Ambassador John M. Kindly read the entirety of the thread you have commented on.
For the records, I critiqued the APC in a four parts serial in THE OSWALD HANCILES COLUMN titled “The Tribal Card: Not a Wise Option For Any Governing Party”; in it, I excoriated APC leaders, presidents Siaka Stevens and General Joseph Saidu Momoh – when I was earning a plum salary at State House as media adviser to former President Ernest Bai Koroma, and reported only to the former President between 2012 and 2018. I critiqued
some of his ministers – Miatta Kargbo , health minister; Joseph Sam-Sesay, agriculture minister, Retired Captain Palo Conteh, internal affairs minister, etc. –
in my newspaper column, and social media postings.
I critiqued Sierra Rutile in 2013 for their ecological devastation of the Bonthe and Moyamba district lands they mined on, and marginalization of their indigenes: when John Bono Sesay was CEO of Sierra Rutile, and I knew he was (is) a cousin of former President Ernest Bai Koroma, and likely one of the wealthiest men in Sierra Leone at that time.
Critique is different from condemnation. Though President Bio and I hail from Bonthe District, and I always refer to him as my “Bonthe Brother”, I critique some of his policies in my column, and appearances on television – especially Bio’s woeful environmental policies, which I have termed as “Ecological Genocide”.
There is this perception among Sierra Leoneans that the SLPP and APC are regional cult parties that demand permanent loyalty, and undying devotion. So, if one breaks away from either of those parties and critique or criticise them, you are deemed to have committed heresy.
For the youth who are ignorant of Sierra Leone’s history, learn this today from 71 years old Oswald Hanciles, who former President Ernest Bai Koroma would call “Pa Hanciles”, when he served under him at State House.
In the early 1960s, Siaka Stevens was SLPP member, and mines and lands minister in the SLPP government of Sir Milton Margai, first Prime Minister of Sierra Leone. He left the SLPP to form a new political party – with Sir Milton Margai’s junior brother, Sir Albert Margai – with the acronym PNP. Sir Albert Margai returned to the SLPP, and when his elder brother died in 1964, was elected by SLPP MPs to be the leader of the SLPP, and second Prime Minister.
Siaka Stevens joined the APC, and won the 1967 parliamentary election, becoming the third Prime Minister in post-independent Sierra Leone in 1968. In 1972, he became the first executive President; in 1978, after what I have written was “state-sanctioned terrorism” by the APC, the APC knocked out the SLPP from governance and established a de jure One Party State. (Siaka Stevens who was a cabinet minister in the SLPP tried to kill the SLPP in 1978).
As a young FBC graduate teacher in Makeni in 1977, Ernest Bai Koroma sought for the APC ticket to contest a parliamentary seat in Makeni. He was denied that parliamentary ticket by the APC. By the 1996 presidential election, with the APC almost dead, Ernest Bai Koroma joined Thaimu Bangura’s PDP-Sorbeh. He returned back to the APC, entered Parliament on an APC ticket, and became Leader of the Opposition in the 2002 to 2007 Parliament, got elected as President as the APC’s presidential candidate in 2007.
Dr. Abass Bundu was APC minister in the 1980s. It was reliably rumoured that he turned down the offer to lead the SLPP as their presidential candidate for the 1996 presidential election; and established his own political party he was presidential candidate for. When the SLPP was kicked out by the military in 1997, and the AFRC junta formed, Dr Abass Bundu was one of the most vociferous critics on national television of the Tejan Kabbah SLPP government, passionately arguing against Nigeria’s military intervention to boot out the AFRC/RUF government. Dr. Abass Bundu later joined the SLPP before the 2018 elections, and became Speaker of Parliament under the banner of the SLPP.
Dr. John Karefa-Smart was first Minister of Foreign Affairs in the post-independent SLPP government of Sir Milton Margai; he left the SLPP after he felt he was cheated of leadership of the SLPP and Prime Minister position when Sir Milton Margai died in 1964. In the 1966 presidential election, Dr. John Karefa-Smart won 28% of the votes, and almost prevented the SLPP presidential candidate, Alhaji Tejan Kabbah, winning that election. Kabbah won because Thaimu Bangura’s PDP-Sorbeh supported Kabbah in the second round of the 1996 presidential election. Thaimu Bangura was a cabinet minister in the APC government of General Joseph Saidu Momoh, when the APC was a One Party.
Charles Margai’s father, Sir Albert Margai, was the second leader of the SLPP, and second Prime Minister. When the APC government of General Joseph Saidu Momoh announced that multiparty democracy would commence, Charles Margai singlehandedly financed the rebirth of the SLPP in 1991. Charles Margai became internal affairs minister in the SLPP government of President Tejan Kabbah in 1998. Feeling cheated after he was not elected as flagbearer of the SLPP in 2005, Charles Margai left the SLPP to form his own party, the PMDC. The PMDC won 13.8% of the votes in the first round of the 2007 election; votes got almost entirely from traditional SLPP strongholds of Bonthe, Moyamba, and Bo districts – thus robbing the SLPP presidential candidate, Vice President Solomon Berewa, of winning that election in the first round. In the second round, Charles Margai declared support for the APC’s presidential candidate, Hon Ernest Bai Koroma, and was the catalyst for Ernest Bai Koroma being elected President. Charles Margai became the shortest serving Attorney General and Minister of Justice in the SLPP government of Retired Brigadier Maada Bio.
Don’t forget that Alpha Kanu (aka Khan), Presidential Spokesman in the Bio presidency, when he left the APC told the public that he had been APC member for about sixty years. Alpha Khan was minister of presidential affairs, minister of mines, minster of information and telecommunications in the APC government of former President Ernest Bai Koroma; and was one of the aspirants of the APC for the flagbearer position in 2018. Alpha Khan was one of the fiercest critics of the SLPP.
Victor Foh served the APC loyally for 50 years. Victor Foh was Secretary General of the APC; Ambassador to China, and Vice President in the APC government of former President Ernest Bai Koroma. Victor Foh has become one of the most acidic critics of the APC he served in for 50 years.
Nigeria
Nigerians have been fluid in joining and leaving political parties. None of the major political parties that existed in Nigeria before the 1996 coup are in existence today.
Former military Head-of-State, General Olusegun Obasanjo, won the presidency in 1999 on the ticket of the PDP. He left PDP in 2015, and linked up with the African Democratic Congress.
Another military Head-of-State of Nigeria, General Muhammadu Buhari joined All Nigeria’s People’s Party (ANPP) in 2003, contested for the presidency under their banner. He left ANPP and joined the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in 2011, contesting for the presidency under their banner. The CPC later merged with other political forces to form the All Progressive Congress (APC) in 2015. Buhari contested the presidency under the banner of the APC (Nigeria) in 2015, and won.
The governing party of Nigeria today, the APC, with President Bola Tinubu, has been in existence only since 2015.
United States
Ronald Reagan was member of the Democratic Party in the United States from the 1930s to early 1960s. In 1962, Ronald Reagan switched to the Republican Party. In 1980, Ronald Reagan got elected as President of the United States under the Republican Party banner. He became one of the most famous and effective presidents in US history.
Between 2001 and 2009, Donald Trump was a registered member of the Democratic Party. He left the Democrats twice to become Independent, and to return. Then, in 2015, he officially left the Democratic Party, and joined the Republican Party. Donald Trump got elected as President of the United States under Republican Party banner in 2016, and, a second time, in 2024. He has developed one of the most loyal and passionate following of any political party in the United States’ history.
I need to research this, but, it is likely that in West Africa, the SLPP and APC are the only political parties that were formed in the Independence era of the 1960s that are still the dominant parties in their countries . Is that a good thing?
If our rigid political loyalty to the APC and SLPP is a good thing, how come Sierra Leone is a disgraceful paradox – our country endowed by God with marketable diamonds, gold, bauxite, iron ore, rutile, one of the best fisheries and marine life in its territorial ocean space, yet, for most of its sixty years, one of the poorest countries in the world; its wealth being carted away by foreigners, all significant contracts going to foreigners.
If fixity to APC and SLPP hasv been a good thing, how come Sierra Leone has gone through one of the worst political convulsions in Africa in our eleven years rebel war between 1991 and 2002; a civil war in which Sierra Leone became globally-famous for the sordid brutality of amputation of civilians for political profit?
What is amazing and nauseous about the political scenario in Sierra Leone is the very masses who have been impoverished by successive SLPP-to-APC-to-SLPP-to-APC-to-SLPP governments; those whose grandparents and parents would wallow in abject poverty, their past destroyed when the educational standards would be diminished; those ekeing their living as subsistence farners, or, hawkers or petty traders in hand-to-moht lifestyles in towns and cities, would be the very ones crowding streets dancing with schizophrenic abandon for the SLPP or APC, fanatically and blindly giving support to either parties.
Then, the APC leaders and SLPP leaders would present themselves as liberators each five years to be voted for… presenting themselves as liberators that would instantaneously uplift the masses from their portor-portor of miserable poverty once elected into office. Sadly, five years in the presidency, SLPP or APC would make excuses how moving the masses from poverty would be intractable. Impossible. Whilst 1% of the SLPP or APC elites would enrich themselves, some becoming dollar millionaires overnight.
The APC and SLPP leaders demand loyalty, blind support, especially from their Northwest and Southeast regional bases. Even when either of the SLPP or APC messes up, they try to fool the gullible masses that there is no alternative to the APC or SLPP winning the presidency. That is incredible stupidity that borders on COLLECTIVE MADNESS.
Sierra Leoneans would get emancipated from their poverty when voters reward political parties, political leaders, for what they do to mitigate and eradicate poverty; what they do to speedily empower a vibrant productive middle class – not vote for politicians based on tribe or region.
The blind loyalty to both the SLPP and APC has only encouraged the political class not to stimulate services to the masses, encouraging them to openly steal the people’s monies and enriching a few APC and SLPP partisans. The politicians in both the SLPP and APC likely think: “Those stupid gullible masses would vote for either the SLPP or APC anyway”. The SLPP government of President Maada Bio has consolidated this stranglehold on the masses with the Proportional Representation system – so that at the constituency level, parliamentarians don’t need to perform, since power has now passed to the political parties, which knows that it would get blind support from the masses.
The Northwest Temne-speaking
masses who fiercely support the APC have been fooled by their elites that they are fighting against the Southeast Mende-speaking people.
The Southeast Mende-speaking masses that ferociously support the SLPP have been fooled by their elites that they are fighting against the Temne-speaking Northwest people.
The poverty-stricken masses are the victims of their own tribal thinking, victims of their petty greed, which gets them to think that “it’s better for my tribal brother to steal one million dollars and give me one hundred dollars, and not the ‘enemy tribe’ to steal’.
Are there true Sierra Leonean liberators out there to cure the masses of their SLPP-to-APC-to-SLPP-to-APC-to-SLPP-MADNESS.
I pause,
Oswald Hanciles, The Guru
+232-79-545715
April 10, 2026
12:45 hours in Freetown, Sierra Leone
