The Ecumenical Service in memory of Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam, Batonnier Francis Sama, Mayor Balick Awah, and Barrister Manga Moussole was held at the Nkolfoulou residence of SDF National Chairman, Ni John Fru Ndi.

Although the occasion was scheduled at the 11^th hour, it however had the impressive presence of some members of government and frontline members of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM.

Regime diehards present at the ecumenical service included: Grégoire Owona, Minister of Labor & Social Security and Deputy Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the CPDM; Ibrahim Talba Malla, Minister of Public Contracts and National Organizing Secretary of the CPDM; Balungeli Confiance Ebune, Director Of The Prime Minister's Cabinet; Hon. Jean-Bernard Ndongo Essomba, CPDM Parliamentary Group Leader; Hon. Muyali Boya Mary epse Meboka, MP for Bakassi-Mundemba and Vice-President of CPDM Parliamentary Group; and Ngally Ngoua Pierre Henri, appointed CPDM Senator for Ocean Division in the South Region.

Also, present were Issa Tchiroma Bakary, Minister of Employment & Vocational Training and President of the National Salvation Front party and Jean de Dieu Momo, Minister Delegate to the Minister of Justice & Keeper of Seals and President of the PADDEC political party (Les Patriotes Démocrates pour le Développement du Cameroun).

Reports have it that frontline SDF members like Hon. Jean Michel Nintcheu, Hon. Awudu Mbaya Cyprian, and Hon. Emmanuel Yoyo, among others, were absent.

Hon. Joshua Osih, First Vice National Chairman of the SDF told the press that the ecumenical service was also a way to welcome chairman Fru Ndi from his ten-month stay abroad and to relaunch activities of the party after a very turbulent period.

“We are grateful to have the National Chairman, Fru Ndi back with us. It has been a difficult time for both the chairman and the party. As you know, the party constitution is such that the vice presidents of the party execute duties assigned to them by the national chairman. As such, the party was functioning all okay. Maybe it wasn’t functioning as some people would have wished it functioned.  I think there is nothing you can say that the party was supposed to do that it did not do,” Osih said.

With the return of Fru Ndi, Osih says the party will start planning for 2021.

“The national chairman is back in town. This means that over the coming weeks, we will be sitting together to try to work out our activities for 2021. You have to know 2020 has been a complicated year for everybody. It has been even more so complicated for us in the SDF. As you see, we have lost so many high-level cadres of the party. That is why we thought that we could not relaunch our activities without first commemorating their passing away. We hope that very soon, this entire COVID-19 thing will be behind us and we are going to focus towards working full-time in 2021,” Osih said.

SDF National Chairman, Ni John Fru Ndi thanked God for the lives of the departed members of the party. “Since God knows best, we can only surrender back to him what is his. There is no way we can keep what is God’s own,” he said.

As they offered prayers for those who have died because of the crisis in the North West and South West Regions, Fru Ndi says the country must unite in love in order to face its challenges.

“Now that all the people across the board have come for us to cry and mourn, let this love transcend across all the facets of things that we are doing in Cameroon. Because until we love each other until we are honest with each other to tell the truth, we cannot change this country,” said Fru Ndi.

65-year-old Hon. Joseph Njang Mbah Ndam, National Legal Adviser of the SDF died Monday, April 13, 2020, in Yaoundé where he was receiving medical care. He served as Member of Parliament for Momo West Constituency (Batibo) from May 1997 to March 2020.

Barrister Dabryn Manga Moussole, Vice Chairman of the Littoral Regional Bureau of the SDF died in Douala on April 23, 2020.

Barrister Sama Francis Asanga Legal Adviser of the SDF died on June 6, 2020, and was buried on June 8, 2020, at the Nkolfoulou residence of Ni John Fru Ndi. The one-time President of the Cameroon Bar Association was buried in a fashion akin to COVID-19 fatalities.

The former Mayor of the Bamenda II Sub-divisional Council, Balick Awah Fidelis, 70, died on July 19, 2020, in Bamenda. He ran the council from 2007 to February 2020.

The abovementioned SDF frontline members died while Chairman Fru Ndi was away. He had gone to the U.S. to seek medical attention following his double abductions by separatists last year.