Expected verbal outburst:

Elimbi Lobe trims FruNdi to size, advocates a more qualified Anglophone candidate in 2018

The resigned former SDF Wouri official says that he stands firmly for an Anglophone to become the next president of Cameroon, but he is not for SDF Chairman John FruNdi, who is not only pathologically corrupt but is unfit to rule Cameroon. Elimbi Lobe made these and other scathing remarks in a one-on-one with Vision4’s Ernest Obama on Friday.

By Tanyi Kenneth Musa in Yaounde

SDF Chairman FruNdi, taking jabs from erstwhile partisans

Former assistant secretary for communication of opposition SDF party has said that the National Chairman of the SDF party is very corrupt and unfit to be president of Cameroon. Elimbi Lobe, who only recently announced his resignation from the SDF, was speaking in an exclusive interview with Vision4 Television’s Director of Information, Ernest Obama, on Friday, 11 November 2016.

                Answering a question as to why he resigned from the SDF, Elimbi Lobe explained that the party had diverted from its initial objective which was the pursuit of political power in Cameroon. The firebrand and loquacious former SDF diehard wondered aloud how a party that claims to be yearning to govern Cameroon would field candidates in only 65 parliamentary constituencies out of the available180.

                “This means that even if the SDF won all the 65 seats she ran for, she would still have fallen short of the needed 90 + 1 seats needed to form a government,” noted Elimbi Lobe, who noted that today SDF occupies only 18 seats in parliament, down from 47 seats in 1997.

                Elimbi Lobe notes further that the performance graph of SDF’s natural candidate for presidential elections, John FruNdi, has witnessed a frightfully steep drop in successive elections. He recalled that in the early 1990s when FruNdi inspired hope for change among the Cameroonian electorate he earned an encouraging 37% of the presidential votes. But in the last presidential election in 2011, FruNdi scored barely 10%.         Elimbi extrapolates from FruNdi’s sharply sloping political graph that the SDF Chairman would simply drown, if ever he insists on being the SDF candidate in the 2018 presidential election.

                Apart from the SDF’s dismal showing iin Presidential and parliamentary elections, Elimbi Lobe notes that out of 380 councils in Cameroon the SDF controls only 39, with a paltry 900 councilors out of a total 10.000 and more.

                 “How can a political party with such discouraging and telling statistics claim to be pursuing power?” wondered Elimbi Lobe.

                Asked why he continued to militate in the SDF even when the party had the bleak picture he is painting, Elimbi said he stayed back because he thought the party needed fresh ideas to make good the bad situation.

                “Unfortunately, a small group of very corrupt and greedy FruNdi yes-men from the North West region have tightened their grip of the SDF and are unwilling to accept any proposal for change. This group of unscrupulous and shameless individuals has shoved aside the initial objective of the party and have turned the party into a business enterprise where the share holders are only desperate for immediate profits.

               

Elimbi Lobe: FruNdi is corrupt and unfit for Etoudi

Asked if by accusing the SDF leadership of corruption he is insinuating that Chairman FruNdi is also corrupt, Elimbi Lobe retorted in the affirmative. He noted that FruNdi is not only corrupt, he is sickeningly so.

                Asked to give instances of corrupt practices by FruNdi, Elimbi said the instances are legion and uncountable. He said the fact that FruNdi has never given account of the hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money disbursed by the CPDM government for the running of  the SDF speaks volumes of the corruption at the top of the party.

                Evoking the rather incestuous relationship that FruNdi has with President Paul Biya lately, Elimbi Lobe concludes that FruNdi is not only Biya’s renegade-surrogate, he is a turn-coat who is now used as Biya’s stool pigeon.

                As to whether FruNdi could make a good president if by any chance the SDF won the next presidential election, Elimbi interjected sharply that “FruNdi has never been a presidential material.” He opined strongly that FruNdi is by no means qualified to be president of a complex country like Cameroon.

                “Maybe in the 1950s and early 60s some body like FruNdi could be president of Cameroon. But today, things have changed. Today, managing the affairs of a country is more complex than can be imagined by people of FruNdi’s ilk. And the issues will only confound him the more if by any chance he accedes to such a high office,” Elimbi Lobe said, thanking God that time and events have exposed who the real FruNdi is.

                Yet, Elimbi Lobe admitted that FruNdi deserves a page in Gold in the annals of Cameroon history, especially for his role in setting the pace for Cameroon’s democratic transition and evolution.

                “Every honest Cameroonian will forever hail FruNdi for his wonderful contribution to the advancement of democracy in Cameroon. But that is not to say that FruNdi could make a good President of the Republic, far from it,” Elimbi maintained.

                Asked what his plans are after quitting the SDF, Elimbi said he was still thinking and observing. But he at once said he would not join any other political party except may be a party that fronts a more qualified Anglophone as presidential candidate in 2018.

                Hear him: “Anglophones have suffered immeasurable injustice in a unified Cameroon. It is scandalous and unfair that almost 60 years after reunification an Anglophone has never been Minister of Defence, Economy, Finance, Education, Police, Gendarmerie, SGPr or President of the Republic. I strongly believe that 2018 is time enough for an Anglophone to be given the chance to also acced to the Supreme Magistracy of this country, because there are so many competent Anglophones who can comfortably man that high office”

                Elimbi Lobe is not the first person to criticize FruNdi and the SDF after jumping out of the SDF boat. Ben Muna, Dr. SigaAsanga (RIP), Prof. Asonganyi (RIP), Akonteh, PauloniusJua, Dr. Mrs. Elizabeth Tamanjongetcetc have all done so in the past.

                Yet the SDF has remained impervious to criticism and does not seem to want to change for the better. And that might just be what prompted the editor of Cameroon’s lone English Language Daily, The Guardian Post’s KristianNgah Christian to describe the SDF party as “the political party that has refused to look into its own mirror.”