By Felix Khonte
Since the good Lord created the world, he made the moon and the stars to guard the night, and the sun the day. In a brilliance of light and a beautiful rhyme, he planted the tree, a beautiful palm tree, which spread her branches abreast, seeking the welfare of her children. She heard our pains and cries and so consoled us right. Even our grumbling stomachs she pacified with food. I know, we all know that motherly tree was a descendant of patriotism.
She aspired, she strove, but plasmolysis hooked her when the retired Brigadier emerged into the scene, with green colours of different facets. It all started like a bush fire in the wilderness of the Lion’s Mountain, when the retired Brigadier expressed his desire to return to politics in 2012. After his sojourn in the United States and later the United Kingdom for over twenty years, people were expecting much from him as he had laid the foundation when he handed over power to President Tejan Kabba, who was their chief adviser during the NPRC days in 1996.
The Brigadier, with no official regalia who catapulted himself in three months to become the rank of the ranks, discarded laid down protocols which all military cadres must go through to attain the ranks in the military. Armed with a hidden agenda, he sailed himself through the amazon to become the flagbearer of the opposition Sierra Leone Peoples Party SLPP. With the coining of the phrase ‘the tormentor’, many unsuspecting youths swallowed the bait, thinking the saviour had joined the political bandwagon, to come and redeem the nation and put some amount of discipline in every sector of our society.
The chronology of evil events started rearing their ugly heads when in the ensuing elections, he lost to the incumbent President Ernest Bai Koroma who won by a landslide on the first ballot with no runoff. According to the SLPP Party Constitution, any candidate that is defeated in any presidential election becomes an ex-officio member, and therefore takes the back seat. But this was not the case with the retired Brigadier as his resistance gave birth to PAOPA.
There and then, the bastardisation of the two constitutions started namely, their party constitution and the National Constitution. For him to consolidate himself in the affairs of the party, he first of all slaughtered their party constitution and applied the PAOPA ideology. He ferried down Freetown a large number of vigilante groups from the South-East who took hold of the party headquarters and made it a no go area for people who were opposed to Bio’s presidential ambitions. Big guns of the party could no longer go to the building to avoid the onslaught orchestrated by the hoodlums encamped in the corridors of the office.
Now the floor was left wide open for the PAOPA ideology to be mesmerised and popularised, with the introduction of the phrase ‘The New Direction’. These antics were glaringly supported by his cronies and sponsors in the diaspora who wanted to see Mr. Bio become the president of Sierra Leone come what may. The youth again became ecstatic and hopeful to popularise and spread the message; the message of joy, hope, good will and pleasure thinking it was a new dawn in the annals of our history that could change the political narrative of our beloved country, hinged on economic prosperity and social justice for all.
The nemesis of our downfall as nation started in early April 2018, immediately Mr. Bio was announced as the winner of the presidential elections, “an election that was dubbed regime change” spearheaded by the former British High Commissioner in the country, Mr. Guy Warrington. The announcement saw the emergence of vigilante groups masquerading all over the place, vigorously searching past officials residences, a scene akin to military takeovers. As if that was not enough, then came the governance transition team headed by a professor in peace conflict, David Francis who virtually left the ‘peace in the diaspora only to return home with the conflict’. It was just an unfortunate situation for our country! He recommended the setting up of commissions of inquiries to investigate the outgoing president, vice presidents and ministers and their deputies who worked under the previous regime and a selected set of people.
The commissions of inquiries were set up in a kangaroo type of hearing. There was no evidence of rules of engagements, leaving the past officials in solitary confinement, as he fiercely vented out his anger, audaciously forgetting the sacred oath he took, that guarantees the freedom and justice to his citizens. A retired Nigerian Judge, Justice Biobelle Geoegewill and a Ghanaian retired Judge William Atuguba and Bankole Thompson ware drafted to conduct the inquiries. Majority of the names of persons of interest that were invited to the inquiries as persons of interest were North-Westerners leaving out the South–Easterners. The inquiries kick started with the former President represented by his team of legal luminaries. Judgements were handed down and a white paper was passed recommending the houses of persons to be seized and forfeited to the state. The houses of Dr. Minkailu Bah, who was the minister of education and Mr. Momoh Conteh who was chairman of National Telecommunications Commission, who had since passed away, were seized and their families were forcefully removed from the houses.
“Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes a necessity”. So be it with our political Godfather whose lust for power was bent on the PAOPA ideology—‘by force’. The election of the speaker of the House of Parliament was characterised by another show of blatant disregard for democratic best practices. According to modern day democracies, the house speaker should have gone to the opposition All People’s Congress – APC as they commanded the majority in the parliamentary seats. To achieve their objective, the clerk of the house summoned the paramilitary force of the Sierra Leone Police to forcefully remove the APC parliamentarians inside the well of house and got their thing done. The judiciary added salt into injury, as two high court judges gave rulings that saw the removal of ten opposition members of parliament on 31st May 2019, and the subsequent replacement and swearing in of nine on the same day. That again was done in complete disregard for democratic best practices.
The axis of evil acts and killings became synonymous with this administration as it started in a small village in Mile 91 where heavily armed military and Operational Security Division personnel carried out a raid for cannabis sativa leading to the death of one civilian. The standoff between the youth of Makeni City and security personnel for the relocation of a thermal generator from their city to Lungi also resulted to the deaths of several youths. In a bye-election in Tonko Limba, Kambia district, one school boy was fatally killed by security personnel that were assigned there to monitor the elections. The sequence of events moved rapidly as it surfaced in Lunsar, where there was a misunderstanding between the youth and the Paramount Chief with regards the closure of the mining company. The youth, sensing the consequences this might lead to in terms of their daily living, were angered and took to the streets in protest.
The police were called and, in their usual unprofessionalism, displayed terror and a number of civilians were killed. The countdown of ugly events continued in Tombo, a fishing community in the western area rural where government decided to put a stop in fishing activities as a way of combating the spread of Corona Virus. The fishermen did not heed to the ban and the police again intervened and there was bloodshed. The carnage continued at Pademba Correctional Centre, on April 19, 2020, when suspected state security apparatus barricaded the entire environs as early as 3am. At exactly 5am, the operation was executed and several inmates were killed. In a brilliance of light, with a beautiful rhyme, the truth of the carnage was revealed by a senior governing party functionary. With a boastful voice and without remorse, she narrated everything how the operation happened; naming some other senior party functionaries that witnessed the blood bath.
This brings back to mind ugly memories of August 10th 2022, events that will forever be remembered, when our commander- in chief, a brigadier turned president, abandoned his constitutional duties to protect his citizens from what was perceived to be a peaceful protest. The protest was called by one famous blogger called Adebayor from far away Holland for the high cost of living and economic hardship. The police, in their usual unprofessionalism, applied terror by firing at the crowd. All hell went loose when the shot was fired and the pandemonium led to the death of several civilians including six police officers. The commander-chief, together with his spouse hibernating in faraway England watched at the events as they unfolded back home. His second in command declared a curfew to cool down the tensions. It was at the peak of the curfew that one known notorious former Lieutenant went berserk, raiding at people’s homes suspected to be sympathetic to the opposition, and killing indiscriminately at close range without recourse to the laws of the land. O ye mighty Samson, a famous blogger of the opposition, whose voice has been laid to permanent silence, as it was in broad day light that he was attacked and shot at close range by suspected state security apparatus. But as it is said “a good soldier will never see the end of a war”. As you lie so low in your grave, doom will surely befall those that shed your innocent blood. At the return of the God Father, he labelled us all as ‘terrorists’ within his territory as no investigations were carried out to find out about these barbaric acts.
“POWER WILL INTOXICATE THE BEST HEARTS,AS WINE THE STRONGEST HEADS.NO MAN IS WISE ENOUGH,NOR GOOD ENOUGH TO BE TRUSTED WITH UNLIMITED POWERS”—‘Charles Caleb Colton’. As a country, we went through these human rights abuses in quite slumber as the human rights activists, civil society organizations and other rights groups remained silence. Bad laws were enacted to the period leading to the June 24th 2023 presidential and general elections. All amounted to bad precedents that were being fermented with a hidden agenda! The elections were conducted in a bizarre manner that we have never witnessed since the return to multi-party democracy back in 1996. Everything was done within the PAOPA agenda, to make sure he continued his second term, even though the tide was against him. The chief electoral commissioner and returning officer Mr. Mohamed Konneh who pronounced president Bio as the winner of the presidential elections could not produce the data to authenticate the results.
There was resistance from the main opposition APC as they claimed that President Bio did not win the Presidential elections. They called on their elected members of parliament, mayors and councillors district council chairmen not to take part in the governance of the state. Even the international observers like the EU observation team, the Carter Centre, American Embassy, and all other reputable international organizations, including our most trusted local observer, the National Elections Watch NEW, claimed that President Bio did not get the 55 per cent threshold to avoid a runoff. As a result of this blatant disregard of electoral best practices, our donor partners have cut off funding to the country, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, all have help up their monies pending the outcome of the investigations committee. But it is we the ordinary people that are feeling the brunt of these sanctions. Can our president think about the suffering masses and do the needful as a true Christian? Let’s wait and see as he is a listening president who cannot continue to be in office at the detriment of the masses.
The stalemate continued until a peace deal was brokered by the Common Wealth, African Union and ECOWAS that culminated to the setting up of the Tripartite Committee to investigate the elections irregularities and proffer recommendations that are to be actionable and implementable to the core. As we are on the wait and see of the final communiqué to be completed on the 19th June 2024, let us all pray to God that: “AT A TIME LIKE THIS,GOD GIVE US MEN,STRONG MINDS,GREAT HEARTS,TRUE FAITH AND READY HANDS! MEN WHON THE LUST OF OFFICE DOES NOT KILL, MEN WHOM THE LOVE OF OFFICE CANNOT BUY; MEN WHO POSSESS OPINIONS AND A WILL, MEN WHO LOVE HONOUR, MEN WHO CANNOT LIE”—J. G. HOLLAND. God save our beloved nation!