God the Politician

19. Power and the Man

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Power and the Man 002 was another dark year in the SDF’s history. Not only did the party lose half the seats it had in the previous parliament but a peace pact was signed with the Biya regime which led to the resignation of Seidou Maidadi, its first vice chairman, Evariste Foupoussi, the communications officer and other top officials. The controversy began when NEC resolved not to enter Parliament or take up seats in the newly won councils because she had been cheated in the elections. To the embarrassment of these top officials, Fru Ndi took a unilateral decision that the new mayors and MPs should go in. Clement Ngwasiri, one of the new MPs had been sent by Fru Ndi to represent him when the SDF was blamed for the violence that rocked Bamenda. The government thought it was absurd that the SDF was protesting in Bamenda after winning all but one of the 20 seats in the Northwest. Clement Ngwasiri and Aaron Neba of the Bafut/Tubah constituency ended up signing a peace pact with the Northwest administration. When accusing fingers were pointed at Fru Ndi, he passed the buck to Ngwasiri and his colleagues who were ordered to pay the party FCFA 1m each. The signing of the peace pact reopened old wounds. The resignation of Maidadi and the rest was the zenith of their frustration caused by a system in which the party chairman took unilateral decisions and made scapegoats of others. The deal with Sani Abacha was still fresh in his mind. Ngwasiri, who was the principal victim of the pact, was later to have his revenge when he raised hell in Parliament about Fru Ndi’s bad faith in promising him the parliamentary group leadership and then breaking his promise by reappointing Mbah Ndam to the prestigious and lucrative post. Constitutional Coup The most decisive blow Ngwasiri ever dealt Fru Ndi was a constitutional coup d’état he carried out in 2006. The whole thing started as a joke. Clement Nforti Ngwasiri, one of SDF’s founding fathers issued a declaration on 13 February 2006 announcing that the SDF National Executive Committee (NEC) was dissolved and Fru Ndi was overthrown 2 137 as party chairman. He said the SDF was supposed to hold its next convention after that in Yaoundé in 2003. Having failed to do so, the NEC had outlived its mandate and Fru Ndi by presiding over the SDF was acting illegally. Ngwasiri, a university professor, lawyer and MP for Bamenda was also the chairman of the National Advisory Council (NAC). He quoted the SDF constitution that he said gave the NAC the right to take over the management of the party if the chairman and the NEC failed. As in the case of Souleymane, an NAC and NEC meeting was also held and Ngwasiri was dismissed both as NAC chairman and as SDF militant. Fru Ndi had argued that Ngwasiri resigned as NAC chairman but the professor dismissed the allegation with the argument that he had tendered his resignation but that it was rejected by the party chairman. The proof of this was that he handed over his resignation letter and he presided over another NAC meeting with Fru Ndi present. Ngwasiri finally took the matter of the NEC and Fru Ndi’s illegal status to the Mfoundi High Court in Yaoundé calling on the court to rule that the NAC was the rightful body to manage the SDF. The matter had a favourable hearing and the court passed a ruling calling on Fru Ndi and the NEC not to hold the Bamenda Convention. Confident that he had legality on his side, the professor and his supporters went ahead to schedule an SDF convention in Yaoundé, as Soulemane had done more than eight years earlier. Ngwasiri had the firm backing of Ben Muna whom Fru Ndi and his supporters had barred from contesting the SDF chairman’s post with the incumbent, claiming he had since resigned from the SDF and had only recently been readmitted. Ben Muna argued that he contested elections with Fru Ndi to choose the party’s candidate for the 2004 presidential elections which the SDF chairman won. This was after a reconciliation meeting at Ntamulung Church Centre in Bamenda on 8 September 2004. To Muna, it was incongruous to allow somebody to contest elections to choose a candidate for the country’s top job and later consider the same individual unfit to stand for...