Fru Ndi was a candidate of the ruling
Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (RDPC) in the
Mezam Central constituency during the single-party
1988 parliamentary election, losing to a different RDPC list. After that, he was popularly known as "The Chairman". He campaigned for the rights of the English-speaking minority in the mostly French-speaking country, but wanted a
federal, unified nation. (in Fru Ndi's stronghold, Northwest Province, he officially won 86.3%). This election was condemned as fraudulent by the opposition, Amidst the outbreak of violence in the North-West Province that followed the election, Fru Ndi was placed under house arrest in late October 1992. After about a month, he was released. Along with other opposition parties, the SDF chose to boycott the
October 1997 presidential election. Fru Ndi was re-elected as SDF Chairman at the party's fifth congress in April 1999, receiving 1,561 votes from delegates against 40 for his challenger, Chretien Tabetsing. Fru Ndi was the SDF candidate in the
October 2004 presidential election; according to official results, he took second place with 17.40% of the vote against 70.92% for Biya. He received his best results in Northwest Province (68.16%), followed by
West Province (45.04%),
Littoral Province (32.71%), and
Southwest Province (30.59%). Fru Ndi alleged fraud in the
July 2007 parliamentary election and called for it to be annulled; in the election, the SDF won the second highest number of seats but was far behind the ruling RDPC, which won an overwhelming majority of seats. After the election, Fru Ndi said that Biya should recognize him as the official leader of the opposition. Fru Ndi said on 14 November 2007 that he would be willing to meet with Biya. He said that Biya had not invited him to meet and that he had tried to meet Biya several times, contradicting Biya's statement on French television that Fru Ndi had not responded to his invitation. On 12 April 2008, Fru Ndi called for a
national day of mourning on 21 April 2008 to commemorate the individuals who died during the
2008 anti-government protests and the "death of democracy" in Cameroon. Fru Ndi indicated that he believed the 2008 changes to the
Constitution were intended to enable President Biya to be
lifelong dictator of Cameroon and that the changes would institutionalize
corruption, immunity, and inertia. Fru Ndi again stood unsuccessfully as a candidate in the
October 2011 presidential election, placing a distant second behind Biya. A few days after the election, on 17 October 2011, Fru Ndi, alongside other presidential candidates, called an emergency meeting to demand that Biya annul the election. In the
April 2013 Senate election, Fru Ndi stood as a candidate in the Northwest Province, his primary support base. The
indirect election marked the creation of the upper house of Parliament; previously only the National Assembly had existed. Fru Ndi failed to win a seat in the Senate. He alleged that the ruling party had bribed some SDF local councilors. Fru Ndi took a critical stance against the Cameroonian government's handling of the
Anglophone Crisis, a war that affected him personally. In October 2018,
Ambazonian separatists burned down his house in Bamenda. On 19 April 2019, his brother was kidnapped by gunmen, who demanded a ransom. Eight days later
he was kidnapped himself, while visiting
Kumbo,
Northwest Region to attend the funeral of Joseph Banadzem, the Parliamentary group leader of the SDF. He was released shortly afterwards, with the SDF describing the whole affair as a "misunderstanding" that was quickly solved. It was revealed the next day that the separatists had kidnapped Fru Ndi in order to get a chance to talk to him. In a video that appeared online, gunmen asked the SDF leader to withdraw all SDF legislators from the National Assembly and the senate. Fru Ndi replied that he would not, stating that doing so would be counterproductive. In June 2019, Fru Ndi stated that while he was not a separatist, the government "was pushing him" in that direction. Fru Ndi made a point of always travelling without a security escort whenever he visited the Anglophone regions, stating that he was not afraid of his own people – including separatists. == Personal life and death==