{"id":65225,"date":"2014-02-12T05:59:49","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T05:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierraexpressmedia.com\/?p=65225"},"modified":"2014-02-12T05:59:49","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T05:59:49","slug":"the-tribal-card-not-wise-option-for-any-governing-party-in-sierra-leone-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/?p=65225","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018Tribal Card\u2019: Not \u2018wise\u2019 option for any Governing Party in Sierra Leone (Part Three)"},"content":{"rendered":"

About two weeks ago, I was on the radio programme most widely-listened to by Sierra Leoneans at home and abroad, Dr. David Tam-Baryoh\u2019s \u2018MONOLOGUE\u2019<\/span><\/b>: to talk about the\u00a0 video documentary, \u2018SALONE PROSPERITY\u2019<\/span><\/b>,\u00a0 which I produced last year; and to help radio-debut the youth coalition I am mentoring, evocatively named, \u2018Grahp! Woke!! Study!!! Salone Go Befoe!!!!<\/span><\/b>\u2019\u00a0 I implored all youth in the country to\u00a0 \u201ctake advantage of the opportunities that have been created by President Ernest Bai Koroma\u2019s government\u201d; and not wait for a political party of their choice to, hopefully, come to power first and work \u2018miracles\u2019 for them \u2013 \u201cFor if there is any Messiah in Sierra Leone, there is already one at the apex of our national leadership\u201d,<\/b> I intoned. That halo of \u2018Messiah\u2019 was embedded in one of the songs (\u201cErnest nar World Best, O….Salone Messiah, O!!….)<\/i> that millions romped on, and women swooned with,\u00a0 as President Koroma\u2019s film-star handsome visage would beam at them,\u00a0 waving a white handkerchief during the heat of the 2012 elections.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019Messi done change pan we….\u2019\u201d (??!!!!)<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Sierra Leone\u2019s mega star musician, Emerson, in his recent hit song, \u2018Kokobeh\u2019,\u00a0\u00a0 aims to yank the Messiah halo over President Koroma\u2019s wisdom-symbolic white hair head with such lines in a song that is more of a sermon: \u201c\u2019Kontri done broke done O! ….Ar sweh…dis nar revo… Messi done chill….Messi done change pan we…. Messi reach ee Waterloo…lef we pan mohneh….\u2019\u201d<\/i>.\u00a0 Emerson\u2019s hyperbole on the ruination of the country under President Koroma who he paradoxically expressed reverence for is laced with the near lethal poison of tribalism: \u201c\u2018If u nor to Temne u nar go geh job….\u2019\u201d.<\/i>\u00a0 In that tribalism lampoon, Emerson echoes the main political opposition, SLPP.\u00a0 I took\u00a0 this indictment of tribalism against President Koroma\u2019s government\u00a0 seriously enough to have done four articles on it in this Column, and I continue my exposition on what I consider a time bomb in our political space which must be defused before it is detonated<\/b>.\u00a0 I have looked at the potential of Emerson\u2019s song being a spark for a Rwanda-1994-type genocide in Sierra Leone.\u00a0 I have examined the inexorable consequences of those governments in our history that have used the \u2018Tribal Card\u2019 as their potent political weapon\u00a0 \u2013 disastrous loss of power and\/or military coups; or,\u00a0 a civil war. The \u2018tribalism dam\u2019 I open would have its deluge\u00a0 naturally flowing\u00a0 into the presidency of H.E. Ernest Bai Koroma \u2013\u00a0\u00a0 who the youth have dubbed\u00a0 \u201cWorld Best\u201d….; who\u00a0 Emerson has labelled\u00a0 \u201cMessi\u201d in his \u2018Kokobeh\u2019 song.\u00a0\u00a0 Is \u2018Messi\u2019s\u2019 government guilty as charged by\u00a0 Emerson \u2013 of tribalism?<\/p>\n

Disproportionate Number of Northerners Head MDAs today (?!!)<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

At the risk of being charged with equivocation here, I would respond to my rhetorical question thus: \u2018It does appear as if there are \u00a0disproportionate numbers of Northerners or \u2018Temnes\u2019\u00a0 appointed to head Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) by President Koroma\u2019.\u00a0 The premise of this serial is \u2018Tribalism\u2019. Emerson\u2019s poisoned dart is \u2018Tribalism\u2019 \u2013 principally against the alleged \u2018favoured Temne\u2019 tribe.\u00a0 In Sierra Leone, a nuance of\u00a0 the African Virulent Virus of \u2018Tribalism\u2019 is likely to evoke mirth.<\/p>\n

The Temne Tribe or Temne-speaking Peoples?<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Should we be talking of a Temne tribe or Temne-speaking peoples<\/b>?\u00a0 Turn the spotlight on a few ministers in President Koroma\u2019s government: Hon. Pat Sowe, marine minister, and Hon. Minkailu Bah,\u00a0 education minister \u2013 both men may speak Temne, but, as their names show, they belong to the Fullah tribe<\/i>. Mineral resources minister, Hon. Minkailu Mansaray may have a \u2018Northern Province\u00a0 name\u2019 (Is \u201cMansaray\u201d Loko, Temne, Fullah name…? You find Mansarays from Pujehun in the Mende-speaking Southern Province\u00a0 today), but, he was born and bred in Kanikay, in the Eastend of Freetown.\u00a0 Do we lump those ministers together in the Temne pot?<\/i> Come to think of it, is President Koroma himself\u00a0 a \u2018real Temne\u2019?<\/b>\u00a0 Outlandish question that….-\u00a0 given the reality that President Koroma is young enough for us to know about his parents\u2019Temne\u00a0 lineage.\u00a0 Think! President Koroma was born and grew up in a relatively westernized home in Makeni, an \u2018Orportoe\u2019.\u00a0 For 40 of his 60 years on earth, President Koroma has lived\u00a0\u00a0 mostly in Freetown \u2013\u00a0 he has become absorbed, like his closest friends, as\u00a0 part of the westernized Freetown \u2018Krio-lized elite\u2019<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Salone\u2019s \u2018Tribalism Comedy\u2019<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Can a man migrate from Sierra Leone\u00a0\u00a0 to the US at age 18, get thoroughly assimilated into the American culture, and at age 60 that man is slapped with the \u2018Sierra Leonean-ness\u2019 he would have thoroughly lost?\u00a0 SLPP minister in President Tejan Kabbah\u2019s\u00a0 government for 11 years, Dr. Alpha Wurie, is a Fullah, or a Northerner? Well, he does wear very fashionable Fullah garments.\u00a0 I went to Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone in the mid-1970s at the same time as \u2018Alpha\u2019 (pronounced with an Anglicized accent), and, I know for sure \u2018Alpha\u2019 is as westernized or \u2018Krio-lized\u2019 as Dustan Abimbola Taylor-Pearce.\u00a0\u00a0 If you read the \u2018Koroma-ist\u2019 belligerent prose of \u201cMohamed Sankoh\u201d<\/b> (a.k.a. One Drop) in his THE NATIONALIST newspaper you would easily conclude that that the man is \u2018genetically an APC\/Limba man\u2019 \u2013 but, on meeting Sankoh, you are likely to be shocked to see that every sentence, every mannerism, every dress of One Drop…is as Krio as\u00a0 Dr. Davidson Nicol, Jr<\/b>\u2019s.\u00a0 The \u2018worst\u2019 in our tribalism comedy are the newly returned JCs \u2013 from UK and US.<\/p>\n

Some of these JCs have returned\u00a0 home speaking English with unalloyed American or British accents.\u00a0 Some were born and bred in foreign lands. When in the US or UK, they would be horrified, and, would protest with vehemence, if they are derided as \u2018African\u2019 \u2013 but, once home, they claim their \u2018tribal rights\u2019 to get the plum jobs.\u00a0 They are part of \u2018civilized societies\u2019 in the West \u2013 but, in Africa, they are quite willing to dance the \u2018Primitive Tribal Dance\u2019.\u00a0 <\/b>\u00a0This is all so funny.\u00a0 The hilarity should be treated with levity if the result of this silly game by the African elite wouldn\u2019t lead to macabre consequences \u2013 in Sierra Leone, and Africa. .<\/p>\n

Africa\u2019s Most Virulent Virus: Tribalism<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

THIS DAY newspaper of 20th<\/sup> October, 2012, writes that \u2018the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has…said\u00a0 the political class in Nigeria has failed to realize the danger of building their political empire on the basis of ethnicity and tribal associations, adding that they no longer think of competent hands to steer the affairs of the nation, but all they think is which part of the country produce the next president….. …promoting mediocrity….\u2019<\/b>.<\/p>\n

This African writer lends the proper gravity to the tribalism malaise in Africa: \u201cWhen you combine corruption and tribalism you get a nasty mix.\u00a0 If the president of an African nation surrounds himself with members of his own tribe, as they often do, and those people also surround themselves with members of the same tribe, as often happens in Africa, the government begins to look like a tribal government rather than a national government.<\/span><\/b>\u00a0 If those government officials are also corrupt, it often seems to the other tribes that the president’s tribe is taking advantage of them…..the tribes that are not in power often demand their own country and resort to armed rebellion.\u00a0.<\/b>\u201d(https:\/\/sites.google.com\/a\/southcolonie.k12.ny.us\/littell\/unit-7—the-twentieth-century-since-1945\/collapse-of-european-imperialism\/african-independence\/tribalism-corruption-and-civil-war)<\/p>\n

Hon Raila A Odinga, <\/span><\/strong>Member of Parliament, Langata, Kenya<\/span><\/strong>; <\/span>presidential candidate of the <\/span><\/strong>\u00a0Orange Democratic Movement<\/span><\/strong>, writes that \u201c<\/strong>…..<\/strong>The civil wars in Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, among others, can be attributed to the contest between ethnic groups over the control of the apparatus of state and government for the allocation of the national pie. …..The politicization of ethnicity …. has in turn generated deep-rooted suspicions, mistrust, and at times resulted into widespread violence, insecurity, and even caused genocide.<\/b>….\u201d<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

Emerson\u2019s Orwellian Big Lie on \u2018Temnes\u2019 (?!!)<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

One lesson that George Orwell\u2019s \u201c1984\u201d book teaches is: you can tell any Big Lie intensely and persistently enough and it could be believed by even the\u00a0 strongest-willed persons.\u00a0 Emerson fingers the \u201cTemne\u201d in our tribalism maelstrom \u2013 those getting the \u201cjobs\u201d.\u00a0 Out of edibles, about 90% of traders in Sierra Leone are Temnes. Temnes mostly\u00a0 don\u2019t look for jobs \u2013 Temnes largely\u00a0 create their own jobs.\u00a0 <\/b>Temnes are spread, indeed, dominant, in every district in Sierra Leone \u2013 trading everything from slippers, underwear, mirrors, to fish and palm oil. After ten years in the UK, Cllr. Ibrahim Kamara who just returned home says that \u201cThe Temnes thrived through providing service to every tribe in the country; and, some have grown wealthy doing that.\u00a0 Temnes have no reason to be tribalistic!!\u201d.<\/b>\u00a0 Indeed, Temnes should be studied by nearly all non-Temne youth \u2013 so that they can learn from Temnes how to be entrepreneurial, to be hardy, to be persevering, to be courageous….. Not vilified!!\u00a0 Emerson meant a few of the educated Temne elite…..The Temne elite using (or, misusing) the trust of the Temne majority to feather their gilded nests…<\/p>\n

I have started the process of working with Cllr Kamara to establish a form of \u2018ethnic harmony organization\u2019\u00a0 – to confront the ghoul of our tribal politics and mitigating it: researching, and confronting, and dousing the flames of tribalism.<\/b> Charlie Hughes, Chairman of the Monuments and Relic Commission,<\/span><\/b> recently authored a UNIPSIL-sponsored Paper (along with E. Lavalie, and Sesay) on tribalism in our country.\u00a0 Hughes has promised to meet with me to discuss this Paper.\u00a0 I am 97% positive that \u2018Messiah\u2019\u00a0 Ernest Bai Koroma (\u2018Messiah\u2019 can be literal or figurative: in this context, President Koroma can save us from the monster of tribalism; and, put us firmly on the path of sustainable prosperity) would give encouragement to such effort which would\u00a0 help defuse the tribal time bomb which is the best weapon of the political opposition to the surging development of his administration.\u00a0 The Tribal Card empowers the mediocre among the elite.\u00a0 Tribalism saps at efficiency in our public sector.\u00a0 It is like cancer in the body politic.\u00a0\u00a0 In a contest between development\u00a0 of a governing party and the Tribal Card being utilized by the political opposition…. the political opposition would always emerge the winner.<\/p>\n

Oswald Hanciles<\/i><\/p>\n

Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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