The rate at which soldiers are being discharged from the Sierra Leone Armed Forces is disturbing.
What makes what seems like a purge of the army by the President Maada Bio government concerning is that most of the soldiers being discharged are from the Northwestern region of Sierra Leone.
Last week , 18 soldiers , most of them reportedly from the Northwest were dismissed from the Sierra Leone Army.
The systematic purge of the army which has been going on since President Bio came to power in 2018 accelerated last year and intensified after the November 26 shootings in Freetown, which President Bio later described as a failed military coup.
Shortly after November 26, over 100 soldiers were thrown out of the barracks into the streets.
Given the volatile state of affairs in the post- conflict country, the indiscriminate dismissals of soldiers from the national army does not augur well for the continued peace and stability of Sierra Leone.
Any sensible person who is not blinded by the sick political extremism going on in Sierra Leone would deny that this is not an alarming development in the country. Merely discharging hordes if soldiers and releasing them into a politically and ethnically polarized society is a huge security risk, not to mention the fact that it is an ethnically- motivated exercise , with the soldiers hailing from one region.
President Bio is a very dangerous man and continuing to divide our country and now our armed forces along ethnic lines is the most dangerous thing for an leader to do in a country like Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone is too destabilized already by the same Bio for him to start adding petrol to fire. What have Northwestern soldiers done to him that he keeps purging them from the army ? Is this retarded and uncivilized President not aware that he is dangerously creating a pool of frustrated and angry soldiers who might rise up against him one day ?
An ethnically divided army is a dangerous army.
Whatever President Bio is depending on will fail him one day. But he has proved correct the perception of many Sierra Leoneans that Maada Bio wants to take the country back to war. Everything that Bio has been doing is directed towards one goal —polarize Sierra Leone along ethnic lines and provoke it back to war.
Cursed be the day Maada Bio was born.
READ THE REPORT BELOW BY JOURNALIST AMADU LAMRANA BAH
Eighteen officers from the ranks of Lieutenant to Major have been discharged from the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF), for alleged subversion.
A total of 37 officers have been discharged according to a press release from the Director of Public Relations of the Ministry of Defense, Colonel Issa Bangura.
Six were discharged voluntarily, eight were compulsorily discharged for absence without leave and five were discharged for alleged misconduct.
**After 33 Years Of Service War Hero Summariliy Dismissed* Colonel Musa Bangura, then Major in the SLA – who was captured, brutally tortured and thrown into a pit latrine where he was defecated and urinated on and left to die by fearsome ‘Westside Boys, *was Friday Morning, Januaray 26 dismissed* from the army, allegedly for ‘misconduct’. No specific offence was stated other than that he belongs to a certain WhatsApp group.
