By: Winstanley R. Bankole Johnson
Kadiru Kaikai’s incendiary and belligerent utterances over the past weekend was vintage SLPP antics. No two ways about that.
Before and during the last electioneering periods the man was all over the place, strutting countrywide – but more especially in the South-East – baying rallying battle cries and dispensing resources as moral boosters for voters to fall in en masse for the SLPP flag bearer Julius Maada Bio. And in all of those movements Kadiru Kaikai had well-armed, ostensibly identifiable uniformed close protection officers in tow.
Policy
What was most disturbing during those political escapades of Kadiru Kaikai was that while they lasted, not for once did anyone from the Security Sector, or the Office of National Security (ONS), the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone (HRCSL), Independent Commission for Peace and National Cohesion Commission (ICPNC), the Inter-Religious Council of Sierra Leone (IRCSL) or even the Political Parties Regulations Commission (PPRC) as much as whimpered, nay attempted to openly restrain him for excesses or disorderly conduct.
Those were the same periods when the PPRC was busy raining reprimands and levying monumental fines against the APC Party for misdeamenours as harmless as APPC supporters playing loud music deemed to be offensive the SLPP Presidential candidate. Back then as was the norm, whatever Kadiru Kaikai said or did was SLPP policy. He was one of the most resourceful within the SLPP materially and financially. He took much pride in having traversed APC heartlands unchallenged and would count that as bravery, obviously mistaking the high democratic tolerance values of Northerners for cowardice. Long and short of it all, it was as if Kadiru Kaikai was guaranteed state immunity and protection from prosecution for no matter injuries caused, as long as it was in the interest of the SLPP.
I am sure it is that long insulation of prosecution that he had enjoyed in the past from the SLPP the prompted Kadiru Kaikai to have lapsed into such irresponsible, inciteful and incendiary vitriolic ultimatum hat if he is not confirmed and installed as the President of this country in 2028, he would invoke wars and destruction with such cataclysmic proportions as would make our 1991 – 2002 wars like dress rehearsals. Observe that he was addressing the entire country, meaning his threat transcended political parties and barriers. And in his own grotesquely village estimation all of that will not cost him more than US$3million which he boasted he could easily afford.
Graveyards
But as things stand, Kadiru Kaikai’s “Cup hath runneth over”, as it would appear the SLPP government finally has a limit of recklessness they could not go beyond. So they have taken umbrage and ordered for his arrest and incarceration, even though his detention center was not disclosed to the public. I have no reason to doubt that, but given the selective manner the SLPP are wont to dispense “justice’, one should not be surprised to cross Kadiru Kaikai having sumptuous lunch in down town Crown Bakery – with two armed, uniformed police escorts in tow.
But again come to think of it, what Kadiru Kaikai did was against the law for which he ought to have been arraigned before a Court of law. The ONS the PPRC, the ICPNCSL, the HRCSL and the IRCSL all know that, but have all remained as quiet as graveyards “in the past”. And I maintain “in the past’” because that is no longer the case and very soon our graveyards will all be declared “residential areas”. Yet it is not enough for the police to inform us that he’s been arrested. If anyone in the APC had dared that he would be facing worse consequences by now. I know that.
Vintage
But like I said, Kadiru Kaikai’s vile, belligerent and incendiary vitriolic is vintage SLPP trade mark. Sound the war cries. Flood the social media with gory and grisly video clips of the war years showing civilians being amputated, massacred and scurrying away aimlessly and leaving their properties including homes torched most times with souls inside them to perish in the inferno. This was what they did prior to the 2023 elections either to frighten cowards away from polling stations or to teach them the raw consequences that would befall them for supporting APC in the South-Eastern heartlands of SLPP. And they got away with it.
Well up to this point because I must say, we still anxiously await the final reports of the Tripartite Committee on “Results Examination and Electoral Justice”. My inference here is that the sooner the UNECOWAS produce their findings on who the actual winner of the June 24th 2023 Presidential election was, and their list of indictees (across both the APC and SLPP Parties) of those who undermined democracy before, during and after the June 24th 2023 elections for prosecution by the residual International Criminal Special Court right here in Sierra Leone, the more unlikely that zealots like the Kadiru Kaikais of this world will continue to see Sierra Leone as a fertile ground for war mongering.
Most of the political atrocities being committed to this day would have long been erased had the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliations Commission (TRC) been implemented to the full. But their implementation was politicized, allowing many who were actually culpable and should be nearing completion of their sentences by now to survive as free men and women and mutate as credible politicians. God will not give this nation a third chance.
