President Ernest Koroma of Sierra Leone and Kailahun too

That is the reason he wanted to make the eastern region a region of substance. His progressive intentions in agriculture to reduce poverty could not be attained without the Great Kailahun and Pujehun Districts.He is a businessman and he promised to rule Sierra Leone like a business. Therefore, the most annoying obstacle thwarting the progress of the region in Trade and Industry is the lack of decent roads to transport their produce to the markets all over the country. This is the reason he has made it a priority to open up that obstacle which our brethren in politics from those regions had painfully refused to do for our people for the longest time they were in power.
 
With time and the cooperation from all fair minded Sierra Leoneans, the President and his government will reach out to all nooks and corners of Sierra Leone to make every Sierra Leonean be very proud of being a Sierra Leonean. He will actually make Sierra Leone  One Country for One People. The only way to achieve the confidence of the people is to make it possible for them to earn their livelihood without being cap in hand for government handouts.  With the construction of the Kenema / Kailahun High Way, business will thrive and the standard of living of the people will improve immensely through agriculture, trade and industry. This will make our Mano River Union a reality through regional and international trade and cooperation. It actually pays to have a leader with a foresight and not a hindsight. God bless Sierra Leone and God bless our leadership.
 
Mohamed Aziz Nabe
APC  North America.

 EDITOR'S NOTE :

THIS ARTICLE BY MR. MOHAMED NABE IS IN RESPONSE TO ANOTHER ARTICLE WRITTEN BY OSWALD HANCILES . WE HAVE DISCOVERED  ONE PARAGRAPH  OF THE ARTICLE WHERE  HANCILES MADE CONCLUSIONS  THAT WE THINK ARE NOT IN THE SPIRIT OF THE NATIONAL RECONCILIATION AND NATIONAL UNIFICATION THAT UNDERPINES PRESIDENT KOROMA'S TRIP TO KAILAHUN. HANCILES ACCUSES THE OLD APC GOVERNMENT OF USING THE 1970s TO COERCE THE PEOPLE OF KAILAHUN. WE THINK THAT HANCILES' DECLARATIONS ARE ONE-SIDED AND BIASED AGAINST THE SIAKA STEVENS GOVERNMENT.

SHAKI DID NOT JUST SIT DOWN AND DECIDED TO COERCE KAILAHUN AS HANCILES CLAIMED. WE WANT MR.HANCILES TO LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE SPECTRUM. WHEN PRESIDENT SIAKA STEVENS WON THE ELECTIONS IN 1967 AND WAS RESTORED TO POWER IN 1968 ,AFTER THE ONE-YEAR ARMY INTERVENTION, KAILAHUN DISTRICT REFUSED TO ACCEPT HIM. IN THE SAME FASHION THAT JOHN BENJAMIN AND OTHERS BLOCKED KAILAHUN AND REFUSED TO ALLOW THE THEN APC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIATE  ERNEST KOROMA AND PMDC'S CHARLES MARGAI TO ENTER DURING THE 2007 ELECTIONEERING CAMPAIGN , KAILAHUN VIRTUALLY SHUT ITSELF DOWN FROM THE GOVERNMENT. THE DISTRICT BECAME THE HOTBED OF DANGEROUS POLITICAL INTRIGUES THAT THREATENED THE SECURITY OF THE COUNTRY. THERE WERE DISTURBANCES AND PLOTS TO UNDERMINE THE GOVERNMENT. SIAKA STEVENS SENT SECURITY FORCES TO KAILAHUN TO BRING THE IMPASSE TO AN END. HE HAD THE RIGHT TO DO AS PRESIDENT BECAUSE KAILAHUN WAS PART OF SIERRA LEONE AND HE WAS PRESIDENT OF THE WHOLE OF SIERRA LEONE AND HAD THE RESPONSIBILITY TO ENSURE THAT LAW AND ORDER PREVAILED EVERYWHERE IN SIERRA LEONE.

WHEN THE SECURITY FORCES WENT TO KAILAHUN, THEY MET WITH STRONG RESISTANCE FROM THE PEOPLE AND THEY HAD TO USE ROBUST MEASURES TO IMPOSE PEACE. SOME OF THE MEASURES USED MAY HAVE BEEN REGRETTABLE AND THE ARMY AND POLICE MAY HAVE EXCEEDED THEIR MANDATE BUT THIS IS WHY WE SHOULD ALL ALWAYS ESHEW POLITICAL STANDOFFS AND CONFUSION. HUMAN NATURE BEING WHAT IT IS, THINGS DO GET OUT OF HAND IN TIMES OF CHAOS. THIS IS REGRETTABLE AND WE DO NOT CONDONE IT.

MR. HANCILES HAS TO REALIZE THAT KAILAHUN IS DANGEROUSLY POSITIONED. IT IS ON THE BORDER WITH A NEIGHBOURING COUNTRY AND ANY GOVERNMENT THAT LOVED ITSELF AND WANTED TO SEE ITSELF IN POWER IN THOSE DAYS WILL NOT SIT DOWN SUPINELY AND ALLOW ITS BORDERS TO BECOME THE FLASHPOINT OF INSTABILITY BECAUSE ILL-DISPOSED PERSONS COULD USE THE SITUATION TO INVADE THE COUNTRY WITH MERCENARIES. IN THOSE DAYS, GOVERNMENTS WERE ENTIRELY ON THEIR OWN. THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY DID NOT NOT INTERVENE AS IT DOES TODAY, UNDER THE PRINCIPLE OF THE NOW OUTMODED PRINCIPLE OF NON-INTERFERANCE IN THE INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS OF OTHER NATIONS. SHAKI HAD TO BRING KAILAHUN IN LINE TO SAVE THE NATION . NO INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST WRITING OBJECTIVELY WILL CALL THAT COESION.

WHATEVER MAY HAVE BEEN PRESIDENT SIAKA STEVENS' FAULTS , THE REBEL WAR THAT DESTROYED OUR COUNTRY TAUGHT US A LESSON THAT SOME OF THE THINGS PRESIDENT STEVENS DID WERE DONE OUT OF POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY TO KEEP THE NATION TOGETHER .  IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT PREVAILED THEN, IF PRESIDENT STEVENS HAD BEEN WEAK LIKE GENERAL JOSEPH MOMOH, SIERRA LEONE WOULD HAVE TASTED WAR EARLIER THAN IT DID AND BY THE TIME THAT THE WORLD WOULD HAVE INTERVENED IN 1999, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO COUNTRY LEFT FOR US.

_________________________________________________________-- 

THE OSWALD HANCILES COLUMN

 President Koroma of  Salone, and Kailahun too

The President of the Republic of Sierra Leone , H.E. Ernest Bai Koroma, this weekend visited the easternmost corner of his realm, Kailahun District.  The Editorial of Friday, February 5, 2010, in the prestigious Premier News (whose publisher is former SLPP information minister Dr. Julius Spencer) jubilated over this visit thus: “It is  heartwarming that the President has finally made up is mind to go into the ‘lion’s den’, and in the spirit of reconciliation, try to make the people understand that we are all Sierra Leoneans…”.  And, the Editorial highlighted, partly, the historical and political significance of the visit: “President Koroma…on a visit to Kailahun District, two years after he won the election in which the district was the decisive factor.  Many observers had thought that the President would have visited the area soon after the elections but we recall that his first attempt to visit the area was met with some resistance.  Thereafter, we had a President whose only influence was confined to areas that were wholly in support of his election….”

Let us peek through the prism of our deep ethnic-regional political divide to understand the dynamics of this Presidential visit.   There is profundity in Ernest’s visit.   Ernest is trying to rewrite a different history from the recent Kailahun History as he apparently overcomes his fear of Kailahun people. There is  also strategic relevance to the visit, as President Koroma seeks to re-brand Sierra Leone . 

In the early 2000s, in my newspaper debate with PEEP publisher, Olu Gordon, I wrote in SALONE TIMES newspaper that to the Mende-speaking people of the South-East of Sierra Leone , “the SLPP is like a religion”.  If my thesis holds true, then, the ‘ Mecca of the SLPP’ is Kailahun District. The indigenes of this district have been inflexibly devoted to the ‘SLPP religion’ – as much as Freetown and the Northern Province have been the major vote pullers for the APC. .  Kailahun people’s  fanaticism about  the SLPP religion has not dimmed even when tested through the forge of cutlass-wielding and narcotic drug-induced children and youth toting AK-47 rifles.  Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels ignited their ‘rebel war’ in 1991 as they took over “Bomaru”, a town in Kailahun District. The RUF, whose godfather was Liberia ’s former president Charles Taylor, clearly made a strategic move masterminded by   Taylor .  It  was a geographical and political strategic move that worked for Taylor when he entered Liberia on 24th December, 1989, to start his war against then Liberian President, Samuel Kanyan Doe.   Taylor ’s rag tag army of about 250 men chose Nimba Country to enter Liberia from the Ivory Coast .  The dominant tribe in Nimba County were (are) the Gio-Mano.  They hated Doe!! Especially after Doe had brutally killed their kinsman, former Commanding-General of the Liberian army, Thomas Quiwonkpa, after a botched invasion in 1985. Taylor ’s 250 army soon snowballed into thousands of Gio-Mano youth and children who saw Taylor as a liberator, and, with youthful exuberance and childish absence of the magnitude of danger, they advanced rapidly through the Liberian forests  to the capital city of Monrovia in months, to confront the murderous Doe.  Taylor probably hoped that scenario would be replicated in Sierra Leone .

The APC  won all the parliamentary seats in the North and West in the hotly contested 1967 elections (the Temne/Creole axis)  – and lost nearly all the parliamentary seats in the South/East of the country (the Mende strongholds).  There was the military coup of 1967, which ended SLPP’s first fifteen years rule. The APC was restored to power in 1968 after a counter coup.  Throughout the 1970s, the principal political strategy of the first APC  was the coercion of the peoples of the  South East  in ‘democratic elections’ in 1972 and 1977 that were  scandalous charades  – for they were  more like waging wars of conquests that elections.  One APC tactic was putting thugs in trucks from the North and sending them to the South-East to terrorize the people into accepting the APC, and enforcing the APC tactics of declaring APC candidates ‘unopposed’ in constituencies where the APC would never had won up to 5% of the votes.  There is the ‘rumor’, or fact, that has grown into pride-filled  mythology among  Kailahun indigenes as to how six such trucks filled with APC thugs sent to Kailahun simply disappeared without trace  in the 1970s. 

Nimba County in Liberia ’ was not exactly replicated in Kailahun District in Sierra Leone when the RUF launched its war in 1991.   On entering Kailahun, the RUF did not woo the people.  They used their principal tactic: injecting terror into the hearts of people whose territory they conquered through brutal public killings, and compelling youth and children to join them.  The RUF tactic jarred the sensibilities of Kailahun people. Few joined them.  But, there was enough subdued support for the overt objective of the RUF – to root out the APC government in Freetown – for the RUF to make some of their principal bases in Kailahun District.  In General Elections in 1996, 2002, and 2007, the SLPP won over 95% of votes cast in Kailahun District.  Any Kailahun indigene of high education, or repute, would be considered certifiably mad to openly claim to be contesting for the  APC in Kailahun.   There are disproportionate number of such well-educated Kailahun indigenes in and out of our country today.

According to R.G. Taylor, in his 1967-published book, “Special Dynamics of Modernization in Sierra Leone ”, it was the ‘last wave’ of education in our country that the people of Kailahun caught. “By the time of independence in the 1960s, there were very few Kailahun indigenes with even a university degree”, Dr.  Murray Johnny, a Kailahun indigene who has taught in universities and is a highly paid international consultant, explained to me. Late starters though, but, the people of Kailahun have made a determined surge forward in education.  Today, they boast hundreds of university graduates, and Dr. Murray Johnny bragged that “every village in Kailahun can boast of at least a university graduate”.  This feat is unparalleled in Sierra Leone . Some of our most highly educated citizenry are indigenes of Kailahun.  Like Prof. Sahr Gevoa, the Principal of the medical college, and Vice Chancellor; Prof. A. Gevoa, of the technology faculty in Njala University College (NUC); Dr. John Karimu, former Commissioner-General of the National Revenue Authority, who has held senior management positions in the World Bank, and several international organizations; Dr. George Tengbe and  Prof. G.M.T. Roberts of NUC; Dr. Bernard Jones, of the Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria; renowned development expert, Dr. Shamsu Mustapha; Andrew Keili, one of the most highly qualified and experienced engineers of African heritage. And many others.

By 2002 when the war ended, after most Kailahun people who fled the district ravaged by the ‘rebel war’ started returning, before even houses were built in Dr. Johnny’s Gbanahun village, one mile from the business center of Pendembu, “a school was firstly constructed.  This was the same scenario all over Kailahun District”, said Dr. Johnny.  Villagers pooled their resources together to ensure that their children would attend school. Today, Kailahun District, with a population estimate of 358,000, has primary school enrolment of 87,000, Junior Secondary School enrolment of 6,000.  The literacy rate is 32% of the population, probably the highest in the provinces, where the literacy rates averages 20%  And the people of Kailahun have not forgotten their agrarian roots.

Their more fertile land, plateaus, hills and valleys with rich soils, inland valley swamps being washed with manure-laden sediments from the hills, Kailahun used to be the best agricultural district in the country before the war – for both subsistence farming, and cash crop farming. “Every Kailahun indigene, educated and uneducated, are proud of owning a farm; and devote time and resources to developing their agricultural resources….”  Today, there is an estimated 3,000 acres of land under rice cultivation; 100 acres each of cassava and potatoes being cultivated.  The abandoned cocoa and coffee fields are being rehabilitated, and, once the slump in global prices in those agricultural products pick up, the some 80,000 metric tons being annually produced will definitely pick up as the hard-working and independent-minded indigenes of Kailahun are flexing their muscles again to excel in whatever they put their minds to. “One person can hardly finish a single banana grown in Kailahun. They are so big!!”, Dr. Johnny said with pride.  You are not getting Kailahun food produce in Freetown because the roads leading to Kailahun are terrible.

The poor roads leading to Kailahun presents wonderful challenges and opportunities for the APC to ride into the hearts of Kailahun indigenes and make inroads into the SLPP Mecca.   The APC must become frenetic in constructing the roads leading to Kailahun as make them as high quality as the ones between Freetown and Bo; Freetown and Bombali.  Let the impressive food produce of Kailahun reach the market centers of Kenema, Bo and Freetown . And enrich the Kailahun people. Enable the Kailahun elite who are so attached to their homeland and luxuriating in Freetown especially  to be easily going home every weekend.  Aha!! Kailahun people may be weaned from the SLPP; and even grow to love the APC.  Because they are highly logical people they might be ‘converted’ from their ‘SLPP religion’….

Last year, I wrote in this Column an article calling on this APC administration to defuse the growing animosity caused by perceived ethnic polarization in the country by bringing in highly educated Mende-speaking SLPP partisans into government; specifically mentioning Prof. Septimus Kaikai, who happens to be a Kailahun district indigene.  As the newly appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of the new Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation, Prof. Septimus Kaikai will be one of those who would help to restore the confidence of the people of Kailahun District in this APC government, and, by extension, help to defuse the fears of the Mende-speaking people of the perceived Northern Province/Temne-speaking dominated APC.  Even as President Koroma and his APC big wigs would be  rapturously   welcomed in Kailahun District in typical Mende-speaking style when greeting chiefs and strangers, the President would have to give assurances to these people. That their educated sons and daughters in government jobs who they have invested their fortunes on, their hopes and aspirations on, would not be sacked. Not be marginalized.   The olive branch that implicitly President Koroma would offer would then have meaning.  The tension nurtured by the perceived Northern Province hegemonic APC  today would be defused.  President Koroma would then be accepted as President of all of Sierra Leone , including Kailahun District.  Re-branding Sierra Leone as a country that has put its nasty past behind it, that is a peaceful country that is unlikely to go up in flames soon, will boost the confidence of investors.  The biggest winners in all this will be the APC government of H.E. Ernest Bai Koroma.