Writing Dr Kandeh Yumkella’s Epitaph
By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
In American Literature, only three people have had the rear opportunity of attending their own funerals and listening to sermons given about their deaths inside a church. In Mark Twain’s classic novel, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”; Tom, Joe, and Huck are being given that rear chance by the novelist.
Like Twain; I’m going to give the now ideology-less leader of the National Grand Coalition (NGC), Hon. Dr Alhaji Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella, that rear opportunity of metaphorically reading his own obituary, attending his own funeral, and listening to his own tribute—albeit his will not be inside a church but in the pages of local newspapers where he will also have the opportunity of replying from the grave!
So, I’m assumingly assuming that Dr Kandeh Yumkella died politically on the very day he told his once-upon-a-time NGC acolytes that he was tired of playing Dr Jekyll in the day and Mr Hyde at night. He died the day when he was not man enough to tell President Julius Maada Bio to his face that he had woefully failed the nation and that he would not join a gang of failures but was only able to retort: “Ar ol word.” And he died the very day when he cryptically told the nation that he would be forming a “strategic alliance” with President Bio and his ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP). So, in this One Dropian dropping, I will be using the past tense because, for me, Dr Yumkella has died politically!
Now the obituary: Here lie the political remains of the late Hon. Dr Alhaji Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella, the Leader of the National Grand Coalition in Parliament. Before his death, he conned hundreds of thousands of Sierra Leoneans that he was the Messiah—and they followed him like sheep being led to the abattoir. In Parliament, he was very indecisive in speaking truth to power to the point of embarrassing his fellow NGCers who were always embarrassed by the SLPP’s continual bastardizations of the 1991 Constitution and its blatant human rights abuses. The 64-year-old former United Nations “Sustainable Energy for All” advocate-turned local Yes-Sir politician, who could not even pave the less-than-two-hundred meters Drive where his house was situated, is survived by his parents: Alusine and Alhassan.
And here comes the tribute. Never in the political history of Sierra Leone have Sierra Leoneans being conned the way they were by the sweet-talking Hon. Dr Alhaji Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella. He was a man who never matched his words with actions; a man who did not put his money where his mouth was; a man who normally said his Good Mornings when it were politically correct to say Good Evenings, and a man who played more to the gallery than sticking with his core principles. In short, he was a bundle of political indecisiveness wrapped inside a Chinese box of egotism and trade-marked by intellectual dishonesty!
Unlike spittle-lickers before him such as Thaimu Bangura of the now comatose People’s Democratic Party (PDP-Sorbeh) and Charles Francis Margai of the epileptic People’s Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC); Dr Yumkella did not wait for circumstances to present themselves to him before jumping over the cliff. He, instead, willingly presented himself to circumstances which mockingly flung him over the cliff and drank champagne in celebration of his political demise.
One of the most memorable political sound-bites, in the political history of Sierra Leone, was the conclusion in Dr Yumkella’s accepted speech as the 2018 Presidential Candidate for the NGC. Let me quote, ad verbatim, to make readers see his two-tongued nature: “…the SLPP has eminently distinguished itself by transforming itself in this century into the most naked and offensive tribal political party in the history of our country. Given the track record and legacy of these two so-called traditional parties, I call on you to deeply examine your conscience and agree that the APC and SLPP have both failed this nation. They have knocked and let us down. And for you, therefore, there can be no turning back….” But at the most critical time when he should have stayed the course of the NGC, or cause as the case may be, to bring about his promised “hope, opportunity and transformation” to, or in, Sierra Leone; Dr Yumkella metaphorically played Bingo by returning to his staled vomit! He went and rejoined “the most naked and offensive tribal political party in the history of our country (in his own words)”.
And to amplify that amplified concluding conclusion, Dr Yumkella had savagely twisted the sword in the fresh wounds of the “two so-called traditional parties” (in his own words) thus: “….When you have fought so hard to get back on your feet, don’t ever go back to the very same APC and SLPP parties who knocked you down …” But Dr Yumkella went back to the very SLPP that shut the gates at his face at their Wallace-Johnson Street “Unity House”; the very SLPP that disrespectfully spat at his mother’s face; the very SLPP that disrespectfully disrespected his late wife; the very SLPP that accused him of having a “jebu” membership card, and the very SLPP that had knocked him down again and again! Dr Yumkella showed that he was not worth his salt and lacked basic principles.
And in trying to forge a “strategic alliance” with President Bio and his SLPP, after accusing them of creating “a deep economic crisis of stagflation” in the country; Dr Yumkella automatically became a sort of a leper who was being forsaken by his once-upon-a-time acolytes.
It was Ambassador Alie Bangura who first read through him and dismissed him as a no-do-gooder charlatan; followed by the NGC’s Chairman and Leader Dr Dennis Bright; then the North America’s Regional Chairman Haroun Zubairu; then the Deputy Secretary General Nyamacoro Sillah, and then the Western Region Chairman Arthur Pearce. Dr Yumkella, who had always had the drum-major aura as if all Sierra Leoneans were his late father’s subjugated subjects, returned to the SLPP politically naked as he had come to the NGC.
And now that Hon. Dr Alhaji Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella has died politically; he will be interred in his village of Kychom, Samu Chiefdom, in northern Sierra Leone, after a civic laying-out in the well of Parliament and prayers at the Kambia Central Mosque.
May his political soul rest in trust!
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