Five years after brutal killings, Makeni is now a centre of attraction for the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and the opposition, All People’s Congress (APC).
Portraits of flag-bearer aspirants in the two political parties are displayed at key spots in the city centre as the countdown to 2028 election begins.
Several politicians including one of the lead flag-bearer aspirants, Ibrahim Bangura have visited Makeni several times preaching peace to the people.
SLPP politicians too have toured Makeni with campaign messages although the 2028 election remains doubtful in light of the recommendations of the Tripartite Committee, a body set up to investigate the June, 2023 election.
President Julius Maada Bio is the latest to visit Makeni engaging the people in a town hall meeting where he sent reconciliatory messages to the people of Makeni and promise them of a facelift of the city.
“I will expand the roads in Makeni city and improve the energy supply,” President Bio assured the people of Makeni while warning them to stop electricity theft.
The attendees mainly stakeholders and academics were ecstatic to have the Head of State as their guest.
On Rogbanneh Road, the main street of Makeni city, a handful of okada riders embarked on a masquerade carrying Bio’s portrait.
They were in high spirit chanting slogans of appreciation for President Bio, while sadness is displayed on the face of bystanders and onlookers.
But, for the vast majority of Makeni people it is a different story as the people grapple with the hard and harsh economic realities seeing no need to abandon their hustling for a presidential meeting.
Speaking to this press, a shop agent in Makeni city, Abu Sesay tags the presidential meeting as one not worth going to.
“I prefer my shop to a presidential meeting because I have something to derive from my business at the end of the day. What will I get from a townhall meeting with the President,” Sesay rhetorically asked.
The shop agent is a graduate in Computer Science but without job in the public service because as he put it “I am not part of the system,” adding that he is an indigene of Makeni. Sesay take to business to make ends meet as he believes that he would have got a good job if he were a Southeasterner.
Telling a similar story, is a photographer, Amara Conteh who told this press that he would not attend a meeting to which he was not invited.
“Meeting these days call for invitation before you go there. If you are not invited, stay at home. President Bio is in his own business while I am doing mine here,” Conteh told this press as he beckoned to a passerby coaxing him for a photo.
Similar stories were also told by almost all those who spoke to Nightwatch press in Makeni.
A very important stakeholder here in Makeni city (name withheld for fear of reprisals) intimated this press that he was not comfortable with the visit of the President owing to what he called “the under-performance of the Bio regime particularly in the infrastructure sector.”
The local stakeholder looks back at the days of former President Ernest Koroma who revamped the roads in Sierra Leone especially in Makeni city.
Even the road leading to the townhall, he says, is littered with several potholes indicating that he has done nothing in Makeni although he gets some votes here in the last election.
“The people of Makeni voted for the President in the June, 2023 election, so he must do at least something for them,” he emphasised.
The story is about the economic hardship the Bio regime has created especially the sky-rocketing price of fuel for which many people are not happy.
Global reports have shown that fuel price have gone down considerably at the world market as the US-Iran war almost reaches an end.
The central question government faces is why has fuel price gone down in the global market, but still remains high in Sierra Leone.
The price of a litre of petroleum stands at Le35 (thirty-five Leones) and Le40 (forty Leones) by the Jebu sellers (black marketers).
Recently, a local pressure group, Sierra Leone Labour Congress representing over 3,00, 000 (three million) workers wrote to the Petroluem Regulatory Agency to put down the fuel price.
The letter dated 26th June, 20226 contends that “over the past weeks or months, global crude oil benchmarks have declined per barrel from their earlier levels.”
In response, PRA removed only Le2 (two Leones) from the Le35 leaving the price at Le33 (thirty-three Leones) while riders and drivers are still at the mercy of black marketers who still sell at Le40.
But, the people particularly the commuters are on the wrong end as they bear the incidence of cost.
As government shows no readiness to bring down the fuel price to an appreciable level, another letter has been dispatched by the congress stating that they are still dissatisfied with the new price, and government must take steps to further slash it down.
The people are always worried when fuel price shoots up since it has a spillover effect over other prices of goods and services.
Apart from the high cost of living that has hallmarked the Bio regime, the scars of the July, 2020 massacre are still fresh in the minds of the people, one of the main factors why Makeni residents snubbed the town hall meeting.
It was five years ago when the people of Makeni woke up to sustained gunshots that left several people dead for a mere relocation of an electricity generator from Makeni to Lungi.
Makeni Youth succumbed to the barrel of the gun when they resisted the relocation of the 6.5Kv thermal plant.
Official figures put the number of casualties at six while credible sources said 20 was the accurate figure with several others badly injured.
The above figure (20) was confirmed by Honourable Catherine Zainab Tarawallie during the launch of the report on the killings at the said town hall. The report was authored by a long-time human rights and good governance campaigner, Valnora Edwin.
Honourable Tarawallie, a Member of Parliament representing one of the constituencies in Bombali district condemned the report saying it did not reflect the correct account.
Other important stakeholders were also arrested and detained at police facilities in respect of the incident.
The Makeni city Mayor, Sunkarie Kabba was also threatened with arrest and detention when the youth threatened to go on the rampage.
The issue prompted a protest at the country’s legislative house when APC members of parliament clad in black T-shirts chanted “Makeni Lives Matter.”
It was a move to ensure that government investigate and bring to justice those security forces responsible for killing armless and defenceless youths.
No killer was investigated hence strengthening a culture impunity that is deeply ingrained in Sierra Leoneans.
However, government’s forceful and brutal relocation of the electricity generator was bitterly condemned especially for the loss of lives and infliction of serious injuries by those who should be seen as good guys with the gun.
Critics persistently question government’s lethal action just for the removal of a generator from Makeni. They are of the view that government could purchase the said generator ten times prompting big doubt about what actually made government to let loose their killing machines.
Several incidents also followed the 2020 massacre as state security forces attempted to arrest former President Ernest Koroma who hailed from Makeni for various criminal offences.
A fierce tension opened between state security forces and the Makeni youth over attempt to obtain statements from Ernest Koroma for alleged corruption and money laundering offences.
The youth saw the former President as a honest and clean man almost to the rank of a saint, and that no one would take him anywhere.
The move to arrest the former President by the SLPP government was widely seen as one that would have provoked a tribal war between the Themne and the Mende, Sierra Leone’s two largest ethnic groups.
Although the move to prosecute the former President was abandoned for the sake of peace, allegation of financing coupists to topple the Bio regime in November, 2023 was unpardonable.
Koroma was roped in and humbled in a magistrate court in Freetown before he was exiled to Nigeria.
Either Koroma is a daylight prisoner or a man in exile, Makeni residents are not happy with the Bio regime for treating one of their own.
The massacre and the exile of the former President, put together, is a major source of grievance for Makeni people with the SLPP government treating the President’s visit with a pinch of salt.