NEWS ANALYSIS:

By Peterkins Manyong, guest writer and publisher of The Independent Observer

SDF hierarchy: Shaking the bee-hive in Tubah district

Democracy is more vindictive than cabinets; the war of the people will be terrible than that of kings-Winston Churchill

Tubah subdivision is a good habitat of bees. Thanks to the activities of these industrious insects, many bee-keepers in Tubah are successful people today. Bees can be fairly harmless when left alone. But when you shake their hives, especially in the heat of the tropical sun, don’t expect any good conduct from them.

Bee-stings are good for health, but not when you are stung by a multitude of them. Most of us are acquainted with stories of persons stung to death by bees.

I am, however, not talking about ordinary bees. I am talking about human bees, who in the present case are militants of the Social Democratic Front in Tubah who had been living in peace after the turbulence which characterized the election of Tanjong Martin as mayor of the municipality.

The councillors had defied the SDF investiture committee by voting Tanjong in place of Sofa Stanislaus. After spending one year with relatively less rancour with the party hierarchy, NEC last September, 6, shook the beehive of peace in Tubah district. That was when the party’s ruling organ ordered the reorganization of the Tubah electoral district with the sole purpose of flushing out Tanjong from his post of district chairman.Tanjong may not be the saint his supporters portray him, but he is not the devil incarnate the SDF hierarchy wants the world to believe he is.

Njong Evaristus, who as North West SDF chairman, had to undertake the reorganization exercise might have erroneously thought that the river of time which washes away the soluble reputations of underachievers would have done same on that of Tanjong. 

But to his embarrassment, Tanjong proved that he was still the adamantine rock of Gibraltar that stood against Fru Ndi and the SDF investiture committee.Tanjong who recently made public his report card at the helm of Tubah council after ten months, told this analyst that the 65 projects which have already been carried out in his municipality since November 2013 when he took over, are the products of collaboration with fellow councillors and the Tubah population.

Njong, Tanjong recalled, was embarrassed when 27 councillors (one more than the number that voted him) threatened to resign from the SDF if he persisted in his unpopular mission of reorganizing the Tubah electoral district and flushing out Tanjong.

The Tubah mayor equally looked back with satisfaction at the showdown with a delegation from Fru Ndi that called on him to resign.The delegation comprising Hon.Simon Nchinda Fobi, Njong Donatus, mayor of Kumbo, among others were in Tubah to mount pressure Tanjong to step down as mayor. Responding to Fru Ndi’s 'errand boys’, Tanjong challenged any of them to also step down after being voted.

Apart from Winston Churchill’s remark on democracy quoted above, which emphasizes the power-to-the people slogan, democracy, according, to GB Shaw, is like a sea.Those who understand it best, trust it least. Fru Ndi wanted Stanislaus Sofa to succeed himself as mayor of Tubah but he didn’t envisage the scenario whereby his instructions would be twisted and thrown into a thrash can in his presence.

The SDF national chairman’s discomfiture viz- viz the Tanjong-led rebellion is understandable. What happened in 2013 at Tubah and in Kumba certainly embarrassed the SDF hierarchy just like what transpired at Ndu, Babessi, Nkambe, Njinikom and Bafoussam I in 2007.

But Fru Ndi should know that he can’t win all the time and that the outcome of over-reaction in the face of what happened at Tubah and Kumba II could lead to what transpired in Nkambe, Babessi and Njinikom. The SDF lost Babessi and Nkambe to the ruling CPDM, while in Njinikom 12 SDF councillors voted for the CPDM at the senatorial election of 2013.

Sometimes, we should swallow our pride and let certain things pass without a lot of cacophony about them.Chinua Achebe tells us that we sometimes stand in the compound of a coward and point to where a brave man once lived.

Another lesson the SDF hierarchy is yet to learn is that in politics, people of a particular community have their own priorities and orientations which may not be those of the party to which they belong.

The people of Tubah reportedly have an internal arrangement which states that the position of mayor should rotate among the three main villages-Babanki, Bambui and Bambili.Babanki and Bambui have had their turns.It is now that of Bambili. Babanki even had two terms under Mayor Mufi who later decamped to the CPDM.The population of Tubah seemed very comfortable and satisfied with that arrangement.

Fru Ndi’s idea of party discipline might make sense to him and all believers in the statusquo but not to those to whom development is a priority. Article 8.2 was dreaded in the early days of the SDF when those on whom it was slammed were regarded as worse than lepers in ancient times.Any SDF official still expecting militants to be scared of Article 8.2 is behaving like an old tree abandoned in the Edwardian twilight which cannot understand why the sun is not shining any more (Courtesy:John Osborne “Look Back In Anger”)

When the SDF decided to enter parliament in 1997, the party’s argument was that it was following the example of the fish which moves with the water as opposed to the stone in the same stream or river that doesn’t.

 When a political party continues to impose on its militants a policy which doesn’t serve their interest, it means that policy is serving the interest of the party’s leadership. History is replete with stories of parties that have crashed because they ignored the people’s aspirations. The SDF should learn from history, if it doesn’t want to learn from the Bible.