By Alusine Fullah
“If you are emotionally attached to your tribe or political leaning to the point that truth and justice becomes secondary considerations, your education is useless, your exposure is useless. If you cannot reason beyond petty sentiments and tribal attachments, you are a liability to mankind.”-Dr Yusuf Bala Usman.
Yes, it sounds boorish but nonetheless true. There’s so much hypocrisy and self-serving behaviour among us. Native and naive self-entitlement in this ethnic division has become almost an acceptable norm. We are allowing tribalism to polarize our political landscape. Why do we judge and condemn a good guy solely on tribe? The stereotyping will kill a great nation.
Forgive me if I sound brutal and impervious, but as Sierra Leoneans we must come out from behind our tribal prejudices to be guaranteed great leadership. This applies across the political divide. Tribalism is shallow, retrogressive and a danger to unity in our nation.
Since my arrival in this world, Tribalism has never succeeded and will never succeed in our socio-cultural settings. Our inter-marriages cuts across tribe and regions; our secular nature due to inter-religious tolerance/marriages presents Sierra Leone as a unique society. Reflecting on life at universities/colleges, students socialize and join clubs and fraternities not on the basis of ones tribe or region. It is at university most people make life long relations with peers who are not members of their tribes but with people one shares similar ideology or social inclinations with. It therefore stands to reason that the issue of tribalism is only fanned by selfishly motivated politicians and bigots for their own selfish reasons and therefore has no basis in our society. As patriots, we should be prepared to name and shame such architects.
Tribalism should be rejected together with the tribalists who preach it. It has no place in our nation. Talking about the idea of tribes feels rather intuitive, in that one doesn’t need to define it for their audience to understand the essence of it. The notion that human beings somehow relate to another person or a group of people because they feel a connection with them is an instinctive function of the human psychology, and everyone is implicitly aware of the phenomenon. And yet, we’re immune to observing it, and the novelty is lost on us by now.
When two elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled. That’s you and I: the people. The elephants quickly get over it and recover while we are left broken, holistically destitute with a chronic need for healing. While we are busing fight for tribalism, they (the politicians) are busing embezzling our natural resources. You can’t even afford to go to the professional crazies to uncrazy yourself because the repercussions are Post Election Violence inter alia. We are always the casualties. So if we are always the causalities, what is the essence of fighting one another?
Before I rest my case, let me warmly applaud meaningful and well-wishing Sierra Leoneans who have stood so hard in putting Sierra Leone in the peace map. I duff my hat to you all. We should do everything possible to maintain the peace and not undermine our fragile democracy. Sierra Leone has enjoyed international goodwill following 11 years of civil war; Ebola epidemic; Mudslides epidemic to name but a few. The world cannot continue to support us for all the wrong reasons in a global community where there are competing demands amidst limited resources. Let it be borne in mind that there are other deserving countries that deserve global attention. Sierra Leone cannot relegate itself to ethnic / tribal crises. I also want to entreat fellow compatriots to name and shame those media houses and individuals who always fan traibalistic flames.
