Life Time Newspaper Publisher dies!.

His inconsolable wife confirmed the sad development to The Guardian Post yesterday via telephone. 

Tim Finnian, we gathered, had been hospitalised at the facility for days before giving up the ghost yesterday. 

It was not immediately made public what killed the journalist but we learnt from family sources that Tim Finnian had been battling an unknown illness for months now. He was rushed to hospital last week as his health began declining. 

We gathered that matters got worse on yesterday morning, with Tim Finnian being taken into the emergency unit of the hospital before being kept under oxygen machines. 

He died same day in the presence of his wife, kid sister and other family members.

His corpse has been preserved at the Bamenda Regional Hospital mortuary pending burial arrangements.

Meanwhile, following his demise, the media family in Cameroon has been thrown into a pensive mood, with colleagues describing his death as a great loss, not only to the media family but the country as a whole.

A career of roses, storms

A jovial and forward- looking personality, the late Tim Finnian was widely known in the North West Region, where he practiced journalism for close to three decades. 

Before setting up his own media organ, Tim Finnian had stints with the now defunct The Herald newspaper and other print media outlets.

A native of Njinikom, in Boyo Division of the North West Region, the late Tim Finnian was an outspoken and daring journalist, who had running battles with authorities, while practicing the journalism.

In January 2017, authorities in Bamenda arrested Tim Finnian, over a report he published alleging that two Anglophone youths had died in police custody in the wake of the armed conflict rocking the two English-speaking Regions of the country.

Four men, dressed in black, had forced Tim Finnian into a car in Bamenda, which took him to a police station where officers questioned him about the report. Tim Finnian was later transported Yaounde for detention.

While in Yaounde, Tim Finnian was detained at the national headquarters of the gendarmerie, SED, before being transferred to the Kondengui Maximum Security Prison.

In an interview Tim Finnian granted online platform, Journal du Cameroun, while in detention, he disclosed that: “Gendarmerie officers told me I wrote a sensitive article, which could spark a rebellion …we wrote a [correction] for the story as the law requires.”

Three weeks after his arrest, a military judge charged Tim Finnian with acts of terrorism, insurrection, secession, and publication of false information.

Tim Finnian was held in Kondengui prison, in a cell that he shared with 14 others. He was released after spending eight months in jail, following a Presidential pardon, which also saw several detainees, arrested in connection to the crisis in the North West and South West Regions regaining their freedom.

Tim Finnian, it should be recalled, launched Time Life Newspaper in 2003, as a quarterly publication, before turning it into a monthly publication in 2010. 

The newspaper later became a weekly, with focus on investigations and exposing alleged corruption in government and business sectors.

Before his arrest in 2017, Tim Finnian had previously faced legal action. 

In 2006, the now late opposition Social Democratic Front, SDF Chairman, Ni John Fru Ndi, accused Tim Finnian of civil defamation. 

Fru Ndi had requested 25 million FCFA in damages over an article in his publication. 

After two years, a court in Bamenda threw the case out, putting an end to the legal battle against the journalist.

At press time last night, details about Tim Finnian’s funeral programme were still sketchy.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3882 of Tuesday August 18, 2026