Opponent John Fru Ndi, head of the SDF since 1990, died aged nearly 82 from illness.
Chairman Ni John Fru Ndi is no more. The national president of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) died on June 12 at 11:30 p.m. in Yaoundé after a long illness, according to a press release from the vice-president of the party. Joshua Osih adds that “ the funeral program will be communicated as soon as it is established ”.
According to his entourage, Ni John Fru Ndi had returned to Cameroon after a medical evacuation of several months abroad. The chairman had retired from public life for more than a year and had in fact ceded the presidency of his party, which he no longer wished to lead. He died at the age of 82 after more than 30 years of political activism in the opposition.
It was in 1990 that this former militant of the Cameroon People Democratic Movement (CPDM), in power, decided to create his own party, the Social Democratic Front, which he positioned on the left of the political and ideological spectrum. Born in 1941 in Bamenda, while the English-speaking regions were still under British tutelage, Ni John Fru Ndi did part of his schooling in neighboring Nigeria. He is known to have run a bookstore in the city of Bamenda.
Before the 90s, he resigned from the CPDM and in 1992, he presented himself for the first time in the presidential election against President Paul Biya. He officially comes second in this presidential election with 36% of the vote, against 40% for his opponent. But the Chairman considers his victory stolen by the power in place and declares himself the winner. He is placed under house arrest in his residence in Ntarikon in Bamenda.
In 1997, the man decided to boycott the presidential election when his party was already the main opposition force. He will represent himself in 2004, then in 2011 where he will be systematically beaten. But before the 2011 presidential election, in a gesture of political relaxation, the President of the Republic, Paul Biya, met his historical opponent in Bamenda, on December 10, 2010, during the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the Cameroonian army.
In 2018, the chairman decided not to be a candidate for the benefit of his first vice-president Joshua Osih. The latter will record the party’s worst defeat in a presidential election. Indeed, the deputy finished 4th with 3.35% of the vote, far behind outgoing President Paul Biya (71.28%), Maurice Kamto of the MRC (14.23%) and Cabral Libii invested by the Univers party (6, 28%).
Weakened by political setbacks, corruption scandals and illness, Ni John Fru Ndi announced in February 2021 his intention to retire from political life. He thus opens the succession at the head of the SDF and does not hide his preference for his first vice-president who becomes in fact the dolphin. This accentuates the tensions within politics which lead to the exclusion of around thirty executives. They contest this decision and we seize justice. The chairman therefore left the scene, leaving the SDF in crisis.
The political class of Cameroon salutes the memory of a great man
The death of the chairman of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), John Fru Ndi arouses many reactions from the Cameroonian political class. Former President Akere Muna, an unsuccessful candidate in the last presidential election, speaks of a “great man” immortalized for eternity by his career. He adds: “the history of the return to multi-party politics in Cameroon cannot be written without his name in letters of gold. His life is a lesson that leadership is about serving, not being served.”
Akere Muna knows the chairman well in the political field, but also outside. He does not hide his pain, as does MP Cabral Libii, also an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2018. “I salute the memory of this tireless fighter for the advent of democracy in our country,” said Cabral Libii.
The latter, who has since taken the head of the Cameroonian Party for National Reconciliation (PCRN), believes that the return to multiparty politics bears the “indelible” and “unfalsifiable” mark of John Fru Ndi. For Cabral Libii, the chairman succeeded in breaking the codes and the rigidity of the single party in force.
In the ruling party, some executives of the CPDM have associated their voices with this procession of consternation. This is the case of Grégoire Owona, Deputy Secretary General of the CPDM Central Committee and also Minister of Labor and Social Security. “Cameroon is losing in itself a major figure in our democratization, who will have carried in his time and with tenacity, the convictions of his political formation. The politician, certainly an opponent, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in various and numerous circumstances, was nonetheless a republican for whom the general interest should always take precedence over personal ambitions, “says Grégoire Owona.