Exclusive Report from Kabs Kanu
Full of emotions and many of them confessing that they shed tears of joy when they saw millions of red – clad ecstatic people descend on our ramshackled capital, Freetown , today to welcome Dr. Samura Kamara, Sierra Leoneans told COCORIOKO that the reason for the multitudes was that people were fed up and tired with the Maada Bio government..
A sea of jubilant Sierra Leoneams, numbering a million or more , today came out to give the newly- elected flagbearer of the opposition All People’s Congress ( APC ) , Dr. Samura Kamara, a triumphant return to the capital from Makeni where the APC National Delegates Convention took place over the weekend.
” It is like people are not dying in Sierra Leone. When I saw the crowd from the Eastern Police Station , spreading through Abacha Street to Siaka Stevens Street, I was overwhelmed with emotions, and I cried,” confessed Baby K, a lady who lives in Philadelphia . ” Nar so SAMURA Kamara get support ? Dis election nor go easy O. We people dem tire with Maada Bio. ”
Some of the Sierra Leoneans who spoke to this newspaper tonight are apolitical, that is, they are neither SLPP nor APC or NGC. They said they were talking as concerned citizens of a country that had been taken to the cleaners by the SLPP ..
” People are fed up , Rev. Kabs Kanu , ” said Salamatu Sesay, a certified nursing assistant who called all the way from Maryland. ” People den don tire with suffering en human rights abuse. Ah cry when ah see de crowd. We people den don suffer , me brother, since den Bio people ya cam nar power 2018.”
COCORIOKO called many people in Sierra Leone to find out how they felt when they saw the million- man siege on the city to welcome SAMURA Kamara from Makeni . They were all emotional and exhilarated . They said that such a gigantic crowd coming out to welcome an opposition presidential flagbearer could mean only one thing—- Everybody was tired with the ruling SLPP regime of President Maada Bio and they want a change.
Many of them asked: ” How would people be happy in Sierra Leone and not want a change of government when one U.S dollar is approaching three million leones? How does this Paopa government expect food prices not to keep going up when the national currency has become so useless and importers have to overspend to bring in basic commodities .”
Sierra Leoneans repeated the complaints made by opposition female politician, Femi Claudius Cole last week about how prices of food have gone through the roof under the reign of the retired Brigadier, Maada Bio, who spends all his time travelling around the globe and not staying home to address the daunting socioeconomic and political problems.
They asked: ” How does this government expect us to live when a pint of oil is Le 15, 000; one onion Le. 6, 000 ; a cup of groundnuts Le 8,000. ; and a bag of rice Le 600,000 ? We have to break the bank to provide just one square meal a day . How many of our people eat everyday with such alarmingly high costs of foodstuffs ? Despite the propaganda of this government about a non- existent New Direction, people are going to bed hungry everyday. Things have worsened in the country since this Maada Bio came to power. ”
” Even right now as we are talking to you, the whole city is in total darkness. No light. We have neither electricity, nor water. Our children have to go around the city with buckets everyday looking for water ” , Elizabeth Buckle of Freetown told COCORIOKO..
Reminded about the bluff on social media by SLPP supporters that they have more registered voters than the APC and so the crowd meant nothing, Sierra Leoneans said that the SLPP were deceiving themselves. They failed to bear in mind that even in their strongholds, people are fed up with Maada Bio and want him out. The suffering in the country is widespread .Everybody is suffering. The people making those ridiculous projections live abroad and know nothing about what is going on in this country.
As at the time of writing, the SAMURA Kamara welcome party was still going on and the city of Freetown was still choking with excitement and merriment.
