Sierra Leone today is a highly misplaced society due to survival politics of the belly. Politics of the belly – the need to provide for self and your family has robbed us of our natural potential as a people and country. Politicians have killed the Sierra Leonean society and economy and it would appear as if there is no one in either public or private life who will challenge the issues amidst the current state of things by speaking out in the interests of the people and country.
They have all been bought just by the simple power those in public leadership who hire and fire at will. In a country where jobs are hard to come by regardless of your qualification, those who should have acted as the nation’s moral guarantors have been made useless by being captured by half-baked opposition All People’s Congress (APC) and the governing Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) politicians. All because of the tenacious transitions of politics of the belly or survival politics from ruling party to the other…
These educational dwarfs have so captured our society that they have rendered our educated people useless and unfit for purpose for the task ahead.
For a very long time now, Sierra Leoneans have been suffering under the weight of rulers who exert control over every facet of public and private life, who will go at great lengths to preserve their grip on the leadership of the country, even by employing the use of force against a helpless and hapless society.
It was our colonial masters that made Sierra Leoneans to admire educated people. After making a show of the likes of the Margais of the SLPP and even Siaka P. Stevens of the APC after the deceitful negotiations at Lancaster House, London in England that resulted to Sierra Leone’s premature self-rule, there was great expectation from the people of our then intelligentsia. There was the expectation that we will soon rise to the same level as what was obtaining in progressive African nations like Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, among others former British colonies.
Sadly for Sierra Leone the amount of money that flowed through an economy blinded our early leaders who employed other educated people to do the dirty work while they live off the fame associated with public leadership. The practice became that half-baked politicians would capture those with the technical knowledge of running a state, get them so corrupt that they ended up becoming just as useless as the leader with their entire focus being to amass as much wealth as they possibly can while they have the opportunity and approval from above.
Because they have been captured such people can hardly say anything about what was happening to the society – the drop in educational standards, rice in high placed public sector corruption, lack of national cohesion and unity, stealing of votes in public elections, unbridled violence, drop in the standard of locally produced goods and services, lack of jobs for the educated and the not so educated among so many ills in the society.
Because they have been bought by those in power, because they care so much about their bellies or stomachs, our educated men and women in the universities and other institutions of higher learning (called the intelligentsia or literati), the people in Civil Society Organizations, in the religious organisations and nongovernmental organisations, have all disappointed the people.
In Sierra Leone, politics of the belly have seen the nation’s leaders failing to administer the state to the point where we will be on par with nations like Botswana, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria. Because the educated and politicians in these countries are so result oriented and their societies continue to rise and progress while back home in Sierra Leone, the educated class that should have held our leaders up to task continue to speak and act in line with the expectations of the very people they are supposed to be querying.
The present state of affairs in Sierra Leone where state governors will challenge the unfortunately poor and desperate people with inflammatory statements, where political leaders would ignore threats of sanction by development partners unless they resolve the ongoing elections mess and declare that the next elections comes up in 2028, while a committee is still investigating the ruling SLPP claimed victory at the last national elections, where the Clerk of Parliament will hire and pay his wife for a work she never did, where public sector corruption and moral decadence are getting out of hand, and many such issues, call for men and women with the trainings and education to speak on such matters. Such people would speak truth to power regardless of what they stand to gain or lose.
But not in Sierra Leone! These educated men and women that we admire have failed to live up to expectations therefore instead of being the nation’s moral guarantors as they are supposed to, their roles are shamefully being played by people from the international community whose only weapon against the abuse the society continues to suffer at the hands of our elected and appointed leaders are political and economic sanctions.
It would appear as if Sierra Leone’s moral guarantors are yet to be born.
Since the international community know that Sierra Leone’s half-baked leaders make policy and write longwinded projects only to get their hands on the loots, and since they know that the country’s intelligentsia at the universities, the CSOs and NGOs, the media, the religious organisations will fail to do as expected because of politics of the belly, they refuse to approve grants and loans that will end up being used to fund white elephant projects that will end up collecting dust in government offices.
Yes, politicians have and continue to ruin Sierra Leone. However, our educated people have done us worse by allowing politics of the belly to affect how they do what they spent years in colleges and universities getting trained for. There is an urgent need for such people to repent and stop allowing themselves to be captured by intellectual dwarfs parading our corridors of power.
