Dr Samura Kamara: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 7 March 2024:
I want to express deep concern and to draw the urgent attention of both local and international communities to an alarming development in our political landscape, especially at a time the people of Sierra Leone are clamouring for a speedy restoration of normalcy.
Over the recent days, we have observed a disquieting pattern of heavily armed military and police personnel making unwarranted visits to the residences of key stakeholders associated with the APC party.
These actions, seemingly conducted under the guise of search missions, lack clear legal mandates and raise serious questions about the respect for rule of law and due process, and more so, for keeping within the spirit of the ongoing internationally mediated and supported cross-party dialogue process.
The first of such incidents occurred on Monday at the residence of Hon. Kemoh Sesay, followed by a similar unwarranted intrusion at the home of Rtd Major Alfred Pallo Conteh (Photo).
These actions not only constitute a direct affront to the privacy and safety of the individuals concerned but also set a dangerous precedent for the use of state power to intimidate political figures and stifle positive dissent.
It is imperative that we collectively voice our concerns and call for immediate cessation of these unjust actions.
We urge local authorities to adhere to legal protocols and ensure that any search or investigation is carried out with proper judicial oversight.
Furthermore, we appeal to international bodies and human rights organizations to monitor these developments closely and pressure government authorities to uphold democratic principles and human rights.
In the spirit of transparency, accountability, and the safeguarding of our democratic values, we must all stand in solidarity against any form of undue harassment and intimidation of political stakeholders.
The path to a just and equitable society lies in the respect for the rule of law, due process, and the protection of all citizens’ rights, irrespective of their political affiliations.
About the author
Dr Samura Kamara is the APC party’s 2023 presidential candidate.
I am reading memoirs as well as biographies of Muhammadu Buhari, Jerry Rawlings, Nelson Mandela, Sekou Toure, Ndabaningi Sithole, Samora Machel, Fidel Castro, Che and even Siaka Stevens.
Maada Bio is succeeding to continue to do what he is doing to the APC and NGC now because our opposition is very weak and indecisive. They want redemption on a silver platter.
Bio is a replica of Sir Albert Margai, who even had diabolical military chiefs like the Force Commander, Brig. David Lansana and one Capt. Hinga Norman, who had the temerity to put Head of State Her Majesty the Queen‘s representative, Sir Henry Lightfoot-Boston, the Governor-General, under house arrest to subvert democracy in Sierra Leone. But in Siaka Stevens and the Never-Say-Die APC of those days, Margai met a man. Aborbor nor lek cold water.
Siaka Stevens was Albert Margai’s match. And until today, the SLPP tremble when they hear names like Siaka Stevens, S.I. Koroma, Nancy Steele, Alfred Akibo-Betts. APC lost power only when these giants retired and another coward, Brig. Joseph Momoh took the reins. The NPRC would not have dared to try a coup if Shaki or S.I. KOROMA had been in power. They would have been six feet below the earth.
Until the opposition in Sierra Leone develops the Siaka Stevens type panache to confront the SLPP, Sierra Leoneans will continue complaining until Methuselah, but we have people now who do not want us to speak the truth. We have a new generation of sycophants and bootlickers who do not want you to say the truth. But some of us are unshackled and will continue to say it as we want. I do not owe anybody an obligation to bend the truth to please them.
If we, the APC, with all our grassroots support, decide to redeem Sierra Leone, it will not take a day to accomplish it because Maada Bio is a “giant” on clay feet. He is not formidable by any stretch of imagination and thrives only on the weakness of the opposition and the stoic nature of the Sierra Leone public. Bio is likewise a coward and he is prevailing because of the weakness of the opposition and the unseriousness of the people of Sierra Leone.
Bio cannot survive a day in Liberia where I lived during their war of redemption in the late 70s . Unlike unserious and cowardly Sierra Leoneans, the Liberians ruthlessly wanted the Congau apartheid-like yoke crushed and they went for it. Unlike Sierra Leone which lacks a patriotic and politically vibrant intelligentsia, Liberia was bursting at the seams with them. They had intellectuals of character and revolutionary zeal like Bacchus Matthews, Togba Nah-Tipoteh, Boima Fahnbulleh, Oscar Quiah, Marcus Dahn, George Boley, Amos Sawyer etc.
I used to sit down whole day and envy Liberia for the patriotic intellectuals she had and wondered who cursed Sierra Leone. Apart from the intellectuals, Liberia had a robust civil society that had not been captured by the state like it is today in Sierra Leone. The media was under tremendous pressure but it was not tribalized and useless as our own. The students were also predominant and vocal. I was a teacher and I know what I saw with my own eyes.
Though it took a bloody military coup to overthrow the Liberian apartheid system, it was the intellectuals, civil society, media and the students who softened the ground for the military to storm the Executive Mansion to remove President Tolbert. I was there and saw everything with my own eyes. I am a primary witness and nothing I say is secondary .
Sierra Leoneans are sick of illegitimate President Maada Bio and his gang of thieves and human rights abusers and are crying day and night for redemption, but they are like the cat that wants to eat fish, but is too lazy to stick out it paws, wet them and get what it wants from the river. Once we continue to be cowards, Bio will continue to flourish and grow wings in Sierra Leone. A great country has been destroyed by an imbecile and nobody is man enough to take the bull by the horns.
Sierra Leoneans , compared to other nationals , believe in cowardice and begging diasporans for economic help. They do not believe that they must redeem their country. This is how sad our country is presently. Reading the memoirs of Siaka Stevens, Solomon Pratt and John Karefa Smart and books on Bankole Bright and I.T.A Wallace-Johnson, I can say with confidence that if Sierra Leone was cursed with the kind of opposition, civil society, media and intelligentsia we have today, our country would not have gained Independence from Britain.
But Maada Bio should be strongly warned that the status quo will not remain like this. Societies evolve and God and hardship will raise radicals and revolutionaries in Sierra Leone . It is only a matter of time. The situation is very fluid and you cannot press people to the wall forever. One day, they will react and the consequences would be deadly.
Make we dey go normoh.
The entire male dominated leadership of the APC should borrow some of Mayor Aki-Sawyer’s skirts and braziers.Once they wear them, I believe it will strengthen and embolden them to face Maada Bio. At the moment they are not men but mice, and Samura is stealthily leading them to avoid the glaring eyes of the cat Bio.
Keep weeping mama Salone, although you don’t have anymore tears in you. How melancholic.
This is the way I see it . Each party has done many bad things in power. The country is so poor, the politicians use all means to enrich themselves. Until a change of culture, this will carry on for years to come. Maybe there needs to be a law passed for public officials to only recieve 4 times the average wage of the country as salary. This would mean more money to help the people of the country.
Or Samu from Kamalo,
It is either a case of you being covertly complicit in harassing your party members to cow every one into a state of political comatose or you have been sussed by Bio as very wimpy. We all know what happens in the school playground once it is heard from the grapevine that you could be easily bullied. You definitely do not have that fire in your belly in the mould of late Siaka Stevens, Ngor Charles Margai or late Thaimu Bangura to arouse emotions to keep Maada on his toes and put his feet on the fire. You remind me of the malleable and affable late SLPP opposition leader Salia Jusu Sheriiff who could huff and puff but at the end morphed into a toothless bulldog whose bark could not match his bite to prevent late Siaka Stevens from having his nefarious ways. Are we moving full circle?
We have been asking in this newspaper what was that all about the day you sneaked in and had a meeting with Bio without your party executive members being in the know. What was the sweetheart deal? This is your moment of truth to divulge things. Are you going to take that secret with you to your grave? Are you going to let go the unprecedent hijacking of the franchise, mandate and agency of the Sierra Leone electorate by Konneh and Bio by not publishing election results constituency by constituency? Who is going to stop it being repeated in 2028 and beyond? Why any Sierra Leonean should bother to turn up at a polling station and exercise their franchise and exert their agency? Sierra Leone is toast if you let this go.
The moral from your missteps is that When you woefully fail to hit the iron when it is hot, it becomes no longer malleable. If you think you have a future in Sierra Leone’s politics, continue to wallow in hallucinations and live in a fools’ paradise. I believe your political trajectory has already been truncated and upended, and will soon be overtaken by momentous events in Sierra Leone.
Mark my words with a highlighter.
In the interim, Sierra Leone/Salone has to live with the following unwanted accolades under Julius Maaaaaaaada Woni Biooooooo:
*the 3rd least happy country in the world in 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report
*the 3rd cheapest currency in the world in 2023.
https://sierraloaded.sl/feature/leone-cheapest-currencies-world/
*the 3rd cheapest currency in the world in 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita.
No wonder the country’s debt per capita is approaching 100% and the Bank of Sierra Leone has depleted the foreign exchange reserves to barely 2.3 months’ worth of imports.