By Sallieu T. Kamara
Have you ever imagined what an interesting country Sierra Leone is? This is one of the very few places in God’s green earth where there are people who are always hell-bent on giving all sorts of spurious excuses for the failures of the national leaderships to act swiftly on issues that may have catastrophic consequences for the nation. They defend them with zest and zeal. They vouch for them. They are totally uncritical of leadership deficits. This has become a disturbing trend in the annals of the political history of the country.
Sierra Leoneans have, several times, been constrained to agonizingly witness the usual unexplained inaction of their leaders in situations where actions are needed from them, and very urgently too. But these actions never come forth. As a result, many people have died, several properties destroyed, and the nation subjected to enormous sufferings. The levity with which our national leaders most times respond to crucial information that borders on state and human security has become a cause for serious concern.
Let us take a quick trip down memory lane. Long before Corporal Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front rebels invaded Sierrra Leone in March 1992, the former president of Liberia, Charles Taylor, made a repulsive threat of exporting the destructive rebel war to our country. He chose the world-renowned BBC to make that infamous statement: “Sierra Leone will taste the bitterness of war”. In essence, Charles Taylor was making reference to the devastating rebel war that was then going on in Liberia. Was that not enough for any responsible and conscientious leadership to take prompt action to forestall anything untoward situation? Yes. But that was not the case with us here in Sierra Leone.
Rather, the then leadership of the country headed by the late President Joseph Saidu Momoh initiated the practice of organizing and mobilizing citizens from every nook and cranny of the country to State House. These orchestrated gatherings soon became a daily ritual performed with much fanfare.
Momoh was a permanent fixture in all of these gatherings. So also was late “Odums” who, whilst others were dancing with their feet, was dancing with his entire body frame; rolling like a red carpet all over the courtyard of State House.
Momoh would then appear on the upper foyer of State House to thunderous applause from where he would assure the gatherings that his “government was on top of the situation and that there was nothing for them to worry about”. He would further reassure the citizens of their safety by asking rhetorical questions such as “Where on earth have you seen a corporal defeat a General? No way. I am a General and Foday Sankoh is just a corporal. We are going to inflict a crushing defeat on him and his supporters”. These are statements that were purely driven by narcissism. Momoh kept on fighting the war at State House until the rebels overran the entire country.
The government was so engrossed in these rhetorics that they did not have time to prepare for the promised invasion. The parliament too was completely quiet. We accept the fact that it was a one-party parliament, but that did not in any way change their responsibility towards the people who elected them. Then the war came. And we all saw the downright destruction and absolute obliteration it caused to the nation, the relics of which are still visible all over the country. In fact, it cost Momoh his presidency.
Now, let us fast-forward the calendar to the year 1997. This was the year when the democratically-elected government of the late President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was overthrown by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC); on 25 May to be precise. This villainous act came as a rude shock to many people, but not to the then leadership of the country headed by the late Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. They knew about it long before it happened. But like Joseph Saidu Momoh, they did not do anything concrete enough to avert it. The report of an imminent coup d’etat to overthrow the government, based on intelligence sources, was presented to the government in very good time. In one of his many speeches, Kabbah himself admitted having prior knowledge of the action Johnny Paul Koroma and others. I had the privilege of seeing a brief on that issue.
That exceptional opportunity, which late President Kabbah accorded me and two of my colleagues – Messrs Paul Kamara and late Richie Awoonor-Gordon – came in response to an article we published in the For di People Newspaper. The article did a critical analysis of the fragile security situation of the country at the time using a ghastly picture to give a graphic account of the barbaric and horrendous nature of our civil war. It drew government’s attention to the fact that there were still elements, even within the ruling system, that were plotting to overturn the gains that we had achieved in the peace process.
That article almost landed all of us in prison. But there was divided opinion. Some senior officials of the government called for our immediate arrest and detention, whilst some others including the President called for restraint. This was how President Kabbah invited the three of us to State House to express his agreement with us, and also this was how we came to know about all of this. But even at that, nothing was done, and so the coup successfully went ahead as planned.
Memories of the gory scenes of dismembered bodies of loved ones and compatriots littering the streets of major towns and cities will ever remain fresh in our minds. The rest is history now.
Today, we are in the middle of fighting a war that, instead of plummeting, continues to spread across the country like wild fire in the harmattan. Whilst we are reflecting, it is worthy to note that the Ebola epidemic broke out in Guinea in February 2014, and it was there long before it was imported into Sierra Leone. Accepted that the healthcare system of the country, even under normal times, was weak and enervated to a point of disintegrating. But if only our leaders had heeded the several warnings and the unrelenting calls by all and sundry for prompt action, the country would not have been in the messy situation it is in today. Let’s look at it. If the government had utilized even just one-fourth of the energy that they are utilizing today in terms of marshalling support from all quarters around the globe, the effects of the Ebola epidemic would not have been colossal as we are experiencing today. A stitch in time would have saved nine.
This is where I would also want to draw attention to the failings of politicians that are members of the opposition parties, particularly the Sierra Leone Peoples Party. They are part of the governance system and so they have a constitutional and moral responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of the people. But no, they reneged on these responsibilities and rather embarked on antics that only helped to contribute towards exacerbating an already badly-managed situation. They seemed to derive great comfort and pleasure from peddling lies and half-truths about the Ebola epidemic.
It is beyond belief that some members of the opposition would go out and tell their people that Ebola was not real, but a hoax orchestrated by the ruling All Peoples Congress government with the ultimate objective of killing innocent people in the opposition strongholds before the upcoming national population and household census in December 2014. In other words, the ruling APC government was using the so-called Ebola to annihilate potential voters of the opposition and thereby reducing their chances of winning the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 2017/2018. Can you imagine such warped thinking coming from people that are entrusted with the leadership of the country?
That was the genesis of our failure to hold back the spread of the Ebola epidemic, as people in these communities began seeing and treating health workers as killers, other than life savers. Several confrontations ensued, whilst a number of people that were initially infested with the Ebola disease became elusive. By so doing, many more innocent people became infected with the deadly disease. Today, we have lost hundreds of our compatriots across the country, particularly our healthcare workers, and hundreds more are battling with the pangs of death, whilst scores of families have been entirely wiped off the face of the earth. The pain and misery that the nation is going through today can be attributed very largely to the delayed response of the political leadership of the country just as it were in the past.
But even with all the debilitating consequences of the reprehensible patterns of behaviour of our leaders, there are still toadies that are quick to jump to their defence. No wonder our leaders are in the habit of surrounding themselves with people that always tell them what they want to hear, and not necessarily what they ought to hear. And they are so ensnared in this game of sycophancy that they absolutely refuse to engage in honest dialogue or accept honest criticisms. What is most disheartening is that these sycophants have the propensity to drum up support for all the distortions that go along with these leadership failings. This is the headache Sierra Leone is wrestling with today!
(C) Politico 16/08/14
