Osih Joshua in Fru Ndi's big shoes!.

When the legendary Chairman of the SDF, John Fru Ndi, today of blessed memory, launched the party in 1990, he urged his supporters to: "Make no mistake and do not allow yourself to be misled or misguided by anyone, no matter his station in life". 

On Sunday October 29, he was replaced by his First Vice National President, Hon Osih Joshua Nambangi, in a controversial election at the party’s 10^th Elective Convention in Yaounde.

As if the Chairman had a premonition of what would happen after him, Osih defeated Shewa Jestel, SDF Coordinator for Donga Mantung Division and Godden Zama, Limbe District Chairperson, in an election one frontline official from Fako said was a "stolen" victory.

Be that as it was, Osih has a daunting task to resuscitate a party many articulate commentators say has gone off the rails and dying. 

Even before Chairman Fru Ndi passed on, the party had long lost its vibrancy with a free fall in presidential, senatorial, parliamentary and council polls.

With the passage of the Chairman, it was time to do or mar. That mission, almost impossible, has been entrusted into the hands of a businessman, Osih Joshua, from Ndian Division, though with a political constituency in Douala where Kamto's MRC appears to be the main opposition cock crewing.

Before the convention, this daily warned against the party falling into the abyss of errors that could push the party into extinction.

One of the first errors, the SDF under Hon Joshua Osih, National First Vice President, made, was to have raised the deposit for candidates contesting for the position of the National Chairman from 50,000 to seven million FCFA non-refundable.

For Osih, a parliamentarian and millionaire businessman, that amount is chicken feed, but not for the vast majority of members who might have loved to test their following.

The second error, also attributed to the handiwork of Osih's management, was the expulsion of 27+ top members of the party. 

Their crime was that they held a meeting in Mbouda and resolved that the party's accounts be audited. The Mbouda resolutions also accused the late Chairman and Osih of questionable management of the party and dictatorship.

Among the expelled members is the Regional Chair of the Littoral Branch of the SDF, Hon Jean-Michel Nintcheu, whose popularity in the Region and outspoken criticism of the CPDM regime placed him among the potential successors to Fru Ndi. 

Without Nintcheu's expulsion, some pundits say, Osih might not have succeeded Fru Ndi in a free election.

That monumental error would no doubt annihilate the desire to win supporters in the Littoral Region, where Nintcheu resides and his West Region where he hails from and wields significant influence.

In the North West and South West Regions, which used to be almost the exclusive fief of the SDF, separatists fighters are at variance with the four-State Federation the party is brandishing as solution to the ongoing armed conflict in the two Anglophone Regions.

Those errors have compounded to the criticism of the party belonging to "the presidential majority". 

Hon Osih tested his popularity at the national level at the 2018 presidential election and had less than five percent of votes.

In Saturday's Elective Convention, Osih, with the advantages of Acting Chairman, won his two challengers in clearly questionable circumstances that left a stale taste in many refined mouths within the party.

Some critics claim he would turn the party into a CPDM Section and lobby for it to get into government. 

Political analysts say should that happen, it would be pulling off the life-saving drips from the party.

If Osih must honour Fru Ndi's legacy and the six youth who died while the party was being launched in Bamenda, on May 26, 1990, he has to, as a matter of extreme urgency, reconcile with the Mbouda G27+.

Another thing he must do to save the party is to table the Anglophone crisis in parliament for a debate. 

If he could join 63 CPDM parliamentarians to sign a petition outside parliamentary session to criticise the US Congress, what will stop him from getting them to join him debate on the way out of the conflict in SDF strongholds?

In the same vein, he should, with his CPDM friends, initiate a review of the electoral law to ensure a level playing ground for all elections in the country. 

In that way, The Guardian Post is sure, he will comfortably wear the Chairman's large shoe for the revival of the party. The Guardian Post wishes him good luck and quick reconciliation from the convention bruises before they become reeking wounds.