A very shameful and worrying event is taking place in Kenema that is a direct threat to Freetown and indeed the rest of the country for which the people of Kenema are calling for the replacement of their very own – the President of Sierra Leone, Julius Maada Bio.
Kenema City, which is no less than the very home base of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), is being besieged by thousands of very poor people who have descended on it from outlying villages complaining of abject poverty in the midst of flying or skyrocketing prices of goods and services they cannot afford.
We need to take a pause here. Like Makeni for the opposition, All People’s Congress (APC), Kenema is the home base of the SLPP. We can say that no less than 70 per cent of the current SLPP administrators of President Bio’s New Direction are from Kenema. Has anyone seen the Minister of Foreign Affairs’ palatial residence in that part of the country?
So, why are people flooding Kenema City from the villages complaining of not being able to afford a meal a day? Well, we know that PAOPA strategists will have their way, paopa, without any regard for or projection of how their decisions will affect the people. The problem in Kenema can be traced to the rises in the price of fuel, now at Le9,500.
The rises in the price of fuel since 2018 have subsequently led to the rise in transport costs to that and all parts of Sierra Leone. It now costs Le70,000 to go to Kenema! That is a far cry from the Le35,000 from barely a year ago. The real fallout for the very poor who were determined to stay in their villages and farm their land is that with the rise in fuel cost affecting all other manner of goods and services, whose producers also have to pay increased transport costs, they cannot afford even the barest minimum for survival, down to a plate of food a day.
We have heard stories of families going to bed hungry, of young men marauding at night and making victims out of abjectly poor people who also cannot afford what these young thugs expect them to give out, shortage of pipe-borne water, homes and businesses going months on end without power supply. What is really going on here?
The hundreds of people who have left their villages for Kenema on begging missions, talk of failed businesses and farms, rise in criminal activities, families risking starvation, and other ills they could not bear to experience with their many young children and elderly folks.
They complained of stalled and even nonexistent road construction projects that were supposed to bring employment for many a youths, of substandard construction and materials that have made old potholes on the main roads worse, with Pavi Fort constructed gutters or drainages giving way to erosion from heavy downpours.
Mr President, who are your advisers? If the rumours of home tutelage are true, then Freetown is surely under threat of being besieged by the poor from upcountry. Don’t they know that these rises in the price of petrol that is now at Le9,500 should be buffered by a rise in salaries? What do they expect when the price of the fuel that runs modern technological and other mechanical devices and machines such as cars, phones and computers goes up? The prices of goods and services will also rise.
Far from Kenema, the reality in Freetown should be a cause for concern for the New Direction government of Mr Bio’s. We are also seeing way too many people begging on the streets of the capital city. Social workers are reporting too many beggars, sick people who cannot afford even the simplest and cheapest forms of treatment, and other destitute and vulnerable folks finding it hard to survive as those that they used to depend on are also complaining of hardship. Our beggar government should know how they feel as our donor countries and agencies are also not responding to us the way they used to.
On a personal level, we are hearing so many young men and women getting caught in petty and elaborately planned crimes, young girls risking their health and lives prostituting themselves along the major partying, club or tourist spots around the city. We are really facing hard times in the city.
So news of hardships hitting the SLPP base is worrying because these folks have promised to find their way to Freetown should their situation not improve. In fact, many of them are already here living on the streets of Freetown where they are very grateful for holding Le10,000 for a day – that’s Le300,000 per month, a mammoth sum for a great number of them.
Mr President, we know that PAOPA is not moved by these horrifying depictions of the abject poverty that is plaguing Kenema, or anywhere in the country. Going by the statistics that most incumbent parties in Africa win re-elections, New Direction is confident of winning 2023. But there is always an aberration to certain facts. Remember Ghana? Yes, the incumbent lost.
The people of Kenema are now wishing for the past APC regime. They don’t want to hear of blaming COVID-19, which they believe Sierra Leone has no right to complain about due to our negligible statistics or numbers. Many people have blamed short sighted NACOVERC restrictive measures for the rise of all goods and services, including petrol or fuel.
Mr President, all of the issues we are facing are recipes for a failed regime. Having lost faith in your ability to lead and especially your style of leadership, the people have resorted to try the alternative. If these people’s threat to make their way to Freetown materialises, then you would have really demonstrated the inability of you and your cabinet and advisers to lead this great but underperforming country.
We need someone to lead us out of the mess PAOPA/New Direction has created. This is the direction that leads to more problems with little or no solution but: ‘na for bear o!’ How long will we live like this? When will Sierra Leone have a leader we can all rally behind to take this country forward? The people say they have one choice: replace Bio and his New Direction SLPP.