Fire Fru Ndi Now!

By Innocent Chia
From a modest observation of sports fans the world over, we all seem to think that we know better than the coach, especially a coach on a losing team. This is acutely true of soccer fans in the banana state of La Republique du Cameroun, home of the erstwhile revered Indomitable Lions. To a man, each Cameroonian soccer fan has always known better than the coach and never hesitated to demand that the coach be fired when the squad is floundering and losing game after game, competition after competition.

This passion, unfortunately, has hardly translated into the political arena where the leaders – Paul Biya, Fru Ndi, Bello Bouba, Ndam Njoya et al – have been forever holding unto power with ironic cheering from the same fans that show little tolerance for losing coaches. In this piece, I liken Fru Ndi to a coach who has a record, a scorecard or report card against which he must be judged. My assessment at the end of the day is pretty obvious – Fire the Coach! The SDF has to fire its Founding Chairman in order to find its way back as a winning team or eventually disappear from the political map of relevancy.

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Comments

[PETER VAKUNTA]

"I say it is time to Fire Fru Ndi and hire a new fire brand for the party. Numbers don't lie. The coach has to be fired. Fire Fru Ndi now!"

You hit the nail on the head, Mr. Chia. When the head of an organization outlives his/her usefulness, common sense dictates that they look for an exit pronto. I have opined in many of my write-ups that Ni John Fru embarked on a laudable enterprise on May 26, 1990 when he launched the SDF party. But this is 2013 and much water has flown under the bridge. Fru has lost the vision he had in 1990.Age is not doing him any good either.Some perspicacious folks have even hinted at the fact that ALZHEIMER'S may be catching up with our revered old man.

The aura he created for himself and the SDF in the 90s has thinned into a specter. Fru Ndi should see these signs as a harbinger of terrible times ahead of him and exit now before some internal forces get him out of his chairmanship. Believe it or not, Fru Ndi seems to be the albatross of SDF at this conjucture. The party needs a younger leader that has the brains and savvy to coach and lead rather than micro-manage party affairs the way John Fru Ndi is doing at this point in time.

[The Ngwa Man, l'ami personnel de la démocratie.]

Brother Chia, though I agree with your conclusion, yes Fru Ndi must be fired (along with Ndam Njoya, Bello Bouba etc). Unfortunately you built your case for conviction on a weak foundation i.e. Cameroon's election results.

Cardinal Tumi made the following statement in an interview with Cameroon Postline:

"You know, since independence, I have never known a single transparent election in Cameroon, even when we had the one-party system. Before the votes arrive in Yaounde, the results were already being announced while the people were still carrying the votes on their heads from the villages." (Mbom, Francis Tim. "If I Were Biya, I Would Resign-Cardinal Tumi." Cameroon Postline. 19 October 2012.)

Need I say any more.

But here comes the problem that Cameroonians are unwilling to discuss. Yes Fru Ndi should resign but are those waiting to earn the reigns of opposition leadership going to continue with the failed tactics of passiveness and accommodation that have marked our 20 plus years of pseudo-multipartyism?

I don't believe in boycotting elections and understand the significance of having a seat at the negotiating table. But I also believe that opposition parties should have militant wings that are able and ready to take very assertive actions when needed to show that they are not toothless bull dogs.

[your seo forum]

Thanks for sharing it with the whole video, I like it very much and I think you deserve a thanks for sharing such a nice post!

[John Dinga]

Fru Ndi should leave the scene, because like all mortals, he has worked and is definitely tired and exhausted.

As for raising hopes that the much-sought-after new blood will come in and change an entrenched culture of fraud feeding on fraud, and stomach doing the job originally intended for the brain, well, it is not a bad idea to dream and engage in some amount of wishful thinking.

[Tangwan Ambe]

I think our focus should not be on Fru Ndi going but who should replace him. Fru Ndi, like any failed leader, should make space for a more competent one and leadership cannot be decreed. This will plunge the SDF into further chaos. For now, hardly any one stands up with the charisma to be able to lead the party in Fru Ndi's place, though I doubt if this is because, like an old cock, he has been clipping off the wattles of young up-starts. Cameroonians never prepare youths for leadership! Let's start changing this in our families.

[n r takol]

what is the difference between fru ndi and biya, they all love power and would not relinquish to anybody

[neba mbonifor]

Instead of wishing that Fru Ndi relinguish the SDF in favor of younger blood, let's have younger blood by-pass the SDF and come out with new political groups. If they have to do so, they will have to brave the hurdles and prove their worth, because the comparison between Fru Ndi and Biya will do us no good. The revolutions we just witnessed in North Africa were not championed by existing political parties. They were masses popular movements that sprung up and changed their societies. Within these uprisings, arose new leadership that took up the task to move their countries forward. Similarly, we must contemplate evolution or revolution in Cameroon in the light of new masses-centered movements from within which new leadership will emerge. Most important, new leadership must propel inclusive societies through policies that foment a strong national identity, and negate tribal, regional, religious and divisive cleavages through which the current system has exploited to perpetrate its stay in power

[neba mbonifor]

Second, we spend much time x-raying where our leaders fail without devoting any such time to examining the missing link which we, the people, are expected to contribute. Assuming that there is no benevolent leadership anywhere on earth, and that leadership only becomes responsible when the people force it to, have we, the Cameroonian people, not afforded the opportunities with which the leaders high-jack power. What sense of a Cameroonian identity do we display? Our affiliations, relationships, preferences, and priorities are tribal in nature. We fight, compete and run down each other; we write petitions and messages of support to lord tribes over others, political appointments and development packages are rewards to tribal loyalty. Believe me, politicians go to bed every evening looking for divisions like this to consolidate their stay in power.