By Umaru Dumbuya
If things will ever change for the people of Sierra Leone, a country with such great potential despite the unnecessary and harrowing experiences the people have gone through, there will first of all be a need for a change of mind-set. The mind-set revolution is an absolute necessity if the people are to embrace the change that is needed for the country to take her rightful place among the comity of nations.
Even in the current world order, Sierra Leone is an old country, and her capital city one of the many early centres of western education on the continent and the world. But bad leadership, bad leadership decisions and economic mismanagement have all contributed to diminish the stock of the people and the country, leaving us always on the receiving end of the issues that plague failing and failed states and economies.
The change that is needed is all encompassing, as it involves a reorientation, a political and social orientation that was never delivered by the founding fathers preparing a people for a new way of doing things that is far from the traditional setup the people had been used to. The mind-set revolution will incorporate a change of attitude on how we see ourselves, each other and most importantly how we see, treat and expect of our elected and appointed leaders including religious leaders.
For a long time our leaders continue to make promises to us that they routinely fail to deliver for which the society continues to pay the price in lack of provision of social services for the people and underdevelopment of the state.
If things are to ever get better for the people and nation we have to change our attitude towards the people we call leaders. A leader in the democratic setup is far removed from and not the same as the leaders in the traditional setting. The one is elected by the votes of the people while the latter is selected from a line of leaders whose right to leadership is based on being the next in line or heir through a bloodline established some time ago. One is an inherited position while the other is based on an election.
In a democracy, a system of governance that Sierra Leone has subscribed to since independence from Great Britain, the people make up or form the government, from the president down to the child born today or the least citizen, regardless of his status, condition or position.
An elected leader in a democracy is given permission to operate through our votes during elections. He or she becomes the manager of our business called the government of Sierra Leone. And just as in a business, the president or elected public servant is expected to deliver, to bring profits to the business for the business to thrive. If he or she fails to make a success of the business, at the time for review he or she is replaced with another manager that promises to succeed where the current manager has failed.
This is the same for a president or any elected or appointed official that fails to deliver to the expectations of the shareholders of our national business that also operates on the international stage. At the time for review of his or her performance; that is, at election time, the president or leader is voted out as a reminder of how he or she has failed to deliver based on the promises he or she made during the campaigns. A performing leader is rewarded with further mandates to lead.
The decision to unseat a nonperforming elected public servant is not made based on emotions or sentiments. A failed leader will drag the nation down the road that leads to perdition. Imagine allowing a failed manager to continue running your business. The blame will be yours for allowing for such to continue, which failure will be hell for all the stakeholders in that business. If we do not get rid of the nonperforming managing director or chief executive, he or she will run our business aground.
In a democracy, power or sovereignty belongs to the people. The president derives his or her power from or through the people who voted for him or her to deliver on the promises he or she made during the campaigns. He or she is not a king; he or she operates at the goodwill and pleasure of the electorates or voters. Therefore he or she is under obligation to do what pleases us, or else he or she is put to pasture.
It will require a mind-set revolution for us to see our leaders as managers of our business that we can sack for failing to perform.
It is being said of late that truth is missing in Sierra Leone; that Sierra Leoneans will lie to you even if the lie is a threat to their happiness and wellbeing. Lies have mushroomed and spread across the land because of wickedness. We routinely lie and steal from each other so much so that everybody is on guard or edge, thinking that the next man is out to get him or her. But realistically, it is impossible for everyone you meet to want to steal from you or do you harm.
We need a mind-set revolution for how we see each other as a people. We have to learn to trust each other again and see each other as solutions to our problems instead of the problem. We have to allow each person to stand, rise or fall based on merit, not because of what someone said about them or what others did to us. If you are not a thief, if you don’t go around defrauding others, then you must believe and expect for there to be others just like you in this city and across the country. God didn’t just put one seeker of righteous in Sierra Leone; there are others just like you.
In a mind-set revolution on how we see each other, we allow for others to be, trusting that we are all equally capable of great acts of goodness and kindness.
If there is anywhere we should expect to see expressions of the goodness, love, and mercy of God it should be in the House of God. Sadly, we have over the few decades since independence allowed for the moral and ethical corruption that has engulfed the people to creep into the temple of God as the priests of God have made his house into a house of business.
These men or women who say they serve God want to do so while also serving money. This love of money has been, as prophesised, the root of all the evil that have befallen the house of the living God to the extent that it is difficult to tell the difference between a man of God and a regular hustler or confidence scam artist (called a con artist).
Instead of preaching the truth against sin and unrighteousness, these men of God preach about prosperity and the temporary pleasures of this life. Today, people come to God for what they can get from him, not because they hate their life of sin. They come to God for what they can benefit, not to love and obey him and to love their neighbours as they love themselves.
It will take a mind-set revolution for us to rate our religious leaders based on their actions, not their words. There is urgent need for the people of this land that love God to take stock of our lives as it relates to our relationship with God.
Not too long ago, Sierra Leone, particularly Freetown, was called the Athens of West Africa. In those days students from all over Africa and the Caribbean used to stream to Freetown to attend Fourah Bay College at Cline Town. Some decades later, after we have allowed for public corruption to creep into our education, to the extent that our diplomas and certificates are not worthy of the poor level of education received or being delivered up the hill.
In just a few decades of poor leadership and poor examples set by our leaders Sierra Leone has gone from the Athens of West Africa to the laughing stock in global academia. Nobody anywhere treats our diplomas or degree certificates with the seriousness they should evoke because they know they come at a price instead of effort.
It will take a mind-set revolution for us to admit that education is a mess in Sierra Leone and that the Free Quality Education is one victim alongside lists of others that have fallen to the machinations of those entrusted to make a success of our education sector.
Finally, we have to take stock of ourselves. We have to honestly appraise ourselves far from the images we want to peddle or portray. We are still that resilient stock of people that are capable of overcoming anything if we work at it as a collective. No one can hold a touch to the people of Sierra Leone. From among us we have presidents in waiting, leaders in morality and ethics, clever people that the world has heard nothing about.
But we have to wake up from the decades of slumber during which wolves in sheep clothing have kept us in the poorhouse and afraid of each other. We need a mind-set revolution to continue our early rise to fame for our sake today, and for the sake of those unborn that are on their way. Lonta!