By Albert George Sheriff
Former vice president and defeated presidential candidate of the Sierra Leone People’s Party in the 2007 elections, launches his memoir today in Freetown in which he releases his perspective on governance and the rebel war that almost wrecked the country. And the book is hard hitting. Titled ‘A New Perspective on Governance, Leadership, Conflict and Nation Building’, Solomon Ekuma Berewa says in his book that he was forced by his boss and former president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah to name the then foreign minister Momodu Koroma as his running-mate, something he writes spurred the international community to move for a regime change as they had fallen out with Kabbah. The book also takes a serious swipe at the chief electoral commissioner, Christiana Thorpe for nullifying results from over 400 polling stations which he said amounted to the election chief being unconscionable. Berewa told Politico that his aim was to give his perspectives on governance and leadership of the country since independence. He added that “the failure” by leaders who emerged after the country’s first Prime Minister, Sir Milton Margai, to address governance and leadership issues had set the pace for the country’s decade-long civil conflict. The lawyer-cum-politician noted that the reasons for the country’s governance and leadership challenges, as stated in the book, were as a result of “man’s selfish tendencies to acquire wealth and remain in power.” He said the book discussed the governance and leadership problems of the country according to the different historical and political dispensations from independence in 1961 to 2007. He said his book would serve as “an eye-opener” to many Sierra Leoneans and would serve the purpose of research and other educational engagements. He, however, conceded to public assertions that both the ruling APC and the opposition SLPP should be blamed for the country’s long-standing history in bad governance, leadership failure, poverty and corruption.
