By: Saidu Musa Sesay
(The author is a Sierra Leone and takes cognisance of the fact that he has a part to play in securing the future of the country that’s why he uses words like “us”, “our” and “we”)
Where there is no vision, the people perish… Proverbs 29:18.
We sing the words of our national anthem almost daily thus, high we exalt thee, realm of the free, great is the love we have for thee, firmly united ever we stand, singing thy praises oh native land… How true are those words? Do our actions and our attitude portray the meaning of those words? Have we been doing things to ensure those words become reality? If those words should reflect in our actions, there is the need for us as a nation to have a vision and that’s imperative! There must be something we hope to achieve sometime in future that will change lives in so many positive ways and improve upon the current situation of our health, education, economic, and legal systems, etc. We must have a plan detailing how Sierra Leone will or would look like in 20 years, 30 years or 50 years’ time. We must have something to look up to. If we don’t know where we are going, we would not be able to tell whether we have arrived or not.
The vision of a nation is that mental picture of what the nation would look like within a stipulated time frame in future. The vision, the mental picture must exist in the minds of its leaders who make decisions on behalf of the general citizenry. They must set a working plan and garner all resources needed including: intellectual, financial, mineral, labour, leadership, etc. to achieve it. It is not the agenda or vision of a political party. The government of the day serves as the vision runner and mans all affairs geared towards the realization of the vision. It does not support or should not be seen as part of a political party’s agenda. If, for example, we develop a fifty years plan for Sierra Leone, it has to be broken down into short, medium, and long term plans as oppose to the agenda of a political party. And by the time the vision is realized, there would have been change of regimes in between the stipulated time frame that the vision should have materialised. The leaders must own the vision whether their political party is in power or not and must work to ensure that we achieve what we have planned. The vision or agenda of a political party dies immediately it loses power; whereas, the vision of a nation lives on as it is for an appointed time. It transcends regimes and the agenda of a political party and that of politicians.
The Oxford Dictionary of English defines vision as the ability to think about or plan the future with great imagination and intelligence. That is, a mental picture of what the future of our nation will or could be like. If we don’t have a vision, that is, nothing to look forward to, we will always return to our past; we will continue to refer to the past glorious days of Sierra Leone. But where we have a vision, we would forget about the past and look to what is ahead of us and work to achieve it. We should be pulled by the future of our nation as that would cause us to make progress and not our past. Having a vision pulls us forward while keep talking about and lingering in our past glorious days takes us backward.
Hellen Keller said, “The greatest tragedy to befall a person is to have sight but lack vision.” In this context, the greatest tragedy to befall our nation would be that while we are blessed with a good number of mineral and marine resources, but we couldn’t utilize them to our advantage. With a vision, we can adequately manage proceeds from our resources and use it to develop our nation and empower our people. God Almighty deposited these resources in our nation to be used for the good of the land. The realization of a vision is followed by leadership, management, thinking, planning, imagination and action – collectively.
Our nation is sixty-three (63) years old this 2024 from western or colonial nations, but we still depend on them for almost everything that concerns our nation, our institutions and our people. At sixty-three (63), imagine that! We have to work hard and do what we ought to do rightly and now to save our nation and our people and our children from foreign dictates, control and dominance! We should be independent enough to check out the rapacity of foreign nations through their leaders seeking their interest in our land at the expense of our nation and our people. We should focus on building our nation thereby changing the status quo. At sixty-three (63), we should not be begging or borrowing from other nations to build ours and to meet the needs of our people when we are blessed with enviable natural resources. We should not allow leaders of foreign nations to influence our institutions nor our laws as that would hinder our vision. We are a sovereign nation! In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon wrote “Let us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions, and societies which draw their inspiration from her. Humanity is waiting for something other from us than such as imitation, which would be almost an obscene caricature.”
A nation without a vision is lost among the community of nations with vision!
The leaders of nations we refer to as great and successful had a vision for their nations and still do. They might have had a vision of how their nations will be in 30 years’ time, 40 years’ time, etc., and they start to work on their plans, setting priorities, and gathering and utilizing resources properly. For example, Rwanda, a nation that was battered and shattered and consumed by hatred has evolved from being a failed state to a prosperous one. I am sure the leaders had a vision of what Rwanda should look like after the genocide of 1994. There are no longer Tutsis and Hutus, but Rwandans. They have put the interest of the nation above political rivalry and tribalism. This is what we Sierra Leoneans ought to do! Samora Machel, former president of Mozambique said “For the nation to live, the tribe must die.” The leaders of Rwanda had a vision of how their nation should look like after the genocide of 1994. Have the leaders of Sierra Leone got one since we gained independence and after the civil war of 1999? Somebody told me something that I have been thinking about. He said, “Individuals will prosper in Sierra Leone, but the nation will not prosper.” What he was saying is that, individuals have visions that’s why they will prosper but our nation hasn’t any.
Our nation is rich in marine and mineral resources which should earn us commercial value and that should be used to develop our nation to move from being a developing nation to a developed one. On the contrary, the commercial value of our mineral and marine resources to a large extent had not been use for that purpose. Why? No vision! Political stalwarts use what should be used to develop the country and improve upon the lives of it citizens to enrich themselves. The focus is not the nation but political party members. They come to power disguise as having the nation at heart but later change to loot the resources to be used to make Mama Salone a heaven on earth. The agenda is to fulfil, satisfy and promote the interests of political parties and their members with little or no consideration for the future of the nation. Leh we member the contry as we dae member we sef. Leh we love the contry as we love we sef…
A nation could be rich in natural resources, human resources, has all the money, has all the connections, has all the friends and everything, including its people would perish if it has no vision. A nation without a vision is standing on the brink of destruction, disaster and ruin. Where is Sierra Leone going? Somebody said, “If the destination of a journey is unknown, speed is irrelevant.” The commercial value of our natural resources has and is not been used for the right purposes, not properly utilize – irrelevant, because we don’t have a vision. The path we are on determines our destination. If we change the path, the destination also changes.
The vision of our nation should factor in the people: how will their lives be, their economic status, educational level, living standards, health conditions, availability of sufficient food, and so on. Many Sierra Leoneans had left the country to work overseas as baby sitters and house help among others. Some have been victims of sexual exploitation, human trafficking and torture; some killed or badly injured; some destitute and wondered in deserts and other inhabitable places with exposure to all sorts of dander. Why did they leave the country? In his article, Cairo to Cape Town, Mukoma Wa Ngugi wrote, “African countries have a chance to create democracies with content: democracies that are people centred and are, in fact, better than anything in the West. This content will be specific to the needs of each nation. If rich in natural resources, then that wealth should be used to the benefit of the poor.” When will our leaders realized that our natural resources must be used for the benefit of the people who elected them and that investment in their people is a principle of the good governance they make long speeches about and that they claim to practice?
It is only with a vision that we would know our needs and work to meet them. It is only with a vision that we would know what needs are urgent, what needs fit into the short term, medium term, and long term plan. It is only with a vision that the resources would be allocated properly and monitored to ensure efficiency so that the vision is achieved within the stipulated time frame. Without a vision we don’t go anywhere!
Let’s rise up and design a plan for our nation so that we could prepare the future of generations yet unborn. We should not leave things to chance. Nothing will happen until we make it happen; things will not change until we change them. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 10:16-17 as follows:
Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning!
Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness!
What the above passage tries to make clear is that, the success or failure of any nation depends on the people in it, in particular, its leaders. John Maxwell has said that everything rises and falls on leadership. It is saying, a country or nation whose leaders have no vision, no focus and nothing to look up to in future is cursed, and its people will suffer. It is saying, it leaders behave like children and children have no time to plan their future until they grow up and become matured. On the other hand, a nation whose leaders has got a vision for it and does the right things at the right time is blessed! Its leaders are focus and they plan and imagine how their country will be like years ahead and work to achieve it. They think about their people and think about ways through which their lives will be improved. And on achieving it, they plan, think and imagine again how their nation will be in the years ahead, and it continues on and on. This is the secret of progress for nations. A nation must have something to look up to; a clear picture of their destination within a specific time frame.
Sierra Leone will develop or move forward in many areas when its leaders have got a vision for it and its people. Western aid is not the solution to our desire of becoming a prosperous and developed nation; in fact, it is our problem. We should transform that desire into a dream and pursue it with passion until we achieve it. This can be done only with a vision in place. Political instability is hindering our nation from making progress. When a political party assume power, the focus is to seek the interest of the party and move forward its agenda but pushes the interest of the country behind by deliberately not doing anything to move it forward to becoming a developed nation. That happens because there is no vision. When there is a vision, it guides the leaders as to what should be done, when it should be done, how it should be done and by whom. When we have something to look forward to, it would cause us to stay focus and avoid distractions. When a nation has a vision, its leaders change from depending on Western aid to being responsible. It turns them into investors and shapes their sense of ease. The vision would keep them awake all day and night. The vision would cause them to be hard working, manage resources wisely, be dedicated, and be disciplined. It would confront them daily and take them off their comfort zones.
Where there is no vision, the Bible says, the people perish…
I would end this piece with the words of Frantz Fanon, from, The Wretched of the Earth: “For Europe, for ourselves, for humanity, comrade, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work our new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man.” A nation without a vision has no future; no matter how rich it might be in mineral and marine resources! Let’s develop a vision for our dear Sierra Leone so that the words we sing daily, “High we exalt thee, realm of the free, great is the love we have for thee, firmly united ever we stand, singing thy praises, oh, native land…” could become true. Happy Independence Day, Mama Salone at sixty-three (63).
