THERE ARE NOW TWO SIERRA LEONES IN THE SAME COUNTRY
By Kabs Kanu
The way rabid Southeastern SLPP supporters are scrambling to defend even the most wicked and evil deeds by President Bio is very disheartening. They do not care what Bio does to other Sierra Leone.
There are now two Sierra Leones: The Southeast and the Northwest. All the jobs and goodies in the country go to Southeasterners. President Bio shamelessly told a national TV interview during the 60th Independence Anniversary celebrations last year that “My people” ( the Southeasters ) are the only people whose work ethic he understands. How a president can allow himself to make such an outrageous public statement is hair-raising and very disturbing.
The West and the North are sidelined and marginalized . They do not get appointments or goodies because they speak a different language . It is mind-boggling that in a country of 16 different ethnic groups, each with a different language, almost all our ministries, departments and agencies ( MDAs) are stacked top to bottom with only one ethnic group. Even the National Elections Commission ( NEC ) , which is supposed to be independent , has been transformed into a Southeastern organization. If this is not madness that deserves to be addressed , you tell me what it is.
When I worked at the UN as Sierra Leone’s Minister Plenipotentiary and Coordinator of the African Union’s Committee of 10 on UN Security Council Reform from 2008- 2018, I also served on the UN Peacebuilding Commission Special Sierra Leone Configuration , and our main preoccupation at the Peacebuilding Commission was to ensure political tolerance and tribal and ethnic balance in Sierra Leone, because the imbalance was deemed one of the trigger points for civil wars and genocide in Africa.
Though ethnicism and tribalism have always existed in Sierra Leone as in other African countries, the Peacebuilding Commission held persistent engagements with the then ruling APC government headed by President Ernest Koroma to ensure political tolerance and ethnic balance in Sierra Leone. Delegations were even sent to Freetown to study the situation on the ground. As God would have it, President Koroma was not a tribalist or divider and he appointed Sierra Leoneans across ethnic and tribal lines. President Koroma and many of his ministers , especially Dr. Samura Kamara and Mrs. Zainab Bangura ( Whom I worked with ) recommended and facilitated the appointments of many Southeasterners in government. Even majority of their personal assistants and domestic servants were Southeasterners. They were not tribalistic at all.
But since President Maada Bio came to power in 2018, all this changed. Northwesterners were removed from employment in all the MDAs at home and our embassies and missions abroad and replaced by Southeasterners. Most of the new appointments of ministers, deputy ministers, directors, ambassadors , diplomats and even top brass of the military and police forces favored Southeasterners over Northwesterners. Why President Bio went over postwar policies and precedents by international stakeholders and the UN and the President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and Ernest Koroma governments and reinstituted tribalism and ethnicism in Sierra Leone is beyond anybody’s understanding.
Like the demon he has often proved himself to be by his human rights abuses, callousness and impunity , President Bio has divided Sierra Leone beyond everybody’s imagination and created the platform for tribal and ethnic conflagration in the future.
How long Sierra Leoneans being brutally sidelined and marginalized by the demonic President Bio along tribal and ethnic lines will continue to endure the untenable situation is now the question on everybody’s lips
