Ayuk Akpoeban Peter: A Genuine Financial Expert and Development Advocate.

By Christopher Ambe Shu

Ayuk A.Peter: a noted financial expert/Recorder C

 His eloquence in English language to those who meet him for the first time may give them the impression that this gentleman is an English language teacher-or that English is his mother tongue. Far from that. Ayuk  Akpoeban Peter,  a native of Manyu Division of the Southwest Region ,is a financial expert, who graduated from ENAM Yaoundé in 1990 as Inspector of Treasury.

Even before entering ENAM, his love for the English language, had first taken him to the then University of Yaounde where he read Modern Letters and graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree  and later a Post-Graduate Diploma in Modern Letters.

Currently, Ayuk Peter is the Treasurer-Paymaster General for the Southwest Region. This forty-something- year old  father  and Inspector of Treasury took over as the Treasurer-General of the Southwest Region last January and immediately went to work ,ensuring that accounting principles are strictly respected in the execution of the state budget.

The duties of the Treasurer-General  include: the supervison,coordination and control of accounting operations of the Southwest Financial circumscription; the  follow-up and facilitation of transfer of financial resources from the state to the councils; the consolidation of receipt and expenditure figures of the region; the production of the region’s management accounts; the control, coordination and supervision of the activities of attached treasuries of the Southwest Region, related to the fight against corruption, poverty alleviation and facilitate business activities through prompt payments. In deed, these are delicate and challenging tasks that not just anybody can perform superbly.

Users of the Buea Regional Treasury would not hesitate to tell anybody who cares to listen that, the treatment of flies there now, under Mr. Ayuk said to be a workaholic and financial wizard, is done with rapidity and all the seriousness required when dealing with financial l matters.

Mr. Ayuk’s duty-consciousness and stringency has always pushed Hierarchy to assign him very challenging tasks. It would be recalled that upon graduation and integration into the public service, Mr.Ayuk handled certain sensitive positions with dexterity, winning the confidence of hierarchy. He had served as Provincial Auditor, Regional Tresaury of Bafousam from 1991 to 1194; Divsional Treasurer at Nanga Eboko from 1994 to 1997; Divisional Treasurer at Ndop from 1997 to 1998; Chief of Service of Budget in the Ministry of Public Works from 1998 to 2002; Inspector at the National Audit Unit of the Ministry of Finance from 2002 to January 2011. 

Impressed by his skills, performance and simple lifestyle, the Minister of Finance on January 6 this year appointed him as Treasurer Paymaster-General, in replacement of Mr. Martin Ojongfong Ojong, another stringent financial expert.

While installing Mr.Ayuk Peter into his functions as Treasurer Paymaster-General, Governor Koumpa Issa had made this remark about him: “Mr.Ayuk Akpoeban Peter is a replica of academic brilliance and long professional experience. It is for this reason that he attracted the vigilant eye of hierarchy and has been catapulted to the prestigious post of treasurer paymaster General for the southwest Region”

The Governor had challenged Mr .Ayuk to continue promoting the principles of probity and performance, so “to improve on the negative image which the general public has always had of the treasury.”

 The Recorder has observed that the Buea Regional Treasury appears to be corruption-free, thanks to what a worker there described as the TPG’s “rigor and moralization policy”

Buea Regional treasury users and some staff who spoke to The Recorder about the Mr. Ayuk Peter, were agreed that, he is an anti corruption and embezzlement crusader, as well as a determined development agent.

Truly Mr.Ayuk could be rightly described as a development advocate. It would be recalled that, during the third coordination meetings of treasury accounts of the Southwest region last November in Mundemba, the Treasurer Paymaster-General expressed regrets at the very slow rate of consumption of credits provided for the councils by the State.

He even appealed to the Governor of the Southwest Region to cause stakeholders-be they authorizing officers, treasury accountants or service providers to take their responsibilities more seriously.

Mr. Ayuk bluntly told the meeting of treasury accountants also attended by some administrative authorities “that any unjustified delay in the execution of this nature of credits has a direct and nefarious impact on Government projections and planning towards an emergent Cameroon in the year 2035”, addin that, “the entire decentralization process is tied to effective utilization of this nature of credits within the respective regions”

 How else can some one be truly patriotic if it not by contributing in several ways to the development and growth of his own country?  

Mr. Ayuk, The Recorder which advocates stringent and transparent management, sees you as an exemplar and encourages you to keep up the spirit! 

First Published in The RECORDER Newspaper,Cameroon,of December 31,2011