As the Presidential and General Elections are coming up, recent political activities and developments remains very unpleasant and distasteful happenings have rare their ugly heads – inter parties and intra-parties acrimonies have arisen. Since the political campaign started across the Country there is not a day without reported cases of violent clashes which always end up in wounding and killings of young people, women and children.
Political Parties have been criss-crossing the length and breadth of the country targeting provincial capital towns and cities to market their presidential candidates for the March General elections through very big rallies and street carnivals.
It is very obvious in any country in the world when elections are forthcoming but what is different here in Sierra Leone is the unnecessary violent, invectives and obscenity perpetuated by political parties and their supporters against their political opponents and their supporters and sympathisers .Even those who called themselves “Big Men” or Elders in these Political Parties, recruit youths, give them alcohol, drugs and machetes to go out and wreck mayhem on political opponents and rivals. This happens in every corner of the Country – One may want to ask “is this Politics?”
Another ugly and fearful scene which occurred in the South Eastern part of Sierra Leone in a place called Kenema, where a girl of about 11 years called Aminata Lahai was found dead by the roadside with her body disfigured and vital parts removed; it was really shocking within the township.
Another incident reported also was one involving a boy of the same age found dead by a Farmer within the same area nearby a running stream. These mysterious deaths have been attributed to ritual killings by power-thirst politicians who want to win power by all necessary means in the forthcoming elections. And we all know that these areas (the South and South-East) are the strong holds of the Opposition Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) which is fighting tooth and nail to cliché power again since they lost the 2007 general elections to the APC.
The questions many people are asking are that why ritual killings should bedevilled Sierra Leone Politics in this day and age of technology? All fingers are now pointing on the Maada Bio led Sierra Leone Peoples Party and people are calling for them to desist from such practices – those days are gone in politics – taking the lives of innocent children in the name of gaining Political Power.
Sierra Leone Peoples Party and other opposition Parties should stop killing our young children and their futures. Killing them will never give you the power to defeat the strong and formidable All Peoples Congress (APC) Party on come 7th March 2018. The people of Sierra Leone have seen and witnessed the good work of the All Peoples Congress Party and they are just waiting for the elections day to cast their votes.
By: Benjamin Pratt
Information Officer/PRO
Ministry Of Information & Communications