Three Years of the Bio Administration – Part One
On April 4, 2018, Sierra Leone changed the government from the former All Peoples Congress (APC) Party of Ernest Bai Koroma to Bio’s Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) administration.
As the PAOPA regime celebrates its three years in power, it is interesting to listen to what the president and his appendages said about the three years spent in the tenure of a five-year term.
I have been careful here not to mistake the PAOPA regime for an SLPP government. Because this was how the problem started when a group of infiltrators highjacked and captured the oldest political party in West Africa, creating a clique out of it, referring to it as PAOPA! It seems the clique intended to demonstrate its resolve to take the country out of the abyss of destruction that she was being dragged into by the former APC administration. Good as the intention may have been, but no one develops a country out of physical zest.
There is what we call vision!
Vision is the ability or capacity of an individual professing to lead a group of people, (be it in an organization, a business entity, or a country), to proffer the various paths or stages of the process that leads to the achievement of a grand plan. In other words, a visionary leader must have a clear insight into where s/he is leading others or the country as a whole. It is like a translucent journey. That is to say, one explored through the years as the visionary leader grows to loathe the man-made challenges in society. That is why a visionary leader must be self-disciplined, consciously retraining himself from the mundane pleasures of life.
It is a lifetime commitment to live for the good of others. You do not become one overnight!
Such a visionary leader must be able to explain the process both at the macro and micro-content levels with ease. The elucidation of the vision should be done with such clarity that it makes sense to his listeners, more so, to the suffering populace. S/he must have the capacity to articulate the big picture and how it is connected and/or interrelated with the various parts forming the whole.
And most importantly, how it affects the living standard of the people!
A vision is assessed by the quality of solutions the visionary leader proffers in addressing the complexities that underlie multifaceted problems in a society. For example, s/he must have a thorough understanding of the interrelationship between the local and the foreign, between the developing and the developed countries. So that when his country received a fifty million dollars loan or a so-called grant, he does not go around celebrating. A visionary leader should understand that it is not in the interest of his people to receive largess from so-called international partners. Because their primary motive has always been to fend for their people by impoverishing others. Hence, the bait in the forms of loans and so-called grants.
Visionary leaders seek solutions to the challenges of underdevelopment. They resolve those challenges by mobilizing the available resources from within and ensure that the allocations and usages of such resources are based on the needs of the populace. Sierra Leone has both the human and material resources to transform her in a short time but has always lacked leadership!
Sierra Leoneans are presently admiring leaders such as Paul Kagame and the late John Pombe Magufuli that in a short period transformed their countries or are on the path of transforming their countries. They are not magicians! These have been leaders having the prescribed competencies stated and an altruistic commitment to their people that president Maada Bio lacks though well meaning. Simply put, Maada Bio is a ruler fulfilling his ambition! Vision is the antidote to self-ambition.
While the latter seeks power, fame, and ill-gotten wealth, the former is ready if need be, to sacrifice his life for his people without asking for anything in return!
A visionary leader must understand the priorities of his people. You cannot talk about the fourth industrial revolution in a society where 3/4 of its population is without electricity supply. A country in which potable water is in short supply. And the average Sierra Leonean struggles to have one meal a day. A country with an over 70% unemployment rate. A country where the right to freedom of speech and assembly are on quicksand?. And corruption by the regime’s apologists is defended by the president?
After spending a colossal amount of public funds to launder its image, the regime now brags about MCC recognition? And loans and grants secured from so-called international partners? This regime lacks a thorough understanding of the intricacies and nuances of geopolitics. Thus, its claims of three years in power are to reference the very landmarks that qualify a bankrupt neocolonial regime. To be continued…
Hon. Victor Reider
04/10/2021
Three Years of the Bio Administration – Part Two
In part one, I addressed the phenomenon of President Maada Bio’s fulfillment of his ambition to rule Sierra Leone, which to a large extent he has succeeded in achieving. We, however, concluded that he is failing to address the multifaceted problems of the country because he lacks any comprehensive vision that is the antidote to self ambition. Therein lies the fundamental problem currently in Sierra Leone. That is to say, having someone achieving self ambition without the competence to address the challenges in the country.
The nation of Sierra Leone has suffered from perennial abuse by men fulfilling self ambition at the expense of the state. And as they embark on their blind mission of trial and error, they continue to plunge the people into grinding poverty. After they realized they could not improve the living conditions of the people, they resort to the wholesale looting of the resources of the state with impunity.
At this phase, the regime will inevitably transition into another level of dictatorship. Hence, a dangerous stage. Because at that point, the operatives of the clique cannot turn back, so they start to plan how to stay in power perpetually by using the security apparatus to oppress and silence every opposition. We have to watch out as a nation that we are not already starting to head in that direction.
Because unlike Ernest Koroma that looted the state but listened to the appeal of sane voices, Maada Bio has a record of using other people to perpetrate violence on his behalf while he plays dumb. That was how he suffocated members of the Sierra Leone People Party (SLPP) and forcefully emerged as its flagbearer in the 2018 elections. Before he came to the party in 2005, the culture of violence was alien to every SLPP member.
Siaka Stevens, founder of the APC knew that his party was an antithesis in character to the SLPP. Thus, one of the fundamental differences between the SLPP and the APC before the advent of the PAOPA clique.The violence introduced and perpetrated in the rank and file of the party by Maada Bio led to the loss of respectable and hard-working party members who were ostracized or forced to be silent.
Now he has brought violence to the level of the state. We have accommodated a monster that is transforming our country into a police state where only the incompetent or the sycophant can survive as they continue to celebrate mediocrity! Violence has been on the rise since Maada Bio assumed power. It has been mainly perpetrated against the people by state security organs. Yet the President has not for once spoken about any of these numerous occurrences because that is how he operates as he has been caught on tape admonishing his followers: “as the leader, he can be calm but did not expect his surrogates to be.” This strategy is to intimidate the people, especially those whose consciences are alive, and force them into submission the same way he did to all the key members of the SLPP party!
All is not lost because the world is no longer a place where such dictators can survive, thanks to Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT) and the ability of the progressive global forces to network. However, as the situation deteriorates further, the eyes of many more Sierra Leoneans will open to the cause of their abject poverty! It is not surprising, therefore, that the opposition parties have started pooling their resources together. We should brace ourselves for what is ahead. They do not have answers to the sad state of the suffering of our people.
Hon. Victor Reider Pls share!!
04/23/2021
