Looking Glass: Meet Divine Ade Muma, The Guardian Post Best General Manager of The Year

By Fai Cassian Ndi

Divine Ade Muma: The Award Winning GM

If there is anyone who owes his successes and reputation to transforming lives, Divine Ade Muma does. He is the General Manager of Ntarinkon Cooperative Credit Union LTD, with head office in Bamenda in the North West Region of Cameroon. Divine Ade is a strategic and nimble leader, sustainable visionary and active community partner. 

Last February, The Guardian Post, the lone English Language daily honoured Divine Ade as the Best General Manager of The Year 2015. The award jury chairman Peterkings Manyong described Ade as a pulse in the microfinance sector who successfully collaborates with all stakeholders to achieve optimum results at workplace. Divine Ade was voted due to his efforts in delivering what matters to workers, members and the management organs of NTACCUL. With Divine Ade Muma as the General Manager of NTACCUL, this microfinance has become one of the most recognized and award winning credit union in the microfinance sector. 

It is often assumed that knowing history is "knowing the facts." But historical understanding is more accurately depicted as a series of inquiries and hypotheses about the past. Asking questions and looking for answers are essential components of the historian's craft. 

History had it recorded when Ade was proclaimed the Best GM of the year in Buea during the fun-filled national achievement awards of The Guardian Post, it was a rare moment where merit was recognized. 

While servant leadership is a timeless concept, the phrase “servant leadership” was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader, an essay that he first published in 1970. In that essay, Greenleaf wrote that:

“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.

The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?“

A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid,” servant leadership is different. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.

The General Manager of NTACCUL has proven beyond reasonable doubts that he is a servant-leader. It is on this that The Eye has decided to look into the success story of this unsung hero in the micofinance sector.

Who is Divine Ade Muma

He is 41 years old yet a self made man. A servant leader who has contributed enormously to put NTACCUL among the frontliners in the fight against poverty in Cameroon. He is a graduate of Business Administration and he is endowed with analytic skills that make him an exceptional servant leader. He is holder of B.Sc. in Banking and Finance from the University of Buea, Higher Diploma in Business Administration -LSC London, MBA in Finance from the University of Wales Institute, London. Since 2012, he is lecturer at the University of Bamenda and also teaches in the Higher Institute of Commerce and Management. 

He is creative, innovative and rich in expedients when it comes to managing finances. From the results obtained so far, one cannot be wrong to conclude that he has a passion for business and finance. He rose to the position of General Manager not only through competence, but also through humility, respect and being serviceable to all the stakeholders. 

He served as credit analyst for the Cameroon Cooperative Credit Union League-CamCCUL where he assisted Credit Union Managers and League Board members on the practical implementation of the canons of loans and credits, recoveries etc. He is on record to have developed a recovery plan that led to an improvement in the recovery rates. He also developed a two-years action plan to deal with crisis situations that yielded the best of results ever. From 2002 to 2010, he moved to NTACCUL and he was immediately appointed to head the lending department of one of the biggest credit unions in Cameroon. That was when he had the opportunity to personally implement the long established recovery strategies that he had developed and introduced when he was at CamCCUL. 

From July 2011 to February 2013, he was appointed to head the Finance Control and Supervision Department where he ensured an efficient internal control to oversee that all acts and activities are in compliance with COBAC norms. He also ensured the effective control the effective execution of the budget and followup the implementation of all the resolution of the Board and General Assembly. 

In 2013, he was appointed General Manager of NTACCUL. His trappings as GM speaks volume (See the performance of NTACCUL in separate story to understand). 

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