Titus Boye-Thompson, Communications Expert
The events in Sierra Leone since the announcement of a Bio Presidency have morphed along such lines of intimidation and victimization. There is now clear evidence that Sierra Leone exists under a state of imminent danger and this has been brought about by the deliberate policies and actions of the Maada Bio Government. It is high time that somebody stands up to this rogue government and calls them out for what they are.
This government came in like wolves in sheep’s clothing. From the easy move into office, they started out with issuing Executive orders that invariably sidestepped the governance structures of a democratic society with laid down laws but were ruling as if they had just established a Military Junta. These edicts were wholly wrong and ill-advised but then again, the security services had been dealt a pre-emptive blow by alleging that there are plans afoot to overthrow the government, even before it was firmly established. They came also as men of Peace with a background rooted in Peace Studies academia but then again that stance belied their aggressive and vengeful paths.
On the face of it, one may be easily tempted to view the top two in the Government as men of an understanding of what makes a society peaceful, the Chief Minister being the more grounded in Peace studies should take full responsibility for this. However, the anomaly lies in the fact that for some students of Peace, their attention is strayed into the realms of war and the management of it, conflict and its spread including the ramifications for conflict minerals such as Diamond, Oil or Coltan and also on the history of carnage demonstrated in the World Wars without an equal attention to the efforts to sustain peace, to build peace and to consolidate it. In the event, Messers Bio and Francis came back to Sierra Leone from the University of Bradford with some specific intentions to wreak havoc in this society, to strip those from the North and West from any vestige of power and to transfer their positions to the South Easterners and specifically the Mendes by establishing them in positions of government authority and largesse.
What Professor David Francis should know is that Sierra Leone had expected much from him, hoping that under his tutelage, the ex-Junta Leader would have been chiselled into a much smoother personality. In the event, where the expectation that the wolf would have been Maada Bio, it is becoming clear by the day that the sheep that Prof. Francis portended to be has been a mistake all the time. As it were, the roles are reversed and President Bio seemed much tamer than those closest around him as the ravages of Prof. Francis and Fatima Bio are now legendary.
Somebody has to say something to President Bio and his cohorts that Sierra Leone cannot survive a period of such ethnic cleansing that they have embarked on. What such an act does is to put the Mende tribe in the eyes of the rest of the country as enemies of our very nationality and sovereignty. Why would these people consider, even for a minute that by replacing all Northerners and people from the Western Area from government and top positions only to be replaced by people from the South East on such a wholesale level would bring harmony to the state is only a matter of conjecture. It would only bring civil war and a war of tribalism as happened in Rwanda and Sierra Leone being known for its brutality at war, would go another step further in dehumanising its own peoples as they wage war and battle against each other. This should stop and a more measured way of securing the interests of the Mendes and the rest of the tribes be secured.
