As ECOMOG (ECOWAS Monitoring Group) prepares to deploy In Sierra Leone, members of the public have been placed in a pensive mood about what will be their mission here again.
They were here 15 years ago to restore peace and democracy with the people at the wrong end, but this time, highly placed persons who undermine democracy would be targeted. Genuine concerns and fear that the people’s rights and freedoms once more would be threatened have come up since the request to deploy was made President Julius Maada Bio.
Credible sources have however intimated this press that ECOMOG will be here in Sierra Leone to protect the people and not lord it over them. An opposition politician has also told this press that “it is a stability force” to guard and secure the people whose rights have been abused and violated for too long.
He said it was not like in the past years when ECOMOG troops were deployed here in Sierra Leone to restore President Ahmed Tejan Kabba who was toppled by renegades that formed the AFRC (Armed Forces Revolutionary Council).
Information reaching this press has shown that the foreign troops would use their amphibian tanks to enter Sierra Leone, and station on the waters for some time before they take over the land.
Although their deployment pattern remains unclear at the moment, the ECOMOG soldiers would perform internal security duties as they had engaged the police chief, William Fayia Sellu in a meeting last week.
The foreign troops could be deployed alongside SLP and RSLAF forces on specific checkpoints in the country to protect the people of Sierra Leone.
The request for ECOMOG troops to deploy in Sierra Leone was made by President Julius Maada Bio owing to security threats that have engulfed Sierra Leone after the June 24, 2023 elections.
However, reports later surfaced that President Bio who asked for ECOMOG’s deployment was on the verge to withdraw when the plan became true.
He had hoped that ECOWAS would stand with him in what appeared a complete undermine of democracy in a fragile state.
Initially Bio’s plan was about to work, but the dismissal of Mohamed Ibn Chambas, ex-President of the ECOWAS Commission dashed his hope with reports that Bio was at loggerheads with the sub-regional bloc going rife.
Sierra Leone’s current situation calls for the deployment of foreign troops as the police and the army have turned their backs against the people who they are under oath to protect.
Allegations about local forces abusing people’s rights are not uncommon especially those from North-West regions, strongholds of the main opposition, All People’s Congress (APC).
At various checkpoints leading to the nation’s capital, Freetown, Sources said, commuters from different parts in the Northern region would be asked surrender their phones to the security forces for examination, and those whose phones contain anti-government messages would be arrested and locked up. Their phones are also confiscated.
Police and the army have also conducted several raids in people’s homes in Freetown arresting dozens without proper and sufficient reasons.
Residents in Freetown, particularly those in eastern part of the city have been victims of brutal police and military raids and same time lost their property in the process.
The arrest came most times after a protest against has been staged and sometimes government has executed a machinated ploy.
Most of the protests were responses to the country’s unbearably high cost of living, resistance to police killings and most importantly bring back stolen votes.
Bio is on record to have presided economy characterised by uncontrollable inflation, weak exchange rate, chronic deficit budgets, unfavourable terms of trade and abject poverty.
The economy which, many say, is debt-driven has been the worst since independence in 1961, but government would not like to see the people on the streets to invite government’s attention to their plight.
Brutal and unjustifiable killings have hallmarked Bio’s five-year rule styled in the form of an ethnic cleansing or genocide.
The are directed in the opposition strongholds targeting specific tribes in the country.
Matters are worsened when authorities who should bring the perpetrators to justice renege on their mandate. In such a situation, the people may be left with the option of defending themselves.
The number of protest that has taken place in Sierra Leone was to compel President Bio concede defeat and hand over power to the opposition leader, Dr Samura Kamara who many said won the election.
The people hoped to have respite under Kamara’s rule owing to his competence in managing economies in developing countries in Africa.
Sierra Leone’s economy is bad and the people need the APC leader to handle it so that Sierra Leone can get out of the quagmire, and the only way is to take to the streets.
But, responses by the state security personnel have been high-handed as if they were not restrained by any conventional rules of respect for human rights recognition and respect.
Police killed several protesters in September last year including a disabled top-up seller, Alfred Kallon who resided in the hilly Mamba Ridge community in Freetown.
The protest came after Bio allegedly stole the votes in connivance with Chief Electoral Commissioner, Mohamed Kenewui Konneh. The vast majority of Sierra Leoneans voted massively despite firing of teargas and live rounds by police and military officers to scare away the voters.
Police arrest would follow on mere finger pointing after the people return to their homes owing to the suffocating heat of the teargas canisters. Siege situations are often created in people’s homes in Freetown and other parts upcountry to ensure that no one escaped.
The police and the army, on several occasions, have justified their actions as warding off a possible protest in the country.
But, such defence appears weak and untenable in the calculation of right-thinking men as such never happens in the South-East regions, SLPP strongholds where government expect to get their votes.
Several protests have taken place in Sierra Leone’s Southern and Eastern cities of Bo and Kenema without recording any casualty.
But, the situation is always bloody when such protests take place in the North-West regions.
The attacks on police and military facilities into November last year resulting in the deaths and disappearances of state security personnel were events that showed that all is not well within the security sector.
The unidentified gun men who carried out the attacks had melted into the jungle with no one knowing when they would emerge to strike again. It was also reported that the attackers carted away arms and ammunition whose exact number remains unknown.
The situation was one that reminisced the May, 1997 scenario in which runaway coupists ran into Okra Hill forest where they formed an enclave attacking and robbing the people of the money and other valuables.
They grew in such strength that it was very difficult for a local force to remove the guys from the jungle not until the British SAS (Special Air Service) struck ending years of terror.
With ECOMOG’s deployment, the people would get back their freedom.