By Rev Tamba DK Pessima
Agreed that President Siaka Stevens was the founding father of the A.P.C. and the man who championed a lot of infrastructural development in Sierra Leone. The man who shared wealth with most of his family members and friends including his drivers, cleaners, cooks, security guards, etc. All enjoyed the acquisition of wealth.
However, he still had his demerits as a dictator who would accuse anyone critical of him of treason, and whose elimination could be manipulated to bring about their demise.
It is interesting to envisage the political era of President Stevens who at one time appointed nearly seven cabinet ministers who hailed from Kono District. But alas! It would puzzle one to know that some of those ministers were more of his blue-eyed boys who served as his miners to exploit the wealth of the district rather than perform their cabinet responsibilities. That left the district and the Kono people with nothing to be proud of. Is it in the same paradigm that President Koroma is using the titles of Vice President, First Lady, and Second Lady to blindfold the Kono People, whose home remains the most deprived, the most under-developed and the most neglected in the whole country?
During the eleven years of the senseless rebel war, not a village, suburb and town in the district was spared from the wanton burning and destruction as if the war was brought specifically for the purpose of bringing the district to its most nadir point of poverty and the elimination of its indigenes.
Recently I visited the district to see if there were any tangible developments going on there. I interviewed various inhabitants in various geographical localities to elicit their views relating to President Koroma’s government’s performance. My findings show that Kono people were extremely jubilant when President Koroma took over in 2007, knowing full well that he was their in-law. Expectations were therefore pretty high. They were confident that he was going to restore the past glory of the district.
One of them said to me that they knew little that it was going to be a matter of “from the frying pot to the fire”. No meaningful development is going on in Kono even as we speak now. There is no electricity, no pipe-borne water, no good roads, no equipped medical facilities, nothing absolutely to boast of.
Another source furthered that there were some people in the district who were still very hopeful and optimistic that the President was going to transform the district as he had been doing in other places. They are becoming worried that this being his second and final term in office and still there are no tangible developments going on. One intimated that the MATOTOKA-KONO Road which was highly trumpeted to be completed before the onset of the current rainy season has become a passing wind as the rottenness of the road is still visible.
It is very ironical when people say Konos are blessed with the Vice President and his wife, and the First Lady. Agreed, but as far as the reality goes the three titles are just white elephants. The bitter truth is that Ernest has succeeded to make Kono a laughing stock.
Who doesn’t know how President Koroma has marginalized their son and VP, Chief Sam-Sumana. He has deprived the man of all facilities commensurate to his status? He has succeeded in reducing the Vice President to political chaff in his cabinet, and also made their daughter, the First Lady, a laughing stock to the nation? One of those I spoke to interestingly reminded me of the wife of the former Nigerian President, Ibrahim Babagida. Mrs Babangida was from one of the most remote villages in Nigeria. But because he had much love and regard for her he completely transformed her village to a modern city.
Kono people have reasons to be furious about and to believe that all the APC political gimmick and animosity going on in the district is at the say-so of President Koroma.
Minister of Local government, Finda Diana Konomanji and Ambassador to Russia John Yambasu are in one Camp. They are pitted against the Vice President and the First Lady who are in another camp. Is President Koroma’s government a government of divide-and-rule where Kono will continue to be fragmented thus impeding any meaningful developments to take place in the district? Can a house divided against itself stand?
Diana and Sia are first cousins from the same town and chiefdom but not in talking terms. Can Ernest tell us why? If Ernest truly cars for Kono he could easily bring the two factions together for a long lasting peaceful settlement. He has the power, the capability and the know-how to tell each one of them a hard fact and the bitter truth that can usher in peace in the district.
If President Koroma has made peace between various factions in the length and breadth of Sierra Leone, should Kono be an exception where he cannot bring together the Vice President, The First Lady, the Local government Minister and the Ambassador? Unless he is the cause of the split he should be able to do so. Most of the Kono people are definitely not happy with President Koroma for his lackadaisical attitude towards the affairs of the district and its people.
One sad thing I glaringly observed in the district is the feeling that the Vice President is just carrying an empty title with no powers or functions.
The rumour in circulation is that the party will ditch him at all cost for a Northerner as successor to succeed President Koroma.
Like President Siaka Stevens like President Ernest Koroma. Stevens used and misused his Vice-Presidents I and II and dumped them like dead dogs at a dumpsite. Is it in the same vein that President Koroma is using and misusing his Vice President so that at the end of the day he would throw him away like a dead rat?
The meditational verses in II Samuel 23:2-4 says: “He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be like the light of the morning without clouds”. Clearly the president is not treating his Vice President and the First Lady fairly? Know ye that the world is vanity of vanities which is all vanity. And that it profits a man nothing if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his soul to eternal damnation.
Rev Tamba DK Pessima is Assistant Pastor at the National Pentecostal Mission at Wellington and is the managing editor of the Liberation Newspaper.
(C) Politico 20/08/13
