MAADA BIO WILL GO, BUT THE HARM DONE BY DICTATORS LAST FOR GENERATIONS
By Kabs Kanu
The wounds of authoritarian rule can haunt nations for generations. This is one calamity that Sierra Leone , in their partisan, naive minds have not contended with and many still continue to support President Maada Bio.
Sierra Leoneans must wake up from their Rip Van Winkle- like slumber and think about the future of their nation. A Dictator can leave office in many ways. He can be overthrown by a military coup, defeated by a popular uprising, forced into exile, or eventually removed through elections. His statue may come down. His name may disappear from government buildings. His political party may collapse. He and his family may flee the country. But the damage created by dictatorship does not necessarily leave with the dictator.
That is one of the most tragic realities of political life. A dictator can die, disappear or be overthrown, while the consequences of his rule continue to live among the people.
Dictators destroy Institutions . They squander national wealth . The judiciary becomes compromised during their reign as is now happening in Sierra Leone under Maada Bio. The military has also been politicized. Ethnic and regional divisions have deepened in Sierra Leone. A culture of fear has replaced a culture of accountability. Young people in Sierra Leone have grown up knowing violence and mammy cuss , rather than democratic debate.
Most dangerously, dictatorship can plant the seeds of hatred, revenge and future political chaos as President Bio is busy doing in Sierra Leone. Maada Bio will go one day , but the ghosts of his dictatorship may remain for generations. Let us look at past examples .
IDI AMIN:
Few African dictators illustrate this phenomenon more dramatically than Idi Amin. He seized power in Uganda in 1971 and presided over one of the country’s darkest periods. His regime became synonymous with political repression, killings, disappearances, economic destruction and the expulsion of Uganda’s Asian community. Amin was eventually overthrown in 1979 and died in exile decades later. But overthrowing Amin did not instantly repair Uganda.
The country inherited weakened institutions, a devastated economy, a traumatized population and a political environment in which violence had become an accepted instrument of power. Uganda eventually moved forward, but the country had lost precious years of development. The scars of that era became part of the national memory. Ugandans learnt the first lesson of dictatorship: removing the dictator is not the same thing as rebuilding the nation.
MOBUTU SESE SEKOU :
Mobutu Sese Seko ruled what was then Zaire for more than three decades. His government became associated with authoritarianism, corruption and a system in which political and economic power was heavily concentrated around the ruler and his network. Mobutu eventually fell in 1997. But his departure did not bring immediate stability to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Instead, the country entered an even more catastrophic period of conflict. The Congo wars became among the deadliest conflicts since the Second World War, involving numerous domestic and foreign armed groups. It would be simplistic to attribute the Congo’s subsequent wars entirely to Mobutu. The country had enormous historical, regional and geopolitical complexities. But the destruction and weakening of state institutions during decades of authoritarian rule formed part of the difficult inheritance confronting the country after his fall. This is another danger of dictatorship: When institutions are weakened for decades, the vacuum left behind can become more dangerous than the dictator himself.
ROBERT MUGABE:
Zimbabwe offers an especially complicated example.
Robert Mugabe became one of Africa’s most prominent liberation leaders and served as Zimbabwe’s prime minister and later president for decades. His government initially presided over significant achievements, particularly in education and health. But over time, political repression, controversial land policies, economic mismanagement and electoral violence contributed to a profound national crisis.
Mugabe eventually resigned in 2017 after pressure from the military and his own political establishment. Yet his departure did not magically restore Zimbabwe’s fortunes. The country continued to struggle with economic difficulties, institutional weaknesses, political polarization and a political culture shaped by decades of highly personalized rule. The Zimbabwean experience demonstrates that history is rarely black and white.
A liberation hero became an authoritarian ruler. Through him, authoritarian political habits become embedded in the state and his departure never removed the habits.
SANI ABACHA:
Sani Abacha ruled Nigeria from 1993 until his death in 1998. His regime was marked by repression, political imprisonment and the suppression of opposition. The execution of environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists in 1995 became an international symbol of the brutality of the period.
Abacha died suddenly in 1998.
Nigeria subsequently returned to civilian democratic rule. But democracy inherited a country in which military rule had already done enormous damage to democratic institutions and political culture. The Abacha years became another chapter in Nigeria’s long struggle to build institutions strong enough to resist the abuse of state power. The lesson is important: a dictatorship can end overnight; institutional rehabilitation can take decades.
CHARLES TAYLOR AND THE WOUNDS OF LIBERIA
Liberia demonstrates another dimension of authoritarianism and political violence. Charles Taylor became president in 1997 after years of civil war and eventually left office in 2003.
Taylor was later convicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone for aiding and abetting war crimes committed during Sierra Leone’s civil war. His political and military career became intertwined with the violent conflicts that devastated Liberia and helped fuel atrocities in neighboring Sierra Leone. Taylor is now gone from political power. But Liberia continues to live with the consequences of years of war: destroyed infrastructure, broken families, psychological trauma, lost educational opportunities, weakened institutions and generations of people whose lives were permanently altered by violence. This is perhaps the most frightening consequence of destructive political leadership: children can inherit the consequences of decisions they had no part in making.
MUAMMAR GHADDAFI
Muammar Ghaddafi ruled Libya for more than four decades before being overthrown and killed in 2011.
For years, Gaddafi presented himself as the indispensable strongman who held Libya together.
But when he was removed, Libya discovered the danger of building a state around one man’s authority.
The post-Gaddafi period was marked by competing governments, militias, political fragmentation and prolonged instability. Again, the lesson is not that everything that happened after Ghaddafi was caused by Gaddafi alone. Libya’s situation has involved many actors and complicated domestic and international factors.
But the collapse of centralized authoritarian rule exposed how difficult it can be to transition from one-man stability to institutional stability. A country may appear stable because a dictator controls everything. The real test is whether the country remains stable when the dictator disappears. This happened in Sierra Leone after the departure of President Siaka Stevens.
THE MOST DANGEROUS LEGACY OF DICTATORS : REVENGE
Perhaps the greatest danger created by dictatorship is not merely poverty or institutional destruction. It is revenge. When people are imprisoned, tortured, killed or politically excluded, their families remember.
When communities believe they have been deliberately marginalized, resentment can survive for decades.
When one ethnic or regional group believes another benefited unfairly from political power, the bitterness can pass from parents to children. And when the victims eventually obtain political power, they may be tempted to turn justice into vengeance. That is how nations can enter a vicious cycle: oppression produces resentment; resentment produces revenge; revenge produces new oppression.
PART 2 IS COMING
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