BOOK REVIEW: Dr. Bernard Nsokika Fonlon: An Intellectual in Politics

Daniel Noni Lantum, Dr. Bernard Nsokika Fonlon: An Intellectual in Politics (Gown and Throne), Yaoundé: SOPECAM, 1992, 80pp. No price Indicated.

Review by Martin Jumbam

(First published in the weekly tabloid The Sketch, No 22 of April 9, 1993).

Some years ago, in the columns of what was then our national bi-weekly, Cameroon Tribune, No. 907, Friday, April 24, 1989, I had the honour to review a book with a lengthy title Bernard Nsokika Fonlon (1924-1986) is now a Legend: Funeral Addresses, Tributes and Eulogies, edited by a man who describes himself as Dr. Fonlon’s ‘friend and brother’ Professor/Dr/Faay-wo-Bastos Daniel Noni Lantum. I remember expressing regret that three years after Dr. Fonlon’s death, what some of us had expected to become an “avalanche of publications” on the late venerable professor’s life was still a mere trickle.

Even though that “avalanche of publications” has been long in coming, one is nonetheless comforted by the quality of the increasing bibliography on him; my favourite being that beautiful book entitled, Socrates in Cameroon, edited by Dr. Nalova Lyonga, of the African Literature Department in Yaoundé.

A few weeks ago, someone brought me an autographed, beautifully-decorated, blue-cover booklet entitled Dr Bernard Nsokika Fonlon: An Intellectual in Politics (Gown and Throne), still by Dr. Fonlon’s ‘friend and brother’, Dr. Daniel Noni Lantum. In addition to the attractive cover, the reader’s attention is almost immediately drawn to the numerous black and white pictures of Dr. Fonlon, and of the author himself.

This booklet is divided into three parts, each with a title and sub-titles. It is prefaced by the author himself and the Foreword is by one of Dr. Fonlon’s greatest buddies, Professor Victor Anoma Ngu.

From the author’s preface, we learn that this work stems from a theme of a censored, round-table discussion organised some years back by the Bernard Fonlon Society (BFS) at the University of Yaoundé. Dr. Lantum sees his book as ‘A forum setter’ for a long and elaborate debate on what he dubs ‘the phenomenon of Fonlonism’.

In his Foreword, Professor Ngu, states that ‘Dr. Fonlon was indeed a phenomenon so great that it will require many writers and many generations to fathom the depth of his profundity’ (p.9).

The question Dr. Lantum has asked, and is trying to answer, is whether Dr. Fonlon was a political success or failure. When you reach the end of this booklet, it becomes clear that Dr. Lantum considers his ‘friend and brother’ a political success, especially given the latter’s tremendous and undisputed moral and intellectual influence on the Cameroon of the Ahidjo years; a Cameroon which was, and still is, notorious for its blatant violation of the basic rights of its citizens.

What is open to debate, however is what both professors Lantum and Ngu insinuate as Fonlon’s influence on what he saw of the early years of the Biya regime. His membership of the CPDM Central Committee notwithstanding, Fonlon was very disappointed with the Biya regime right from its infancy, when many of us still saw Biya as the long awaited Messiah, who had come to deliver us from decades of thralldom. What naiveté on our part!!

It would seem that, in turn, Biya distrusted this man whose intransigence in matters of moral and intellectual integrity, would soon contrast sharply with his regime’s incurable kleptomania and notorious human rights abuses.

Had the Biya Administration held Fonlon in any esteem whatsoever, he would not have been reduced to that pathetic scarecrow Dr. Lantum so vividly presents to us. Is the Fonlon we see ‘chasing’ his retirement ‘dossiers’ from one office to another in the Ministry of Finance, without anyone even caring to listen to him (p.60), not a complete shadow of the once ebullient personality many of us knew him to be? What of that solitary, downcast, wretched, sullen man, so poor he’s even unable to give his mother a decent burial (p.62)? Would Fonlon have been reduced to that level of poverty had he any influence whatsoever on the Biya regime, as our professors claimed he did? I wonder.

Another issue that is bound to raise eyebrows in certain circles is the author’s claim that Dr. Fonlon resigned from his post as Minister of Health when French doctors opposed his attempts to transform the Yaoundé central hospital into a teaching hospital for our medical school!! (p.50). Is Sankie Maimo listening, he who is on record as claiming that Fonlon never resigned but was fired for trying to transfer doctors out of Yaoundé? Where lies the truth? That is the question.

On the whole, Dr. Lantum’s booklet makes interesting reading, although it is marred by numerous, regrettable and irritating typographical mistakes. I know I’ll receive the usual excuse that a Francophone secretary typeset the work, but one wonders what stops a seasoned writer of Dr. Lantum’s stature from insisting to review the final proof of his work before it rolls off the press? The answer is waltzing in the wind.

Such shortcomings notwithstanding, Dr. Lantum’s work is a commendable scratch on the tip of the huge intellectual iceberg that was Bernard Nsokika Fonlon.

Comments

[ndifor alexander]

How can i get a copy of the book on Folon Bernard