Worth discussing now – the ABC Secretariat that has been either murdered or repressed by the SLPP government of Retired Brigadier Maada Bio.
The ABC Secretariat was one of the best institutions established by the former President Ernest Bai Koroma. But sadly, Ajibola Thomas and Nannette Thomas and their predecessors didn’t quite figure out the very essence of what “attitudes” urgently needed to be changed among Sierra Leoneans; and both were quite at loss on the meaning of “behavioral change”.
You don’t put two Krio-like “slave mentality” citizens like Ajibola Thomas and Nannette Thomas in a
change-institution like the Attitudinal and Behavioral Change Secretariat (ABC) and expect anything dramatic to change. United Kingdom-based Sierra Leonean, Issa Martyn Kanu, has been writing over the past two years on the need for “social engineering” in Sierra Leone – with my warnings that his visionary writing on the matter sound chillingly Hitlerian. But, I support the import of Issa Martyn Kanu’s postulate.
Living in Nigeria for over four years in the 1990s, and comparing Nigerian-Igbo and Nigerian-Yoruba people with most Sierra Leoneans, I would say that Sierra Leoneans generally have some of the worst ATTITUDES to hardwork, to taking entrepreneurial risks – many Nigerians in (of) the Igbo-East, and the Yoruba-Southwest are workaholics; entrepreneurs; and think big with their ambitions and businesses. Mostly, Sierra Leoneans are pathetically small-minded people – even the cream of the educated elite.
I lived in Liberia from 1979 to 1990:
compared to Liberians since the 1970s, Sierra Leoneans too easily endure tyranny from Petty Tyrants and Grand Tyrants – Liberians would lash out almost impulsively at Petty Tyrants. Teachers won’t dare bully pupils in schools; Lebanese merchants won’t dare openly humiliate Liberians like they would do Sierra Leoneans.
There is also one of the most deleterious ATTITUDES of Sierra Leoneans: they generally perceive their presidents as gods and Gods; and they generally expect the government to solve all their sociological and economic problems for them, while they compound these problems, and work very little.
Do we need the ABC Secretariat resurrected? Yes, we absolutely need it. If this SLPP government of Retired Brigadier Maada Bio does not aggressively and imaginatively work on changing the attitudes and behaviors of Sierra Leoneans, this government is certain to be swamped by the people’s negative attitudes, and contra-survival behaviours.
I pause,
Oswald Hanciles, The Guru
August 11, 2020
22:05 hours in Freetown, Sierra Leone
