ICON of the week: Professor Fonkam Azu’u: The Genuine Intellectual Anglophones are Proud of after Professor Fonlon

ICON of the week: Dr. Fonkam Azu’u: 

The Genuine Intellectual Anglophones are Proud of after Professor Fonlon

Every generation has its heroes.  Good men are  generally known only by those who have benefited
from them except in the case or cases where the person occupies a conspicuous position. Leadership requires patience, a lot of patience. It also requires a lot of sacrifices.  Good leaders are born as well as made.  To be a good leader, a genuine one of course, a person must be able to manage different moods, temperaments and shades of opinions.  One person in Watchdog Tribune’s eyes, stands out tall when these qualities of leadership are substantiated.  The person is nobody else than Professor Samuel Fonkam Azu’u, the genuine intellectual, who heads Elections Cameroon (ELECAM). Our keen readers are sure to appreciate the reasonableness in our choice only after perusing the accounts that follow.

Dr. Samuel Fonkam Azu’u has beside his lecturing prowess in the University, proven his intellectualism by giving Cameroon’s electoral body, ELECAM, a human face making it acceptable to Cameroonians most especially to the very critical leading opposition party, the Social Democratic Front (S D F).

Shortly after his appointment as the President of ELECAM, Fonkam Azu’u went on a crusade to debunk skeptics who doubted its credibility.  In January 2011 shortly before the October Presidential elections, Fonkam installed computers in ELECAM offices geared towards the checking of excesses of the electoral registration to thwart all misgivings.  The installation of the computers with unique intercom system were effected in all sub-divisional headquarters of the country and within two weeks, some 60.000 new voters were registered with  160.000 existing registered voters coming in to verify their names within the Northwest Region  alone because of the confidence Cameroonians started having for ELECAM and its chieftain, Fonkam  Azu’u.

Equally through lobbying, despite the fact that ELECAM had taken over the computerized data base from MINATD, it acquired new software by the UNDP which is more versatile than what MINATD had with it, ELECAM was able to manage candidates Polling Stations and the outcome of the presidential elections results were quite impressive to a vast majority.

In another vein, with the computerization of the ELECAM offices, ELECAM was able to organize the 2011 Presidential elections on schedule.  There were organized on the appointed date.  Secondly, the elections went on successfully through out all polling stations.  As Fonkam Azu’u himself admitted, after those elections, “It’s in fact a point of satisfaction because I have traveled across the continent to observe elections.” Truly, he went to countries where elections had to be postponed twice because the logistics were not in place.

For bringing sanity in Cameroon’s electoral system, all Cameroonians and friends have applauded that the 2011 elections were conducted in a very peaceful and serene atmosphere.  In fact, since the advent of multiparty politics in Cameroon, few keen observers of the Cameroon political sphere would envy the fact that the 2011 elections was by far the most peacefully conducted, and with the biometric registration put in place, there’s no gainsaying that Fonkam Azu’u’s ELECAM stands tall above all election bodies in this continent, Africa.

 Overcoming SDF Extremism

Today, SDF is the first to applaud ELECAM for its credibility.  Recently in Bamenda, the very critical Northwest Civil society Coordinator, Nkwenti Simon and the SDF Mayor of Bamenda II, Fidelis Balick Awah, and all showered kudos on Fonkam Azu’u for making Cameroonians have confidence in the country’s electoral system. Mayor Balick hailed Fonkam Azu’u for beating records in the 2011 Presidential elections when over 7 million Cameroonians registered and voted, first of its kind since the advent of multiparty politics in Cameroon. Who then says Professor Samuel Fonkam Azu’u is not a genuine intellectual par excellence.