By Sheriff Mahmud Ismail
Freetown – February 8, 2020
Since the unexpected transition of power to the Julius Maada Bio Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), there have been incessant unjustified attacks against former president Ernest Bai Koroma. The attacks include the baseless accusations of a sellout to the SLPP and a refusal to relinquish the position of chairman and leader of the All Peoples Congress (APC). All of these are as unfortunate as they are pointless.
In an article titled: Ernest Koroma Is No Longer A Leader published today on social media, Titus Boye – Johnson once again accused former president Koroma of deliberately ceding power to the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), attempted to blame the former president for the current dissonance within the All Peoples Congress (APC) and then tried to present him as someone lacking in leadership. This rejoinder seeks to unravel all of those misleading propositions by articulating the facts on the issues.
For starters, former President Koroma has nothing to gain from doing a deal with the SLPP over and above his beloved APC. The evidence abounds that throughout his leadership both in the party and as president, he worked assidiously to make the APC attractive to the public and for it to retain power in the 2018 elections. I could recall that during several strategic meetings at State House, in the run up to the 2018 elections, president Koroma passionately appealed to all comrades, especially those aspiring to lead the party, to put aside individual differences and to work together for electoral victory. At the State Lodge, he held several meetings and reconciliation dinners with aspirants all in a bid to encourage and inspire a common front against the common enemy. But as it turned out, some people were dogged in their determination to either for them to have the leadership or they would sabotage whosoever emerged. And this was on the backdrop that on several occasions, president Koroma had appealed for some of the senior comrades to assist him in the party’s endeavours of choosing the new leader. The jury is out that he was told and given the authority to make the choice. ‘ Pa, anyone pa we wae you choose we go accept am’*, was the usual refrain. In the end, what obtained remains an open book that the fallout from that episode in Makeni has continued to reverberate with undiminishing intensity with people like Titus Boye-Johnson hopping all around not just with both his heavy legs but also with his mouth, unreasonably trying to spin a narrative that even outsiders would not find plausible.
And the idle talk about unduly holding on to the APC leadership is one that I find to be hopelessly unfair and inaccurate. Even a casual observer would know that president Koroma neither has any interest in, nor is there any value for him to continue to serve as Chairman and Leader. As a matter of fact, it is holding him back from fully taking up his next higher role of an international statesman. Even before the elections in 2018, he had indicated his desire to move on. That he is still saddled with the leadership is neither his desire nor is it to his advantage. His continue stay at the helm is only as a result of the necessity to pacify the unhealthy scheming for succession that is threatening the very core of the party. Only those who purport to know so much but in actual fact know so little would elect to attack the man who has served his party so much. This is particularly lamentable in view of the fact that the attacks are based on this unfounded suspicion that president Koroma desires to hold on to the party leadership, *after about two decades at top?* What some of his detractors do not appreciate is the incontrovertible fact that even after THEY begged President Ernest Koroma to kindly hold on until the next convention, that even after some went as far as tabling at NAC for him to stay on as chairman and leader; it was the conscientious President Koroma who outrightly rejected that proposition for which he is now being attacked. And it was not only at NAC, if only those who have made it their business of accusing Ernest Bai Koroma of holding on to the APC had paid any attention during the 2018 APC NDC in Makeni, which I know they didn’t, they would have noticed that twice, it was drafted as a resolution for the Chairman and Leader to continue in his position but again twice, he rejected. I am saying this with authority because I was one of the rapporteurs at that NDC and was privy to the resolutions. So the noise and attacks against President Koroma in respect of this chairmanship of the APC is borne out of ignorance, deceit and betrayal by those who are perpetuating it.
Now about his statesmanship. Again, one does not need an extra brain to understand that Ernest Koroma’ s statesmanship is not limited to Sierra Leone rather; he is well regarded among his peers both in the region and within the wider international community. If it’s not the arrogance of ignorance, one would have recalled that in November 2019, President Koroma led no less a delegation than an AFRICAN UNION ELECTION OBSERVATION MISSION. Earlier, he had attended international peace conferences such as one organised by no mean an organisation as the Kofi Annan International Peace Training Center, the Peace and Security Centre in the Obasanjo Presidential Library and Foundation, the Horasis Global Meeting in Portugal. The Brendthurst Foundation based in South Africa also invited him to Como, Italy, to discuss economic growth in Africa, the Nnamdi Azikiwe University recently invited him to deliver a keynote address in commemoration of the life of that great pan Africanist. And, he has been to several other African countries performing his duties as an acclaimed international statesman. As I write, president Koroma has received several high level invitations and requests either to lead delegations or to participate at high level international events. Therefore, the filibustering argument that president Koroma ‘has lost the moral authority to accede to the position of a statesman…’ is nothing other than an emotional outburst without the benefit of intellect.
And it beggars belief that even with his best of efforts at accommodating all shades of opinions in first; establishing a Nine Man Committee, then a Constitutional Review Committee and then a mini NDC to adopt the new constitution which would have laid the basis for the progression to an NDC from where a new leadership would have drastically emerged, paid up detractors would still go on marauding on social media with the suffocating gibberish that the former president still wants anything to do with the position of chairman and leader. The bareface dishonesty of refusing to acknowledge that the Ernest Korma leadership had actually positively responded to the demands for reforms and that the party was on its way to doing as demanded until such efforts where mindlessly scuttled, only underpins the sad reality that whatever he does, some people want nothing other than a disorderly transition that would install them as ‘natural successors”.
By all indications, it is as clear as crystal that the shameless adoption of the paopa attitude in relation to who should be the next APC leader and presidential candidate is doing more harm to the very favourable chances of the APC regaining State House. It is my considered view that there are many and very good potential leaders amongst comrades but until they accept the reality that only one of them would lead at a time and that any one of them is good enough, the party would continue to suffer the indignity of being in opposition under a very hostile SLPP. The sooner we all accept this indisputable fact and stop the destructive promotion of the surrogacy of antagonism against one another the better for our supporters and the country at large.
