By Elias Bangura – The New Chapter Newspaper
Since Adam, man has had the moment to decide, whether to fight or to cower and moan.
Around the world, nations and people have had to pick up arms or easily surrender their rights and sovereignties.
The paper trails of these incidents and encounters has been glorious or miserable.
Think of Israel before Philistia; Sparta against Persia; America against Great Britain; Germany against the free world; the ANC against Apartheid; Vietnam against the United States; and Ukraine against Russia, among many others.
The narrative before each of the above encounters has either been subtle or arrogant, hidden or done openly. The earth and sea around us is full and continues to be filled with the blood and cries of man fighting against man. Wars and rumours of wars, as Jesus would say, characterize our time, anyway. So avoiding it doesn’t make sense, except to reveal our cowardice and our foolishness in failing to prepare for war, or to stand up for what is right.
This Yenga issue is over two decades old; it’s a legacy of our rebel war. Guinea came over to help, as did Nigeria and others. These others including Nigeria have left, showing that their intentions were genuine, unlike Guinea, that refuses to go back. Today, their flag flies over Yenga, without that bothering anyone across this nation.
Across the nation, all of a sudden, are voices of fear, hiding behind or standing upon shaky platforms advocating for peace. Ah, weak nation, that doesn’t merit to stand or sit where real and true men gather!
We might as well disband our army and be satisfied with only having the police to maintain internal stability! We haven’t and can’t fight for anything worthwhile that relates to our territorial integrity, Yenga or not!
Now, I know truly that the army that exists in Sierra Leone is only good and capable of instilling fear and obedience among the minds of us poor wretched citizens.
To think that our soldiers and their war tanks only roll out each time there is disaffection among us, or a handful thinks that we ought to demonstrate against things that borders on our welfare! They roll out and parade in our streets and towns, dressed for war. Hahaha. Their barrels and grenades on standby to send you hastily to judgment.
No problem, if you ask me, if that’s their notion of entering soldier-hood and subscribing to an oath that they never meant to keep.
Please do not blame them, or the politicians that sign their paycheck.
All rolled into one, we are a nation that have no balls, no guts to fight for what is rightfully ours. If we had, we would have settled this Yenga issue long before now, instead of cowering before a nation that doesn’t respect diplomacy or democracy.
As we speak, Guinea stands suspended from Ecowas, because their army has made mincemeat of democracy and reversed the gains of what a government of the people should do.
Outside of Ecowas and the Mano River Union or the African Union, who do you think Guinea will listen to, because they definitely can’t listen to these three groupings.
If you will hear it loudly, Guinea can’t and won’t listen to diplomacy, especially now that they have a military leader; violence and force is what they will understand. They should be given a taste of what they want then.
Going to war with Guinea over Yenga makes sense, because Yenga is a piece of Sierra Leone, and what affects a piece affects the whole, you know. If our soldiers have to die, so be it, for they would not have died in vain.
This week, and the following weeks, Britain and the free world are celebrating V-Day, because they had balls to stand up for what is right.
Don’t we also in every year join the world in celebrating ‘Armed Forces Day?’ what’s the significance of that day in fact, other than celebrating the heroism of men and women who stood up against tyranny, regardless of the consequences.
This same moment playing before our eyes once played before the 13 American colonies, whether to go to war with Great Britain on the principle of no taxation without representation. Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine, Heaven bless their immortal souls, said war is a necessity, in order to settle that issue. The rest is glorious history for the United States.
Taking more time to talk about our very own Bai Bureh against the British, makes pleasant reading. Did he stop to consider about the almightiness of Britain armed with their Gatlin guns? He did what he had to do, like a man and a leader should!
Bai Bureh didn’t win, just like Leonidas and Sparta didn’t win against the all-powerful Persia then; but he made his point in standing for freedom and for his people.
And for our leader presently? He is more interested in touring the world than staying home and working for his people. Photo albums matter more to him than providing the basics as required by his social contract with us the voters.
Pity, to think he is a soldier, someone who fought for this nation before now, is now shy of war and standing up for what is right?
Ah, God, to give us a leader like this at a time like now, when we need decisiveness and guts!
Listen, our war with Guinea is a right and proper war! Who doesn’t know the people who populate Yenga are Kissis, who can be found both in Sierra Leone and in Guinea? Who doesn’t know our respective nations presently are interwoven by marriage and kindredship? Who doesn’t know we host each other’s tradespeople?
These reasons are strong, but redeeming Yenga is stronger than them all. I cry when I listen to my compatriots at Yenga who are treated like slaves, tossed to and fro like a piece of paper. Their homes, their farmlands and animals are for the taking of those usurpers and trespassers, with no one doing anything. What a shame!
Next time anyone has the ear of our globe-trotting president, tell him to authorize spending and an increase on our military and security. It matters more than the expensive and useless items and other paraphernalia that tops his shopping list.
We have the MCC funds coming in, we have mining companies herein, we have friends outside of Sierra Leone, let’s leverage on them and get us better war equipment, and have our soldiers trained to defend us.
The world is at a point where rascals can emerge at any moment to destabilize nations and wreak havoc. We have to be prepared both for peace and for war.
But if war is our dread, then kindly cede Yenga over to Guinea and call in our cartographers to redraw our map.
Enough Nigerian blood was shed during the Biafran war, and that was a war of brother going to war against brother! Necessity was laid upon their leadership to maintain one Nigeria. Same for the American civil war which drew so much blood when the North went to war against the South that wanted to secede over the question of slavery.
So let us decide now as a nation, as James Russel Lowell so beautifully puts it in his famous poem, ‘Once to Every Man and Nation.’ Here’s an excerpt of it:
‘Once to every man and nation/ Comes the moment to decide/ In the strife of truth with falsehood/ For the good or evil side…/ Though the cause of evil prosper/Yet ’tis truth alone is strong/Though her portion be the scaffold/And upon the throne be wrong/Yet that scaffold sways the future/And, behind the dim unknown/ Standeth God within the shadow/Keeping watch above His own.’
Yenga must be free! That freedom, now, cannot come by wishing alone but by blows and blood. The world can’t stop by us, talk less buy a ticket from us, if it is a peace orchestra that we are rehearsing and advertising all the time.
With war, or in preparation for it, brings attention, speedy attention in fact. Enough of the talk shows and cajoling; diplomacy can’t resolve this issue, oh no! Guinea and Sierra Leone must decide NOW who owns Yenga.
Starting today, there should be a summoning of the Guinean Ambassador to State House to give him a dispatch to Conakry for their soldiers to leave Yenga within 72 hours, or Freetown will declare war with Guinea! We have been shoved around for two decades now; the world must now meet us up at Yenga in Kissi-Teng Chieffdom, northeastern Sierra Leone, either to part us or to send us weapons as their way of helping us regain our sacred soil.
The point is that we didn’t fight to regain our independence from Britain in 1961; diplomacy gave us that when we asked for it from a decent and democratic nation, because it was the proper thing for them to do.
But the Guineans doesn’t know what is the proper thing to do; they think brute force should give them whatever they want – and their want is to have a piece of our land even when theirs is thrice bigger and richer than ours! What gluttony! Another Germany and Adolf Hitler, huh?
Well, tomorrow, it won’t only be Yenga that they would be annexing. Someone has to tell Guinea now, as someone told Vladimir Putin in 2022, that they are wrong in annexing a foothold of another sovereign nation.
Someone would understand their annexation theory, if Yenga were a launch pad to create insurrection in Guinea; but it is not! We already know what it means to have war, so we won’t be a ground to help destabilise Guinea. However, we will reach for our guns again, even if they are very rusty, to withstand their bullish posture against us these two decades on.
And, finally, to those asking, whether I would be willing to be drafted to fight for Sierra Leone. My answer is yes. I have been fighting for Sierra Leone all my life, as has the nurse and the teacher and the farmer, and a thousand others. Each of us has been fighting in our several ways for a better country.
So, it is but proper that our army, whose motto is ‘serving the nation’ be put to the test. They have our prayers and our support. That is what they had sworn an oath to do, to defend our territorial integrity.
It is not that they aren’t ready; rather it is our leaders and the bulk of those who are afraid about the giant that is Guinea, whose sword and spear and javelin looks so mighty to them!
Damn Guinea, I say, because they would be fighting on the wrong side of history while we would be fighting on the right side of history, in defending our own land. And a God of justice will definitely give us the victory and Yenga, which so rightly belongs to us! elbangura@gmail.com /+23278369366
