By Mohamed Gibril Sesay
I was in the middle of doing an article on APC flagbearers when these constitutional amendments arrived like some ugly badly dressed ‘orkoh’. So, I shelved that piece for a few days. These constitutional amendments demand attention. They are dangerous. And frankly, they smell.
Let me begin from far away.
In my late teens, early twenties, I was an avid draughts (checkers) player. Two types of draughts existed in Freetown. The “government type” and the “nor to government type.” The government type involved gambling. Ar day play government means I am gambling in draught. The nor to government type involved pride, wisdom, bragging rights, and men with time on their hands. No money lost. Just ego.
I played government because, well, it was also the reigning wisdom that you could not be a good draught person without playing government. But I gravitated most times to the more common nor to government draught.
I used to go to a place called Wembley, along Malta Street. It was an indoor gathering space for mostly elderly men. They allowed me to sit with them because the old men saw me as (hmmmmm) quiet, respectful, and “trying in school.” In those days, that counted for something. I learned a lot there. Politics. Life. Jokes. Gossip. Memory. Philosophy. One day, the discussion turned to latrines.
Why, someone asked, are latrines in compounds and what they called ‘adjoining’ almost always pushed to the back? Especially when that distance disadvantages old people who have to walk slowly to reach them?
One old man answered with mischievous seriousness.
It is because, he said, old people’s bellies are weak. Their farts are louder. Their smells are stronger. The distance protects the rest of the compound from the noise and the stench. It allows the old men to sustain their respect.
Everyone laughed. But the point landed.
Some things, by their noisily foul nature, should be kept away from the centre of communal life.
That is how I see these constitutional amendments. As the construction of a constitutional latrine right in the middle of the public “adjoining”. Right beside the eating place. Where the smells of bad faith and the sounds of political dishonesty cannot be escaped. And ‘ayybo’, the sloppiness of the construction, of words carelessly thrown about; of hurrying sentences that contradict themselves, and more.
They give us ‘reforming politics’ as justification. Nope! No! None! The amendments could, in the first instance, be seen as an attempt at retrofitting legitimacy.
We are dealing with a government whose election is deeply contested nationally and internationally. A government that still has not published full, disaggregated results. A government facing an opposition that, even by its own declared figures at gun point secured over 40% of presidential votes. An opposition that controls roughly half of local councils across the country.
Yet this same government proceeds to rewrite the constitutional order as though it enjoys overwhelming moral authority.
That is bad faith. A ‘baddest’ form of what we may call “shinka politics”. And this did not begin with the constitutional amendments.
This latrinisation of national processes has been ongoing. It often begins with arguments that sound brilliant on the surface. Technocratic language. Reformist vocabulary. Progressive packaging. But underneath, the politics is crude, ‘shinka’ like.
We saw it with the census. We saw it with the sudden introduction of proportional representation during the last parliamentary elections. These were presented as modernising moves. As democratic innovations. But they were also part of a power grab. A power grab that did not even go smoothly, because our friends are also very incompetent at behaving convincingly even to a child. So, the power grab had to become incompetent brazenness on the day the election results were announced: a spectacle of “think-of-any-number” presidential result. Just enough to cross the 55 percent threshold. Just enough to avoid a second round. Just enough to declare victory without providing the underlying data. A first-round win announced like a cheap ‘shinka’ trick of showing paper shine-shine as real gold.
This is the soil from which these amendments grow
History teaches us that such amendments rarely end well. Albert Margai once designed similar constitutional and electoral “latrines.” When Siaka Stevens later took power, those same tools were turned against the SLPP. Bad faith architecture always outlives its builders. And it always serves whoever wields power next.
If we step back, constitution-making in Sierra Leone has broadly followed three paths. First are constitutions that openly constrict political space. The 1978 One-Party Constitution belonged clearly here. It made no pretense. It narrowed pluralism and formalised authoritarian control. Second, are constitutions that openly expand political space. The 1991 Constitution, whatever its later distortions, reintroduced multiparty democracy and widened civic and political freedoms. In fact, since 1996, it has largely guided the expansion of democratic space in the country. Yes, there have been flaws. Sure, there have been moments that justified reform to deepen accountability and strengthen representation. That was the original warrant for reform. But what is now being offered is not a strengthening of that space. It is a shrinking of it; a ‘shinka’ dressed up as improvement.
That is why these amendments belong to a third and more dangerous category: the ‘nafiki’ constitution. The hypocritical constitution. In everyday Sierra Leonean speech, ‘nafiki’ describes the person who speaks virtue but practices duplicity. The idea draws from the older moral understanding of hypocrisy as presenting a clean face while concealing corruption within. But it has long escaped religious boundaries and become a powerful descriptor in our social life. These amendments sit precisely within that tradition. They speak the language of reform. They borrow the vocabulary of modernisation. They perform concern for inclusion. Yet beneath the wrapping lies a set of changes that weaken accountability, distort representation, and consolidate control. The genuine warrant for reform is being quietly replaced with something smaller, thinner.
The amendments go to Parliament for approval. Parliament will grant the permit for the construction of this constitutional toilet.
But what kind of parliament is this?
A parliament produced by the same disputed electoral process. A parliament where representation has become almost comic. During the 2023 elections the electoral commission picked any number they liked from a district…
