As President Julius Maada Bio slowly rides into the sunset, several aspirants for the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP)’s flag have shown up including Dr Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella, Chairman for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Dr Yumkella will face the likes of former NRA (National Revenue Authority) Commissioner-General, Ibrahim Brima Swarray, Jimmy Batilo Songa and others who appear highly popular with their people in the South-East.
No one knows, at the moment, what Yumkella’s plans are if he became Sierra Leone’s next President. But they may not be too far from the industrialisation of Sierra Leone owing to his academic orientation and experience at the United Nations.
Until his return to Sierra Leone, Yumkella was Director-General for the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), an agency that promotes productive activities to reduce poverty and contributes to environment-friendly technology. He is expected to do the same for Sierra Leone if he is voted in after getting the SLPP ticket.
He was highly hopeful of making it in the race as the presidency of Late Ahmed Tejan Kabba, a man from Kambia inspired him. Kabba was the first Northerner to emerge SLPP flag-bearer and subsequently became President of Sierra Leone between 1996 and 2007.
He too served in the UN for several years as a peace envoy, and it was time to give back peace to Sierra Leone after years of war. Sierra Leone badly needed peace and Kabba became the right man at the right time.
However, Yumkella was not in Kabba’s mould as he was denied the flag in favour of President Bio. But, Yumkella is back to the race this time with renewed hope that he would make it although others see it as a leap in the dark. President Bio, few days ago, said farewell to SLPP members and supporters saying he would not stand again this time as he had exhausted his two-term run in a row.
If all things remain the same, Bio is contemplates to taking an exit in 2028, but the chance is slim in the face of an ongoing election probe. Many within and outside SLPP have been taken by surprise for seeing Yumkella’s name among those aspiring for the party’s flag as he fails to make it in the 2018 struggle.
Many expect him to be modest and take the back seat at this time as SLPP is no longer in no mood to offer the flag to a candidate of Northern origin. It was clearly demonstrated in 2017 when Bio was made flag-bearer among all others as he was a son of the soil.
Yumkella is former leader and Presidential candidate of the National Grand Coalition (NGC), a party he and other strong South-Eastern politicians formed after he left SLPP owing to violence, intimidation and harassment. He was the flag-bearer favourite among several aspirants in the 2017 race to the party’s flag, but Bio’s popularity with the grassroot especially those in the SLPP overshadowed Yumkella’s.
Strong SLPP members especially Dr Prince Harding also backed Bio in his bid for the presidency.
SLPP offices including the party’s headquarters on Wallace Johnson Street in Freetown were no-go areas for any flag-bearer aspirant except President Bio, who many had hoped represented Sierra Leone’s hope.
On several occasions, Yumkella would be stopped from entering SLPP offices, but saw the worst when and he and his mother were tortured at the party’s headquarters by thugs linked to the SLPP.
Therefore, his formation of NGC made Sierra Leoneans believe that a real third force had come after the death of People’s Movement for Democatic Change (PMDC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). PMDC was formed in 2007 and did well in the polls taking 10 seats from the incumbent party, SLPP.
However, the party failed miserably five years later in 2012, and it appears to have died and buried in the waters as it scored low in subsequent elections. Like PMDC, PDP also succumbed to the same fate.
But, with a new party under Dr Yumkella, the people of Sierra Leone strongly believed that new hope was here for the country which has been grappling with abject poverty and under-development.
Yumkella’s party, NGC was filled with intellectuals with most of them coming from SLPP. NGC got four seats in parliament in the 2018 elections and its presence was heavily felt through Yumkella’s unreserved criticisms. It was therefore not unusual during parliamentary hearings for the former NGC leader to refer to Bio’s rule as a “JUNTA DEMOCARCY.”
Yumkella was also said to have voted against several bills and policies including the hasty formation of the Justice Biobele Georgewill Commissions of Inquiry during debates that took place in the country.
He believed that the procedures leading to the formation of the commissions were not properly followed. Yumkella also attended the peace conference at the Bintumani hotel in Freetown where he also expressed critical views about the Bio regime.
His critical comments came at a time the Bio regime was highly lethal and abusive of people’s rights, civil liberties and freedoms with the aim of building a one-party state.
Definitely, the people of Sierra Leone saw Yumkella as the man of the moment as APC politicians were being chased for by the Bio regime for corruption, money-laundering and even treason offences.
But, the people’s hope evaporated after Yumkella resigned from the NGC and went back to his old root, the SLPP after President Bio met Samu elders in Kambia district to strike a reconciliation deal between him and Yumkella probably with a promise of taking the presidential seat after he shall have left.
The former NGC leader flexed his muscles upon his return to the SLPP as he would accompany Bio on most of Bio’s campaign trips across the country. Following the alleged illegal pronouncement of Bio winner of the elections, Yumkella who had hoped of becoming SLPP’s next flag-bearer was made to head EPA beating the imaginations of Sierra Leoneans.
Many had expected Yumkella to have taken a strategic ministry that would have prepared him for the presidency if at all Bio ever wanted it to happen.
It happened in the days of former President Ernest Koroma who appointed Samura Kamara to the key posts of finance and foreign affairs ministries which created a platform for him to interact with the United Nations, the Commonwealth, ECOWAS (Economic Community Of West African States), African Union, European Union and key inter-governmental agencies.
Finance Ministry is also key to any government as it is one that funds all other ministries and agencies of government. Koroma did not stop there in his effort to pave the way for Samura’s presidency as he manipulated the party’s constitution by injecting a ‘selection clause.’
Such does not happen in the SLPP, a party that honours and adores the democratic principle: every post in the SLPP is contested through an election and nothing else. It would therefore be difficult for Yumkella to have his way as SLPP is no longer politically weighty in his hometown, Kambia.
Yumkella himself has lost considerable popularity there owing to alleged failure to deliver on what he promised his people in 2018.
In recent interviews done with some youth in Kambia town, it came out clear that the former NGC leader had lost the respect, support and admiration of the people. The political tide is no longer in his favour.
One of them Mohamed Kamara said “we had hoped Yumkella would do great things for us more than former President Ernest Koroma. But he strongly disappointed us, and we would no longer vote him in no matter the amount of propaganda.”
Other Kambia youth also supported the move to snub Yumkella at any time. Little wonder that SLPP performed badly in Kambia district in the 2023 elections except that the votes were stolen.
Besides, SLPP is no longer ready to have A Northern flag-bearer owing to a bitter experience that learned from Tejan Kabba who handed over power to APC in 2007, a move they saw as the highest political betrayal.