The man Ni Ben Muna, a legal luminary, a political guru, a writer and a fallen baoba tree, is my mentor, my role model and my inspiration. Life is a race and this race involves human interaction.
I fell in the political romance with him in 2005. He is someone who believes in doing great things, to him anything that you are doing on earth you must do it to the fullest because there will come a time when you will leave the stage.
Am one of his followers who believes that political transition or change of power is a corner stone in every sound and genuine democracy.
He is one of the many Cameroonians who holds the notion that political competition is basic fundamental human rights.
In 2005/2006, Ni Ben led a group of progressives to challenge the National Chair man of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) in the Bamenda elective convention in 2006. I must say without any equivocation, that this action of his, carried many a political activists within the Social Democratic Front at that time.
He mustard courage to put his candidature in that elective convention whose fall out led to the spilt and crackson the wall of the S.D.F party. The Muna’s political boat carried several big names in the S.D.F like Honorable Ngwasiri of late, Justice Nyoh Waika of late ,Asonganwi Erstwhile National Secretary General of SDF of late, Joe Wirba now M.P, Chief Agwojang Paul Nerville of late and madam Nyah Margerate and many others including myself. The Cameroon Anglophone press was not left out.
The CHRONICAL publisher Motumu Erick of blessed memory stoled the show. The life time magazine of Tim
Finian and many Anglophone journalists were seen crusading for Muna’s change within the SDF.
Despites all the odds, Muna and Honourable Ngwasiri of late president of the national advisory council of the SDF presented a series of constitutional arguments pertaining to the legality of the national executive committee (NEC) of the SDF both presented that the mandate of NEC of SDF has expired and thereby, giving powers to the national advisory council to convene the convention in Yaoundé.
an uninterrupted advocacy for him in the whole of North West as his campaign manager.
If Ni Ben Muna is not remembered in the political landscape of Cameroon, the Cameroon bar council has volumes to write about him, the Cameroon judiciary will remember a one time magistrate of the Bamenda high court, who resigned from his job when a justice minister called him to dictate on how court proceedings of a case he was handling would follow.
Ni Ben and the April 06th coup d’état in Cameroon of 1984. Ni Ben believed that fear is manmade and must be destroyed. He stands tall in the legal profession as one of the lawyers who entered appearances for those who wanted to topple the Biya’s Government by the barrel of a gun. He defended with a lot of prowess all the accused persons, though most of them who were found guilty of treason faced the wrath of justice. Some were discharged and acquitted.
These and many of his outings in the law practice takes him right to Rwanda where he was deputy prosecutor for the International Criminal’s Court, proved of his excellence in Rwanda is when he confided in me that the honory council of the United Nations department bestowed on him a title
of “Muna the Puma”. This is a reward of his impartial and judicious handling of court proceedings.
If the national and international legal minds failed to write about Ni Ben Muna, local and international press organs would carry him to high pedestal as one who wrote many books and read many newspapers.
Some of his works that would immortalize him are “God the Politician” and “The Challenges of African Democracy Vol 1 & 2”, “Ni Ben Muna The Anglophone Baoba Tree” and “Rich library is burnt”.
My last encounter with him in the press dates back in 2007 when a team of our investigators of the Botfon Human Right Watch granted him an interview on the performance of the Biya’s Government in the past three to four decades, he thundered that “Cameroon is a country that is ruled by a Gang of Desports, whose pre-occupation is to preserve what they have looted from the public treasury than to work towards the development of the country” Ni Ben is one of the strongest of the Muna’s who will defend his father to the last drop of his blood.
In all the accusations levied on his father, Late Honourable Solomon Tadeng Muna for haven’t not presented the Anglophone case well in the Foumban constitutional talks of 1961. He tells anyone who cares to listen that “Am proud to be the son of Honourable Solomon Tadeng Muna. I even resemble him in action and in face” Farewell Big brother
Mudoh Walters
National Secretary for Youths and Women