Until the political culture of stronghold dominance and control politics are completely extinguished from the political space of the country, Sierra Leone will never know what fair distribution of national wealth, development and national cohesion are.
Area rule and dominance politics have since 1961 to date ignited greed, inflicted poverty, retrogression, state-sponsored public-private sector corruption, divisiveness across the board. It has so far affected Sierra Leone’s national development trajectory, rendering large areas of the country grossly underdeveloped with unfair distribution of national wealth.
Despite clocking the third decade of democratic governance, Sierra Leone still couldn’t get it right. Since the start of rule after the infamous Lancaster House Conference, which left representatives largely polarized, Sierra Leoneans remain divided along regional, political and ethnic lines even in the interest of handling their own affairs.
As a norm in Sierra Leone’s political space, dominance and control politics formed significant aspect of the political order of the day, moments and eras in both the failed governing Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and in the current weak main opposition All People’s Congress (APC), characterized by over-representations of South – easterners in the SLPP, and the dominance of North-westerners in the APC. These over-representations of single or a few group of regional class of people in the public space of the country have come a long way in reverting progress and gainful efforts that have so far been made in uniting Sierra Leoneans.
The APC and SLPP being national political entities, they are owned by the people of Sierra Leone, not just a few people from the North-west or South-east. There is thus no need for few people from only one region to dominate those two political parties: the North-west over-powering the APC and the South-east dominating the SLPP due to selfishness and greed of politicians.
These political parties should be fully represented with national features, not just by people from one region, a reason political appointments should always represent all areas of the country’s democratic space, not winner takes all.
Since the return of multi-party democratic rule in 1996, the country’s first election was a clear testament of a polarized nation, with political parties formed based on regional and ethnic sentiments, even at the peak of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel war. Without delving into the specifics of those initial political mistakes in the long journey of the country’s democracy, the North was widely divided amongst the strongest politicians who had long pathways with the APC. They formed their respective political parties and contested the 1996 elections which reduced the ‘traditional’ Northerner votes at the detriment of the APC, and to the advantage of the SLPP as well as few others, as the United National People’s Party (UNPP), and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Those political entities were formed by strong Northern politicians but were all over-represented by people from the North, though none of the parties survive the third force battle against the then SLPP. They were all dead on arrival, a lesson which the APC and SLPP should have learnt by now and avoid the strategies of over representation of single region in their respective political parties.
Whenever there is a power shift from North to Southeast, or say to any region with the power, all development programmes and activities would be automatically shifted to the region of the incumbent political party, leaving others with little or nothing. That is exactly how Sierra Leone’s national development programmes have been undermined over the years and such will continue if the greedy political culture of winner-takes-all is not changed.
Knowing well that winner-takes-all politics is not democracy, it is not peace and can never consolidate, neither sustain stability and the development of any country with such a political culture. It is therefore noteworthy to encourage both SLPP and APC politicians to divorce divide-and-rule politics, which is not development-oriented. And it is not good for democracy, peace and stability of any country.
Classic case studies are the legacies of past regimes of the late former President, Alhaji Dr. Ahmed Tejan Kabbah and the SLPP; and that of immediate ex-President, Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma and the APC.
During the Kabbah era, which spanned from 1996 to 2007, most of the then SLPP-led development projects were directed towards the South and Eastern regions of the country, due to the geopolitical dominance of South-easterners, as a good number of them hailed from the South and East, working for their ethnic and regional people.
Similarly, when Koroma and the APC took up office in 2007 onto 2018, they were accused of divide and rule, working purely for Northerners and Westerners, ignoring the South and East, as it was alleged.
Although the APC extended their development programs to all corners of the country, yet there were unsubstantiated claims by their opponents that the APC and Koroma worked only for their northern and the western allies.
Sierra Leone by now should have grown beyond the point of ethnic and political polarity, and embrace inclusivity as a way forward for constructive national development and cohesion than a partisan approach.
Additionally, one thing that needs to be made abundantly clear is that no single regional and ethnic group or political party can develop Sierra Leone alone. National efforts must be collectively done, with all hands on deck. Thus APC and SLPP must move away from their aged old political illusion of area dominance and control in their respective strongholds. Development should have a national character.
The politics of over-representation of a single ethnic class should not be a thing of the next elections, as Sierra Leoneans, in whichever corner they find themselves, have the constitutional rights to electricity, education, electricity, clean and safe drinking water, good roads, food sufficiency, to name a few. And public service utilities must be made available for the people without excuses by whichever political party that is in governance.
The people are getting tired of blame shifting, excuses from one political party to another, all due to the Southeast-Northwest divide
