By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
The death that will kill a man, says Chinua Achebe in his novel “Arrow of God”, begins as an appetite. That’s true for the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) whose appetite for political bloodletting and chaos is so acute that it will consume it with its supporters someday.
Since the September of 2007, the SLPP has always been looking for the slightest opportunity in the sun to foist its Ndorgboryosoi-Kamajor mentality on majority of the people of Sierra Leone. Everything about the SLPP is coated with warmongering undertones as every time there is a national issue or issues; the SLPP will find a way of drumming on war inferences or references. And the SLPP’s ability to always look for hawks even in dovecots is, and has always been, startling.
The SLPP psyche is so fixated on the Ndorgboryosoi-Kamajor mentality that even simple matter like removing the 2012 billboard of Julius Maada Bio at its Wallace-Johnson Street headquarters has always resulted in either threats of bloodletting or anarchy letting loose amongst its supporters.
And it is that Ndorgboryosoi-Kamajor mentality that the SLPP has been trying to ram down the throats of the 58.8% of Sierra Leoneans who re-voted President Ernest Bai Koroma and his All People’s Congress (APC) in 2012. For even the attempt at mooting the idea of a nationwide strike action or civil disobedience in a matter that could only be solved by the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone shows how the SLPP is determined to force its warped warmongering mind-set on the majority.
But in this case, as it has always been in democracies where the majority rules, the majority in Sierra Leone has unequivocally said an empathic NO to the SLPP’s Ndorgboryosoi-Kamajor mentality of conflict resolution! The majority, by rejecting the SLPP’s call for chaos, is saying that if there is an issue there are other civilized ways to handle it not the crude Ndorgboryosoi-Kamajor manner of doing things. Issues that border on constitutionalism should be handled by the Supreme Court not things that should be settled physically on the streets.
What the SLPP and its supporters have always been missing is the fact that they are in the minority. And the sad thing about them is that they have been feigning that they are the majority, which is one of the reasons why they could just wake up one morning and bark out orders as if they really have the numbers to change anything.
And besides, wherever or whenever the SLPP boasts of one ‘streetwise’ supporter, the APC could boast of a dozen. Added to that, the current APC-led government doesn’t have a Vice President called Francis M. Minah to provoke a byzantine Ndorgboryosoi rebellion. Or a leader called Ahmad Tejan Kabba to disband the national army with the aim of replacing it with the tribal Kamajors. This simply tells you that there is no room to accommodate the SLPP’s Ndorgboryosoi-Kamajor mentality in present day Sierra Leone.
Even if majority of Sierra Leoneans have not learnt anything from contemporary happenings; they are still reminded of their history. The history of Sierra Leone is replete with instances in which the SLPP and most of its supporters have once morphed into personifications of political bloodletting and anarchy. When one examines the Ndorgboryosoi rebellion, one notices that it was an SLPP expression of political dissent. And if one does a thorough investigation of the eleven-year rebel war in light of the current key players in the SLPP, then one could see the fingerprints of that party everywhere on that political madness. And when one adds their Hindo-Hindo to the potpourri of Jumbobla; then one will get the true outline of the SLPP psyche.
But the SLPP’s Ndorgboryosoi-Kamajor mentality will always be rejected by majority of Sierra Leoneans, as they have now done by shrugging off its call for bloodletting and chaos in the guise of a nationwide strike action and civil disobedience. History has also taught the majority of Sierra Leoneans that whenever the SLPP is out of power, it has just one agenda: To create an oasis of instability in Sierra Leone so as to set the stage for its undemocratic elements to give it back power through the back door. Hinga Norman did that for his SLPP in 1967. And Julius Maada Bio, Sandi, John Oponjo Benjamin and others did that for their SLPP in 1992. But this is 2015!
And as I noted in the intro of this One Dropian dropping, the Ndorgboryosoi-Kamajor mentality is an appetite which the SLPP, as a party, has developed. And as Chinua Achebe proverbially notes in his novel Arrow of God, “The death that will kill a man begins as an appetite”. But only time will tell if the SLPP will be able to overcome that appetite so that it might not be consumed by it.
medsankoh@yahoo.com/+232-76-611-986
