By Kabs Kanu
PRESIDENT MAADA BIO IS AN IMPUDENT AND STUBBORN FLY FOLLOWING THE CORPSE INTO THE GRAVE
By Kabs Kanu
President Maada Bio should have shown mature, transparent , accountable , responsive and responsible leadership by listening to the concerns of the World Bank , the European Union ( EU ) and the opposition parties and postponing the Midterm Census, which has divided this fragile nation and fractured the relationship between the government and the international community from whose hands the nation is fed .
It is a very serious indictment on President Bio’s stewardship and rule of a country still scarred by war for a very important and sustaining financial institution like the World Bank, which is helping to keep the country afloat , to pull out out of the census and cut funding and logistical support , following the steps of the European Union ( EU ), which had withdrawn support earlier . The shameful impasse between Bio and the international community calls to question President Bio’s decision- making processes and his fitness to rule. If President Bio had really been a serious and mature leader, such an eventuality that has tarnished the image of his government should have been avoided.
Only undemocratic sycophants like some of the loquacious, unruly and cantankerous people on social media supporting President Bio’s foolhardy leadership will refuse to acknowledge that a fallout with the World Bank and EU over such an important matter as a census does not augur well for his leadership and welfare of our nation and is an unwise act that has sounded the death knell of his rule.
Not only are the concerns raised by the international community and opposition parties legitimate and needed to have been addressed by the government before conducting a midterm census that was really not necessary and is a waste of precious resources. The concerns strike at the very core of LEGITIMACY, which any serious president and government would always try to follow their programs and decisions.
How can a government that wants to be taken seriously stubbornly go ahead to conduct a census that it knows will not be considered legitimate by the nation and international stakeholders ? But President Bio has always been a lawless leader who has never given legitimacy a try in all the fateful decisions he has taken since he came to power in 2018. When he is not beating elected MPs and dragging them out of the Well of Parliament, or sending thugs and errant ministers to trash a polling station and scatter all ballots cast in an election, he is unlawfully removing public servants like the auditor general, who has a tenure of service and blocking the statutory annual audit reports.
The World Bank wants several critical action points that require further technical work to be addressed ,like training of enumerators, and it contends that there is not sufficient time “ between now and December 10 2021 to satisfactorily address all pending actions .” MPs complain that the articles of incorporation of the census were not legally tabled before Parliament.
Even the National Elections Watch ( NEW ) rejected the census on the grounds of “Questions of non-inclusivity of all voices of the people (political groups, civil society etc.) as befitting democratic governance, …”
By not listening to the World Bank, the EU , the opposition parties and all these legitimate voices, and being so stubborn and defiant of political mores, conventions, law and the constitution, and proceeding with the census , President Bio is showing the nation and the world that he is nothing but a tyrant , a despot, a dictator and a petulant leader who has no respect for legitimacy .
President Bio is impudent enough to thumb his nose at the international community and the nation and going on with the census and his behavior is no different from the stubbornness of the errant and irresponsible fly that continues following the corpse until it is buried with it. President Bio is following a lost and illegitimate cause to its grave where he will be buried along with it. He does not seem to be a man who weighs the consequences of his unlawful actions. This defiance of the hands that feed the nation will ultimately cost him and the nation ( Sadly )
President Bio is adhering to his overbloated ego which does not permit him to ever accept that he is wrong or his innate junta mentality and lawless and despotic character , which have made him the worst and the most repressive President the nation has had since Independence . Or he has been blinded by power – consciousness that makes the servant think he is better than his masters or he just wants to win the forthcoming elections by every subterfuge necessary and he does not care about the wounds he inflicts upon himself in his crazed ambition.
Whatever the case, President Bio has opened up a battle that he will not win. Some day, in the not-too- distant future, Bio will learn with dire regret that it does not pay to be lawless . That will be when his impetuous conduct, pride, vainglory , egocentric and despotic eccentricities will come back to bite him, fatally . One only hopes that when he falls , President Bio does not take the nation down with him.
