A SOBAN has fallen: RIP Professor Martin Njeuma (Record Club, Class of 1953)

The passing  away of the pioneer dean of the Department of History,University of Buea, Cameroon, Professor Martin Zachary Mondinde Njeuma, has been described as a great loss to Cameroon and the rest ofAfrica. Professor Sammy Beban Chumbow who made this statement during the academic honours at the University of Yaounde [1] about late Professor Njeuma, disclosed that Professor Njeuma’s immense volume and quality of work made him very much needed as a keynote speaker at international conferences on African History or Social Sciences.

Prof. Chumbow explained that the late Professor had an active involvement with the Council for Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). According to him, he was committed to re-writing African History from the African perspective and not with the spectacles of the colonial visitors who would claim to have ‘discovered’ rivers and mountains which had existed and people lived long in Africa before their arrival. Prof. Chumbow maintained that the departure of Martin Njeuma to eternity is untimely, even if he has attained the biblical ‘three scores and ten.’

On their part, members of the Record Club, St. Joseph’s College, Sasse-Buea, portrayed the deceased as a likeable eminent scholar whose intelligence, honesty and hard work brought pride to the 1953 Class and the entire college. He was one of the moving figures who founded the....
club, they added.

The late professor’s widow, Dr Mrs Dorothy Limunga Njeuma, stated in her tribute that he (Martin Njeuma) was a very supportive husband. However, she regretted that her husband became history all too soon at the height of festivities marking the 50^thAnniversary of the independence and re-unification of Cameroon. She disclosed that Prof. Martin Njeuma was expected to play a determined role during this event as a respected scholar of History within and out of Cameroon.  

The deceased, who was laid to rest on Saturday 29^th May, 2010, was born in Buea on 9^th April , 1940, to Mr. Isaac Mase Njeuma from Ndong Bianga, near Edea, and  Sophie Mondinde of Wonya Lyonga village, Buea. He schooled at Government School Buea Station, St. Joseph’s College, Sasse, Class of 1953, King’s College, Lagos Nigeria, University of Ghana, Accra, then later obtained a Ph.D in African History in 1969 from the school of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London, Great Britain. 

Before his retirement in 1995, he was dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Buea. He was also the dean of the Faculty of Letters and Human sciences, University of Yaounde 1, before his transfer to Buea. He first served as Director of National Archives, Buea, in the then West Cameroon (Anglophone Cameroon) when he returned to Cameroon in 1970. He is survived by two daughters, Dorothy Embelle Njeuma, Christiana Bonbankal Njeuma and wife,  Dr Mrs Dorothy Limunga Njeuma nee Efange, former Vice Chancellor, University of Buea, Former Rector University of Yaounde 1, and now board member Elections Cameroon, ELECAM