By Oumar Farouk Sesay
Historically, Sierra Leone has extremely brilliant people in many fields of human endeavour who were sent by the colonial masters to other colonies like Gambia and Nigeria to beef up human resource capacity much like footballers sent on loan. The linguistic evidence of those postings featured prominently in the study of Krio language in the Diaspora. The torch of brilliance continued in the post-independence period making Sierra Leoneans much sought-after experts in many international organisations and other fields like academia.
Ironically however when these exceptionally bright people are brought together to build a nation from within Sierra Leone, it becomes a case of transplanting rice from the lush fields of Torma bum to the gaping wounds of Mokanji left behind by rutile miners. The star brilliance dims, the glow dissipates, and the total outcome is qualitatively less than the individual part.
How a nation of seemingly brilliant people failed to yield prosperity for their compatriots defies comprehension. Is it that the mythical curse of brilliance that sometimes plagues intelligent people is afflicting the country? How come the efforts of one individual Sierra Leonean yield distinction and the aggregate of those distinct individuals yields spectacular failure?
We can borrow from many theories to explain the puzzle of two plus two that equals minus two.
E O Wilson in his book, The Social Conquest of Earth, contends that as Homo sapiens biologist referred to us as "eusocial" beings, meaning a group member of multiple generations prone to perform an altruistic act as part of their division of labour like ants and termite. To do kindness for the benefit of others and not for individual satisfaction alone guarantees the survival of species and the sustainability of society. It is the eusociality that makes creatures like ants as social conquerors of planet earth. It could be argued that the individuality of Sierra Leoneans sometimes fuelled by ego and self-interest stands out in the collective at the detriment of collaboration.
We are quick to assert our individuality in a situation where teamwork is required, we quickly beat our chests and show the résumé of our achievements to others to show them how fortunate they are to have someone of our status in their midst. In some case, we urinate on them much like lions in the wild to mark our territory with phrases like "you know wudat na me?" The revelation of who we think we are changes collaborative ambience to adversarial posturing hence the relentless bickering about our unique features like we are some iPhone on social media and other platforms designed to foster cohesion. The time spent in showing who we are, what we have, where we have been, seems to take away the synergy and flaw our national calculus.
Passive aggression tends to characterize our conversation as such our dialogue or monologue generates heat instead of the much-needed light the nation desires for development. The tone of our discussion is heavily laden with power distancing, and an aloof attitude, thus creating hindrance to collaboration across diverse groups. The genealogy of the power distancing type dialogue deliberately contrived to put people in their places could be traced to the master-servant relationship of the colonial era in which the colonialist strategically deployed power-distancing to affirm the superiority of the conqueror. Sadly, that form of dialogue exists to this day, indicating that the journey to social cohesion is still an elusive Eldorado.
The human experience dictates that selfishness and self-sacrifice instinct reside in all of us, but the act of striking a balance is what sets individuals, groups, and nations apart. The genetic iron rule, simply put, says selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals in the game of life whiles a group of altruistic individuals beat a group of selfish people. If selfish individuals dominate, the society will dissolve, and if altruistic individuals prevail, the society thrives just like colonies of ants and termites.
The notion of selfish individuals and altruistic ones is aptly captured by a cartoon that depicts selfish people trying to pluck ripe apples from a tree by pulling each other down. In contrast, a group of altruistic people support each other and readily pluck the fruits for the benefit of all. Our selfish individuality goes against the cardinal genetic rule hence our aspirations as a nation limps like “Wanfoot Jompee” of myths. When a people's group definition captures only their ethnicity then we have a problem more significant than a distressed Astronaut saying “Huston, We have a problem!”
Sierra Leone is in a struggle for social cohesion manifested by the fact that an ethnically-induced patrimonial system is hiking a ride on the back of Liberal democracy to reach the shores of nationhood via ethno-regional fault lines. The journey took a toll on individuals as such; they shed out their individuality to assume an ethnic identity. The mutation to identity politics infiltrates into political parties dividing the country into ethno-regional lines along the geopolitical Faultlines which, according to Professor Carew eminent Sierra Leonean scholar, began way back in the colonial era.
In a recently circulated paper titled: “Politics and Corruption in Sierra Leone”, Professor Carew traces the genealogy of corruption to the birth of our nation. He argues that the birth of our country could be likened to artificial insemination where eggs from the ovaries of the crown colony were fertilized with sperms of, not too willing, heterogenous donors from the hinterland. The hasty procedure gave birth to a test tube baby with limbs loosely held together and blabbing babel of dissonance for a national anthem.
The genetic trait of division and bickering from the birth of our nation survived within the national body politic to this day. Like trees in Fall, individuals shed their identity for ethno-regional identity at the electoral season. Hence, the election became an ethnic census, so the winners capture the state for five years, sometimes excluding the others, further exacerbating the sum of errors. In most cases, the loser is not in the aggregate, or if they are in the sum at all, they are perceived as negligible decimal point awaiting the mathematical laws of approximation to terminate their existence.
In less than two decades, the world has gone global and exponential in growth, creating collaboration at a worldwide scale to accommodate a changing world. In comparison, we have stayed parochial and lineal in thought. Our unwillingness to collaborate for the national good with the man whose sister carried our sons is legendary. Our linear thinking in a world with exponential growth creates what political scientists referred to as disruptive convergence. In our attempts to make sense of the disruption or the rupture, we take a leap from one policy to the other like amphibians chased by reptiles.
Many of the actors in Government and the opposition were casualties of the war and the bad governance which preceded it. The TRC was the start over that was meant to wipe the slate and bury the bloody hatchet. But recent inflammatory rhetoric tends to suggest that lesser human instincts remain on the blank slate like a palimpsest waiting to be read by those who still find it difficult to forgive the transgressions of the past. To act on those instincts will initiate a new round of insecurity and conflicts that will reverse the gains we have made as a nation. A tit-for-tat beat seems to be the signature tune of the Sierra Leonean tragedy being played out by us on our national stage. However, if the current Government attempts to use might on their siblings of suffering based on tit-for-tat logic, the question would be asked by the people, whose tit and whose tat are we talking about that the TRC did not address? Is it the tit-for-tat of the 60s between Siaka Stevens and the Margais which eventually culminated in the single party? Or the one in the Momoh era, which led to the war? Or the one in the days of the NPRC? Indeed it is difficult to put a finger at a bloody tit from the Ernest era that might have triggered the toxic animosity among brothers and sisters who suffered the soul-sapping tragedy of tit for tat politics. Nothing will justify a rerun of the politics of yesterday, particularly by a generation that suffered its consequences. For the younger generation who knew very little about the history of political party conflicts in Sierra Leone, a rerun is an initiation of a new tit whose tat, like a delayed note, would come later to create a symphony of dissonance for future generations.
President Maada Bio came into office with a temperament that borders in anger in a manner reminiscent of the military coups of yesterday. He came with kickass of the Opposition attitude manifested in the Executive orders that terminated the services of diplomats and asked for their repatriation to Sierra Leone immediately like the military takeovers of yesteryears. The action was cheered on by his supporters because it was consistent with the image of the battle-tested warrior President. However, that action, among other things set the mood and temperament of his Government to this day. In a nation where individuals sometimes behave like phenotypes of the Queen ant, the anger of the President could be expressed differently by his minions sometimes with collateral damage to the spirit of nationhood. The relationship between the Government and the Opposition will always be competitive, collaborative, and adversarial. In our case, the hostility between the two parties is becoming pandemic unless temperaments are sanitized with some civility, we will continue to look like a divided nation baying for each other's blood like jackals.
The best and brightest Sierra Leoneans from home and the diaspora are transplanted by our leaders to this strife-ridden land and expected to perform as they performed in their previous jobs. They came with the gold standard assumption that all things being equal only to discover that here, at home, the assumption that all things being unequal rules. It takes a toll on our Monty Joneses and David Tambies, as they run the gauntlet of adversarial politics like gladiators of Rome.
Appalling that the toxicity of our adversarial politics has reached the shores of England at the precinct of New Broadcasting House (formerly Bush House) to lynch our brothers working at BBC. I contend that we are treading a dangerous path that could only take us to damnation. The last time I checked, BBC is not Fox News and Umaru Fofana and Hassan Arouni, are not Sean Patrick Hannity before the fall of Trump.
Our democracy is anchored in an electoral period of five years with unofficial campaign commencing in the fourth year so for a Government to spend three years to probe the sins of the previous Government raises questions hinging on time management and strategy.
In some quarters, the argument is that the prolonged probing is a strategy to disrupt the opposition and prevent them from organizing electorally for 2023.
Whomsoever advised the Government to follow the path of disrupting the opposition through prolonged and multifaceted probing might have gotten it wrong. The strategy creates a kind of tension that investors find difficult to write off. We are not the only country with diamond, gold, iron ore, bauxite, beaches, and soil in the world; there are others, offering the same and a tension-free political climate in the menu. Who says the swift action of removing the ten opposition parliamentarians and replacing them with MPS of the party in power is not questionable, yet parliament is limping on to progress? Similarly, a swift probe will expel the tense atmosphere and give the economy a breathing chance. The prolonged probing might give electoral advantage to the Government, but at what cost to the economy and social cohesion?
Apart from Ahmad Tejan Kabba's 2002 election victory, the predictable feature in election results in Sierra Leone is that a single digit in percentage terms separates the winners and the losers. In 2018 it was 3%, and that difference speaks to the division that characterises our political landscape more than anything else. It speaks to the narrative of a state built on ethno-regional fault lines that pushes the country to the brink every electoral season. It speaks to the dilemma of a state in search of nationhood, it speaks of the tipping point and the danger of tinkering with the fault lines of our statehood. It calls for the reengineering of our liberal democratic framework so as minimize the hazards of falling over the precipice. It yells for a magnanimous leader with a healing hand to correct the sum of the error to allow this tiny state to become a nation-state.
It is in our best interest to tone down the atonal rhetoric, temper down the temperaments, grind the petty grudges, ease the tension, and unleash the spirit of the nation to take us beyond the skies. Are we the generation of leaders to do that or we are just like those before us who have gone into their graves with unresolved grudges decaying next to those they begrudged? What is important to us, our petty grievances or a state's search for nationhood?
Oumar Farouk Sesay is the Author of FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF SERVITUDE
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