By Joseph A. Kamanda
Recent attacks on national secretariats of the main opposition All People’s Congress APC party and the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party SLPP are disturbing concerns to the people of Sierra Leone for fear of such rampant incidents causing insecurity to all.
The unwarranted ruling party attacked on the APC party office like the Sunday incident also left so many seriously injured although the SLPP National Secretary General Mr. Umaru Napoleon Koroma refuted clams of supporters attacking the opposition despite the fact that the APC National Secretary General, Alhaji Ambassador Osman Foday Yansanneh explained that his party supporters were rudely provoked by an SLPP Lebanese supporter named Junior Bio, yet the SLPP scribe-Koroma denied they don’t have any Lebanese member in their party.
Was the Sunday 26th January deadly incident a spilled over effects of recent attacked on the APC headquarters, are the billion United States Dollars questions many rational minded Sierra Leoneans and the public are left pondering over.
But then gamely twist suddenly jet in trying to divert attentions from the bad news of state leadership failures in their various offices by cabinet ministers and heads of MDAs in the incumbent government, which are not doing down well with the least performed chief executive Mr. Bio. When the head of a fish is rotten what do you expect from the rest of it…everything is rotten and ‘tumbu is komoting,’ so also with inefficiency at the top down there nothing will come out successfully. So the game surely has to be Mr. CEO Bio thus do some house cleaning for productivity and national development sake.
The deceptive twist of self inflicted violence by pro-SLPP tamed handlooms didn’t in any way take opposition and public attentions from governance and service delivery failures of the ruling party. All what people are concerned about are that the government must seen meeting and achieving its goals assignments in sync with the expectations of citizens of Sierra Leone and development partners.
Lest we forget about hungry irate SLPP jobless boys who were looking for food along on Abacha Streets and other areas in the central business district of Freetown only to meet one or two resistances that resulted to a riot that chased them to their party secretariat, coupled with live shots from Police to protect lives and property according to Assistant Inspector General of Police Ambrose Sovela. But Police Public Relations Officer Superintendent Brima Kamara in trying to save the already battered reputation of the force for the use of arms to stop violence couldn’t confirm the firing of live shots. The argument and counter arguments clearly exposed ruling party supporters’ self-inflicted acts that the rioters were indeed from the SLPP party headquarters harassing vulnerable business people, which is what chairman Dr Alex Prince Harding could also not make clear to the public rather he keeps shifting blames here and there against peaceful opposition APC, even though Dr Harding was also not smart enough to divert attentions from the massive failures of his government.
SLPP supporters’ fight as eye witness could have it also had to do with bitter arguments over choices of incoming candidates for secretary general, other national positions and who actually care about them that will alleviate their sad plights at the party office on Wallace Johnson Street in the heart of Freetown.
Dr Harding who blamed the self-inflicted attacked on opposition APC party supporters on grounds that his secretariat had received an mysterious letter allegedly from APC secretariat hat threatened to attack their office following early January violence attack on APC headquarter on Railway Line, could hardly substantiate his claims to a logical conclusion. To which the APC denied in press release issued on Monday saying; “NO SUCH ‘THREAT MESSAGE’ WAS EVER ISSUED AND THE CLAIM IS COMPLETELY UNTRUE.” On SLBC Morning Coffee, the APC Acting Publicity Secretary Sidi Yaya Tunis said their party is focused on issues that can better the lives of Sierra Leoneans rather than attacking SLPP. He said the APC leader and chairman former president Ernest Bai Koroma had long declared that the APC is a peaceful which is what exactly they are maintaining as a responsible opposition party, adding that the APC has never and has plan of attacking the SLPP.
Imagine if the then opposition party now governing SLPP had brought in war veterans from their South and Eastern regions support bases with the firm notion of resisting the outcome of the March 2018 election had it not been in their favour. Fortunately for them they won the elections and abandoned their thugs who are now languishing in joblessness, hunger, destitutions leading most of them to robberies at night. With such undetermined plights what do they expect from provincial grownups who know nothing about means of survival in largely conservatives dominated Freetown? The ruling party must check its house properly before casting aspersions on its hatred rival APC for the very failures of the ruling class to address the right issues instead of taking curious minds and attentions from deliberate state failures and revert to the widely expressed regime change maxim during the 2018 elections ‘country first.’
The week following the upsurge of the riotous incident at the SLPP national secretariat we were all glued to the much covered news event of government’s January 24th 2020 cabinet retreat held at the Bintumani Conference Center Aberdeen Freetown, with the theme; “Consolidating the Foundation of Service Delivery” The theme was clearly appreciate but not as timely as one could imagine because barely after over twenty-two months in office, it is only now government is calling his team to order. What a catch up Mr Bio? Sierra Leoneans are no longer in slumber. Are service deliveries not priorities of government? Or had the government engaged with better matters than delivering the goods to the people?
Mind you the much expected failures started with the GTT report followed by the commissions of inquiries not to mention the selective Anti-Corruption campaign against past government officials and their APC party members and supporters. Your predecessors inherited fraudulent systems than you claimed to have met but focused on better things than retrogressions.
Failures in the current dispensation are unavoidable and much expected in that if Mr Bio heartedly relieved all trained and qualified experts from the Performance Management and Service Delivery Directorate in the then Office of Chief of Staff, now Office of Chief Minister, and brought incompetent SLPP party loyalists, siblings of his girlfriends who virtually know nothing about performance management and service delivery, what do you expect from them.
To source water out of metal which is impossible, so let the Office of the President point at one performance contract sign by a minister, head of an MDA and state owned enterprises.
As a matter of fact since April 2018 to date there is nothing the PMSD under the leaderships of Mr. Bio and his CM Mr. David John Francis can point at as mark of achievement even though they so-called new experts met everything that could have made them much efficient on their job. Is it because they lack the right supervisions from Mr. David Francis and Mr. Bio, or the requisite knowledge to deliver on their mandates for which they are being hugely paid with tax payers’ moneys? Value for money must be seen now than later before service delivery is thrown to Samba Gutter and covered up with self-inflicted violence by hoodlums being tamed by the ruling party members at the SLPP national secretariat. People can hardly ignore their hopes of government’s promises for better livelihoods made by Mr. Bio during his campaign for the presidency and he must therefore be seen fulfilling those commitments not just the rushed 2023 campaigns being done under the guises of rolling out the free education to win the coming election.
To cabinet members and heads of Ministries Departments and Agencies MDAs Mr. Julius Maada Bio expressed his dissatisfactions at the deficiencies in service deliveries in his government and declared 2020 as a year of service delivery. “We are here to develop a smart plan that is outcome and result oriented. We have the responsibility to deliver this nation, so we have to work together to change the narrative of our country. We have a competent team that inspires both local and international confidence. So, I count on your total support and commitment to deliver to our people,” he said in a poorly written news release issued from his communication department at State House.
Much as the people remained actively awake monitoring and stock taking Mr. Bio’s led SLPP government with fixed focused on failures in his administration closed to two years now, the grumblings of economic hardships everywhere across the country should be transformed into something else for the improvement of the living standards of the every Sierra Leonean as promised during the during his campaigns as attentions are hardly diverted from the harsh realities on the ground.
And the Sierra Leone Police force must in all of these remained very much professional in the discharge of their duties without fear or favours like any democratic professional police in the world, as we anxiously await the outcome of investigations into recent attacks on both SLPP and APC national secretariats as well as so many other politically motivated related violence between both parties. However there is no way the scary violence can take away attentions from the failures of the Mr. Bio led SLPP paopa government.
