Former Vice President of Sierra Leone and Chairman of Police Council, Chief Samuel Sam Sumana is on record for an untainted disciplinary record during his tenure.
He carried out his Vice Presidential duties with due diligence and intermittently acted as President whenever his boss was away on official missions.
Many Sierra Leoneans would remember him for taking two tough decisions that went a long way in saving the relapse to another brutal conflict at that time.
The first decision he took in 2008 was the closure of the ‘UNITY’ and ‘WE YONE’ radio stations of the SLPP and APC respectively.
The two radio stations were closed at a time Sierra Leone was on the brink of an all-out conflict.
At the time of closure, the two radio stations were broadcasting hate messages that could derail the country’s peace.
The political tensions in the country were high owing to messages put out by the two radio stations.
The leadership of the two political parties did nothing to stop the flow of the hate messages.
They failed to lend a leaf from the 1994 Rwandan Genocide fuelled mainly by hate and tribal messages broadcast by the Kangura Newspaper and Radio RTLM. SLPP radio, through its broadcast messages, was misleading the electorate that the government was incompetent to handle the country’s economic crises.
The ‘WE YONE’ radio, on the other hand, defended the government against SLPP broadcast messages by educating the people that the crisis was a global one.
The exchanges between the two political parties became conflictual leading to a degeneration of the situation.
The loaded hate speech of the two radio stations compelled Chief Samuel Sam Sumana to shut them down.
The Chief’s action met with sinister criticism especially from within the APC that wanted to see the closure of only the ‘UNITY’ Radio.
Conversely, SLPP argued that it was the business of the independent Media Commission, the country’s media regulator to halt the broadcasts and not the Vice President.
On the contrary, a great many Sierra Leoneans saw the VP’s move as not only prudent but also expedient and one that sustained the country’s hard-earned peace.
Public opinion, at that time, went in favour of the notion that a leader should always take decisions that would save his compatriots from chaos rather than waiting for the situation to degenerate.
Another swift decision that Chief Sam Sumana took as Acting President was the unconditional, swift sacking of Mr. Showers, the country’s head of correctional services.
The sacking of Mr Showers was not unconnected to a prison break in 2008 which saw the escape of over 60 inmates from the Central Correctional Facility in Freetown.
In comparison, VP Sam Sumana stands taller in handling issues of national security than the current one who displayed a seeming lacklustre leadership during the April, 29 Prison break.
He took responsibility as Head of Police Council to sack the Head of Prisons and spurred the leadership to re-arrest most of the escapes and till then calm had returned to the Maximum Prison.
The ‘New Direction’ Government which had had one of the deadliest so-called Prison Break saw the killing of dozens of prisoners and prison officers are yet to take a single action or neither produce a report to tell the electorates what happened despite the pressure from human rights and Civil Society organisations.
This in itself showed a massive lack of transparency and accountability in a government that promised a New Direction.
Chief Sam Sumana as head of Police Council had also bowed to civil society and international pressure to establish the Independent Police Complaint Board (IPCB) as a civilian oversight structure to deal with complaints against senior Police Officers.
The move was to further strengthen accountability in the operations of the Police as it obtains in some sister countries in the sub region.
This was against the backdrop that the Complaints Discipline and Internal Investigations Department of the Sierra Leone Police were increasingly accused of inability to deal with cases associated with senior police officers serving politicians.
The move has further strengthened the country’s democracy though the role of the IPCB in the last two years under President Bio Government has been watered down .The IPCB’s handling of the shooting, at the residence of the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, where a young man was allegedly shot at.
Victim was charged to court with allegations that he and others attacked the Deputy Minister.
Nevertheless, the creation of IPCB was a stepping stone for the move towards the country’s democracy.
The then VP had also gone down in the annals of history to have challenge his sacking by former President Koroma in local and international tribunals.
He insisted that his fight was not for reinstatement but to set the records straight for future generations that the constitution is supreme and not man.
This explains why he went as far as the ECOWAS Court to seek justice when he could not get it back home from the country’s highest court- the Supreme Court. His international lawyers argued to the ECOWAS Court that Chief Sam Sumana rights were violated by the Koroma government and they won after our government failed to make a representation on flimsy grounds that country’s courts were above those of regional bodies.
The current President acknowledged publicly that he would respect the decision of the ECOWAS Court.
He had even called on former President Koroma to pay compensations due Chief Sam Sumana as ordered by the Regional Court.
But, as we are writing, the President who had agreed with the ruling of ECOWAS later ordered the withdrawal of security details of the former VP just because he reconciled with former President Koroma and the APC. Double standards!
Chief Sam Sumana took a number of other from steps behind the scenes that led to most of his comrades in the then ruling APC to become jittery.
No doubt that his Presidency would hardly tolerate one to embark on business-as-usual in the name of party in governance.
His disciplinary character is indeed untainted and it is what Sierra Leoneans need from their leaders.
The suppression of lawlessness in the country needs the personality of Chief Sam Sumana.