Background
Emmanuel Mbela Lifafa Endeley was born on April 10, 1916, at Buea, capital of the South-western Province. His family were wealthy members of the Bakweri ethnic group.
Emmanuel Mbela Lifafa Endeley was born on April 10, 1916, at Buea, capital of the South-western Province. His family were wealthy members of the Bakweri ethnic group.
After junior education at the Roman Catholic Mission at Bojongo he was sent to Nigeria, first to the Government High School at Umuahia then to Yaba Higher College at Lagos.
On graduating as a doctor in 1943 he worked for three years as an assistant medical officer at Lagos, Buea and Port Harcourt.
He entered politics through trade unionism in 1947 rising to be president-general of the Cameroons Development Corporation Workers’ Union. In 1949 he helped found the Cameroons National Federation and became its first president. He won a seat for Cameroons in 1951 in the House of Assembly of Nigeria’s Eastern Region and in the federal parliament at Lagos. Appointed Minister without Portfolio and later Minister of Labour, he attended the Nigerian constitutional conference in 1953 demanding separate regional status for the Cameroons.
His greatest success came as a result of his party winning 12 of the 13 seats available in the 1953 elections to the 88-member Eastern Region Assembly. The 1954 Nigerian constitution made the Cameroons a separate region within the Nigerian federation with one ministerial post in the federal cabinet and six federal MP's.
On becoming Prime Minister after the elections in 1957 his power began to decline. Supporters defected to the Kamerun National Democratic Party formed by his former colleague John Foncha and by 1959 the two parties were level. The final blow came in February 1961 with the verdict of the referendum proposed by the United Nations: the electorate decided there should be a merger of the two Cameroons into one federal republic.
Although his political activities have been greatly curtailed he continues to sit in the Legislative Assembly of West Cameroon where he is vice-president of the Finance Committee. He was elected assistant general treasurer of the Union Nationale Camerounaise in 1966.
In the new federal state of Cameroon, Endeley and the CPNC took the role of Foncha's main opposition in West Cameroon. Endeley supported President Ahmadou Ahidjo's moves to create a one-party system in Cameroon. He served in several more posts in Cameroon before his death. In 1965, Endeley became leader of government business for West Cameroon. He served as a member of the Cameroon National Union's central committee, and in 1966, he became president of the Fako section, a post he held until 1985. Endeley was also elected to the National Assembly of Cameroon. Endeley died in 1988.
He worked to have Southern Cameroons granted special regional status apart from Nigeria
A gentle, intelligent figure persisting with his campaign for special status despite the extinction of hope by the change from a federal to a unitary republic in June 1972.