December, the twelfth month of the Roman calendar, every year, marks the ending of a year and signals the beginning of another. Aside from its festivity, it’s also a month for prayers for many on how they want their new year to look like.
But not all prayers and desires sometimes come to fruition and this is not lost on what many Sierra Leoneans experienced during this current 2023. And now that the year is coming to an end, many will be praying and hoping that 2024 will not be a resemblance of 2023 in any shape or form.
That’s what The Nationalist thinks will be the aspirations of many Sierra Leoneans, even though it appears that God or the Almighty Allah is no longer interested, or to a large extent, disinterested in any of our prayers.
For many Sierra Leoneans, including those of us at The Nationalist, 2023 has been the most bizarre and for some the most difficult they have ever endured since the introduction of multi-party democracy in 1996 and even before that.
But just like how many Sierra Leoneans are now hoping that 2024 will be different; 2023 was also thought in 2022 of being a year that would have ushered in the desires and aspirations of many on how Sierra Leone would prosper. But it turned out to be the direct opposite of what many had desired and prayed for. In a country where uncertainty is the certainty, and the cost of living is killing the living, a year like 2023 is not what many had hoped and prayed for.
For The Nationalist, 2023 started exactly as 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 as the Bio-led administration continued its policy of strangulating critical voices including media outlets. We, being one of the top media outlets on the list of this seemingly government policy, endured the wrath of it. Adverts were hard to come by and government being the largest advertiser in a society like ours means a lot. But just like how successful governments have described their impoverished counterparts as being a resilient people, The Nationalist has stood firm and survived this scheme as a resilient media house. We have braved this whole year with less than six government adverts!
On the national level, 2023 would have been the year Sierra Leoneans would have been yearning for amidst an apocalyptic five years of a Bio presidency. Many Sierra Leoneans were of the view that the much anticipated June 24 general elections would have paved the way to end this current five years suffering and hardship foisted on them by the Bio government.
But alas, that dream never materialized as the aftermath of the June 24 general elections left no one untouched. Even the country’s international partners were left perturbed and dumbfounded; and as a result condemned their outcomes. The leading Civil Society Organisation (CSO) in charge of elections monitoring, the National Elections Watch (NEW), did not only condemn the outcomes but challenged them by publishing a parallel data. The main opposition party, the All People’s Congress (APC) and its Presidential candidate, Dr Samura Kamara, rejected the results and called for a boycott of all governance activities by its elected officials.
The outcome also prompted the United States of America (USA) to issue a “visa restriction policy for those involved in undermining the democratic process in the elections…” The country also had its Millennium Challenge Cooperation (MCC) compact development programme suspended by the US but later reselected like a student repeatedly being asked to take a Reference Exam!
But many Sierra Leoneans like us, at The Nationalist, were not surprised at the way the elections were conducted and their outcomes, considering the manner in which everything unfolded from pre to post-elections. The thirst to “steal” the people’s votes appeared to be a well orchestrated grand plan and was executed by all state actors and institutions. This was evidenced by the protracted and relentless legal battles endured by opposition parties and their members including the APC, the Coalition for Change (C4C), and the People’s Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC).
As this dramatic year sprints towards its dreadful end with an impoverished populace battling the skyrocketing cost of living; The Nationalist would have thought that the signing of a peace communiqué between the government and the opposition APC at the Bintumani Hotel in Freetown, following a socalled National Dialogue spearheaded by the international community, would have ushered in relief. But that was never the case, as on Sunday 26th November 2023 residents of Freetown, particularly those on the west end, were woken up by the sounds of sporadic gun fire at Wilberforce Barracks, Murray Town Barracks, and the Pademba Road Male and Female Correction Centres.
At first, the government through the Ministry of Information and Civic Education, described the event as a “security breach”, followed by the declaration of a night to dawn curfew.
As more questions emerged on the circumstances leading to that Sunday fusillades; the government in a rather bizarre and dramatic fashion upgraded the “security breach” to an “attempted coup”. And like all other previous skirmishes, where the main opposition APC was accused of having planned or masterminded “insurrections” (in the diction of the Bio-led administration), the November 26 event was not an exception. And to the surprise of many, the opposition was not only accused of having some hidden hands in it but its former chairman and leader who also doubles as the country’s former president, Dr Ernest Bai Koroma, and his daughter had their names dragged into it. He is still a constant visitor to the CID as of the time of writing this editorial while he is confined to the four corners of his Femi Turner Drive home in Freetown.
Whatever your views are, we at The Nationalist are of the opinion that despite 2023 has been eventfully eventful; those events have left Sierra Leone more divided as it has always been divided since President Julius Maada Bio ascended the seat of power in 2018!