By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
There has never been a time, in Sierra Leone’s history, when the ruling elite seem to be making a conscious and concerted effort to insult our collective conscience as a nation than these four miserable years of the Bio-led Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) government. It appears as if members of the SLPP take pride in making unguarded statements that might have far reaching ramifications for the country’s future.
I’m Temne-Sherbro and my wife, Sia, is Kono-Krio; yet in the mind of First Lady Fatima Bio we are not “true Sierra Leoneans” simply because we are not SLPP supporters. Imagine such a statement coming from someone whose Gambian father came to my own country to seek greener pastures. But again, I’m not annoyed with her because my mother is Sherbro-Limba and my father a Temne-Temne. My wife, who was born in Kono, had her primary education in Kenema and secondary education in Makeni. And I was born, bred and educated in Freetown. So, my Sierra Leonean-ness is not only unadulterated but cannot be questioned even by Angel Gabriel!
And recently, in fact just late last week, Madam Fatima Bio made another imprudent statement that might have far reaching consequences for the local business community in Sierra Leone. Whilst campaigning for the SLPP candidate in a by-election in Koya, north-western Sierra Leone, she accused fuel dealers of willfully creating artificial scarcity because they are “supporters of the All People’s Congress (APC)”. With such a thoughtless statement, fuel stations in the southern and eastern parts of the country (known to be the political bastions of the ruling party) are now in danger of being vandalized by SLPP supporters who might make reference to that statement as an impetus for their would-be arson or vandalism.
Although many Sierra Leoneans are still shocked and surprised at such an unwise statement from someone who is supposed to always have her wits about her; I’m not. In fact, it is now becoming factually factual that every time Madam Fatima Bio addresses a public gathering, she is sure to make faux pas that will either anger the bulk of the population or ostracize a segment of the population. But this is always expected from a seemingly gaffe-prone wife whose husband conjectured, on FM 98.1 in an exclusive interview not too long ago, that because the colonialists divided the country into “Temne Land”, “Limba Land”, and “Mende Land” et al; he was always feeling at home with his tribesmen.
And having done some Content Analyses on Madam Fatima Bio’s public utterances, and her performances on Tik Tok, I have come to two cautious conclusions. That she appears to be voicing the muffled thinking of the hierarchy of SLPP-dom or the thought-processes of most political appointees at State House. And that common sense, within the SLPP circles, has now reached its lowest point! I might be wrong. But the loud-sounding silence that always greets every First Lady-ian gaffe, from the ruling elite, speaks volumes!
But Madam Fatima Bio might have taken the cue from the former Chief Minister now Minister of Foreign Affairs, Professor David Francis. He becomes the first government official to overtly resuscitate the ethno-regional specter from its sepulcher and released it on the corridors of State House to roam. Whilst presenting the “Report of the Governance Transition Team 2018”, just few weeks after the SLPP took over, he falsely accused the erstwhile government of Ernest Bai Koroma of pursuing a policy of “tribalism and regionalism in its recruitment and promotion of personnel at State House, in Government agencies and commissions, and in diplomatic postings”.
Apart from using meaningless words like “egregious” and “infractions”, he continued his baseless accusations that “ethnically favoured appointments constituted roughly 71 percent of all senior and middle-level appointments and postings to the country’s foreign missions made by former President Koroma’s Government”. He further claimed that “Ethnic favouritism was also reflected in the APC Government’s award of GoSL contracts, scholarships, commercial bank loans and regional distribution of development projects, with the neglect of Kenema and Kono in terms of roads infrastructure being most glaring”.
Those words bring to mind Dr Sama Banya’s recent statement that, “crooked thinkers have the incurable habit of inventing a falsehood which they then attribute to someone else and proceed to attack the falsehood as if it was a stated fact or the other person’s position.” That is exactly what the SLPP government has been doing through the utterances of both the First Lady and Professor David Francis. To set the tone for the current SLPP government’s modus operandi; there has to be a fallacious argument to justify would-be actions or inactions. And the SLPP has, with pleasure and alacrity, found a scapegoat in the APC.
That is why like Adolf Hitler and his Nazis who looked for, and took, every opportunity to blame the Jews for Germany’s economic woes before the pogrom; so are SLPP members trying to put every blame on either the APC, as a party, or members of the APC for the abysmal failure of their SLPP government. In the lexicon of SLPP stalwarts, members of the APC are now “terrorists”, “not true Sierra Leoneans”, “unscrupulous and unpatriotic”, “saboteurs” and other unprintable epithets. And we should not be surprised, according to Kabs Kanu the publisher of the online Cocorioko newspaper, if President Bio should wake up one morning and state that he is unable to build the Lungi Bridge because it is APC supporters who own the Atlantic Ocean! It is tragically comical that the Commander-in-Chief and his team, after nearly four years in office, are still blaming the APC for the things which they promised to do in their 2018 Manifesto.
As the idiom goes, “it is only a bad workman that always blames his tools” for his ineptitude and his inability to do his job properly. Since 2018 to date, the SLPP has been insulting our collective conscience with lies, half-truths and blaming the opposition for its failure to solve the basic bread and butter issues. But realities are catching up with them! And 2023 is just a few sleeps away.
It is on that note that I will end today’s One Dropian dropping with a quote from Niccolo Machiavelli’s seminal book, The Prince, that “the first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” And when one looks at the “Drunkardnomists” walking on, and working at, the corridors of power you could not disagree with Machiavelli!
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