Many stories about the five-year leadership of President Julius Maada Bio have been told but the story tellers hardly touch on Bio’s blunders that hunt the party and the country.
Owing to Bio’s mistakes,
the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) has been relegated to one of its lowest level compared to its peak of glory under President Ahmed Tejan Kabba. SLPP, party that was well respected for elitism has fast relegated to radicalism and thuggery.
Kabba took over Sierra Leone’s second oldest party in 1996 and made attempt to clean the party’s image by having a broad-based government of national unity, but the task was just too difficult as those around him could not render the necessary support and cooperation.
They wanted Kabba to be brutal and abusive of human rights especially against North westerners. Kabba left much of the task of image laundering undone as he rode into the sunset in 2007 leaving behind what many called a bartered image.
President Ernest Bai Koroma took over from Pa Kabba to steer the ship. He ruled for 11 years, and as he prepared to take the back seat, Bio appeared at the political scene taking many Sierra Leoneans by storm with promises of revamping the education system, fighting corruption, blocking leakages, fixing the economy, agriculture, health, energy among others.
Fighting corruption and empowering women also lay at the fore of his campaigns but achieved none of his promises after five years. Perhaps, one may ask what blunders that militate against President Bio in his first term?
The blunders need no forensic audit as they were as clear as crystals. Although Bio takes pride in celebrated academics that have sojourned too long in first world countries, he did not promote tolerance within and outside his party. Tolerance which is a composite term strengthens democracy and good governance anywhere in the world. Tolerance, within the realm of politics, is about accepting and working with politicians of various political parties for the common good.
In the proper application of tolerance, SLPP will ignore APC’s faults or errors and work with the party in the interest of national development. What is wrong if Bio pays visits to APC headquarters in Freetown, sits and discuss with top APC politicians about the way forward? What also if Bio invites APC politicians to a dinner or cocktail?
What is also wrong if Bio takes along opposition politicians out on an international trip? What is also wrong if Bio visits former President Ernest Bai Koroma in his hometown of Makeni?
Unlike former President Koroma, It is difficult for Bio to embark on such levels of tolerance as he tends to project his party’s interest above the country, a move he embarked on since he came to power in April, 2018. He terrorised opppsition politicians by way of mass arrests, detention in police and prison cells, a move that has landed Sierra Leone into her current quagmire. Although he campaigned on the platform of peace and national cohesion, Bio could not offer peace to Sierra Leone.
His first-term tenure was hallmarked by indiscriminate protests in the city and other parts of the countryside owing to his misrule. But, these protests i were easily suppressed owing to the use of superior weapons. Perhaps, Bio’s most fatal mistake owes it to the expression of vengeance for which his government is notoriously well known. Bio and cronies exercised state power as if they were harmed when they were not.
But, many have posed questions about Bio’s vengeance which have remained unanswered to date. A popular argument holds that Bio has hurt Sierra Leoneans more than they hurt him if at all he WS hurt.
Historians still keep alive Bio’s coups in the early and mid 1990s. Bio overthrew the government of late President Joseph Saidu Momoh in April, 1992 and also staged another coup against his former boss, Captain Valentine Strasser. innnocent blood was shed in almost all those coups.
In 2018, he came again as a reborn and reformed personality appealing to the people of Sierra Leone to choose him leader of Sierra Leone. It came to pass when he was declared President, luring several Sierra Leoneans into what he called peace and national cohesion but achieved nothing as he did not do his homework well.