Alpha Kargbo
17 March 2012
It is truly a blessing in disguise that Tom Nyuma has left the opposition SLPP (Sierra Leone People’s Party). Looking closely into his character, it is easy to note that he has a serious ability problem – a factor that led to his deportation from the United States of America (USA) in 2007.
Tom’s only proven ability is his marriage with the gun. No wonder the NPRC (National Provisional Ruling Council) junta kept him in the role of the gun throughout his military career.
Whilst Tom can still be commended for fighting on the side of the people during the rebel war, he has since fallen from grace to disgrace.
Since his hasty retirement from the Sierra Leone army as a Lieutenant Colonel, one episode after the other has kept this troubled man in constant frustration, hate and mischief. At one of the very least of his troubled lives, he was mercilessly beaten by APC (All People’s Congress) party thugs into state of coma.
Had it not been the decisive intervention of SLPP’s good samaritans, Tom would have long gone and possibly forgotten.
The SLPP saved Tom from death in the hands of APC “death squad”, and restored some semblance of life and respect into him, by elevating him into the role of SLPP Chairman of the Kailahun District Council.
Against these sacrifices, it is Tom’s innate disability that has once again driven him to side with the very APC thugs that nearly destroyed his life. Tom fought against the APC, overthrew the APC, the APC came back and visited him with a deadly assault, and now he is siding with the APC. What a political mess to be in!
The key motivation that drove Tom to the decision of joining the APC party is pretty simple and straightforward. Tom quite knows that his only ability lies with the gun. And unlike APC, Tom has so far not seen any move by the SLPP leadership to arm its people.
So Tom definitely thinks that with APC guns at hand, he can once again rise to stardom. What he, however, fails to figure out is the trillion dollar question as to whether Tom is going to use his APC-amassed guns against the people (his fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, sons, daughters, relatives and friends) who in the first place gave him life and fame.
Frankly speaking, it remains to be seen how Tom will tackle this point. This is to say that there currently exist serious doubts about how Tom is going to regain the stardom he once enjoyed under the SLPP party, by putting himself on a formidable collision course with his own people.
We know that Tom is always desperate for one thing – and that is power. But because of his severe inability, he has deeply messed himself up by setting up a political calculation he can never-ever find a doable solution to. In his sense, we ask if Tom ever factored in his political calculation, the politically viability of APC in today’s Sierra Leone.
For a man with weak calibre and inability as Tom, he could definitely not factor more than one variable into his political math. Tom’s highly simplified linear problem can just not work in today’s political atmosphere in Sierra Leone.
Tom had solely relied on one thing in his calculations, which is the gross illusion that the APC gun is nothing but another junta rule, and that he is the best warlord to make that rule a reality in Sierra Leone.
So with his surprisingly appalling disillusionment, Tom is sure to have one and only one destiny — he will definitely have to face no less a disgraceful end than his former colleague Solomon Anthony Joseph Musa (nicked named in Sierra Leone as SAJ Musa).
Tom must be rest assured that when his chosen APC comes back for him the next time around, there will be no one to raise the alarm. It will be the APC-Minah type of episode and that will effectively end his chapter in Sierra Leone.
APC has a solid history of these little dirty tricks in Sierra Leone and no one can underrate it, not even Tom Nyuma.
The other card Tom is playing today is what we call “hate politics”. Tom today looks back at Maada Bio as a weak boy from the days at school and through the army and war. So Tom adamantly hates in his mind that such a weak boy can be so cool-headed and rise to immeasurable fame in the NPRC junta rule and now presidential candidate in Sierra Leone.
In Tom’s view, this should not be the case and it has since been his political calculation to destroy Bio. In reality, however, the hate in Tom for this gentleman has finally succeeded in destroying himself.
In civilized human social systems like the one Bio heads today, people are trusted and morally expected to live up to that trust – no matter what the circumstances. This is exactly where Tom differs from Bio. Whilst Bio is increasingly proving to be highly trustworthy – with strong moral values, Tom has proven exactly the contrary.
It was possibly because of this betrayal trait in Tom, why he failed to command any sober position in the NPRC junta commensurate with his then popularity.
While we the ordinary non-military folks of Sierra Leone used to wonder about the reason for his lack of promotion in the military junta, his colleagues in uniform who knew him all quite well for this trait of betrayal never bothered.
Had Tom been given a highly responsible post in the junta, he could have simply plunged Sierra Leone into another state of utter anarchy with his attitude of betrayal. The more intelligent but weak Strasser, also knew Tom for this trait and he instead steadily promoted Bio across the rank and file to Vice Presidency of Sierra Leone.
It was also Bio’s level-headedness that made his colleagues to push him to the post of President over his then boss Strasser. Strasser now correctly comes to terms with that past and firmly sides with Bio in all his political endeavours.
It is really breaking our hearts apart to see that these severe inabilities of our brother Tom are preventing him from seeing the forces of reality. We must, however, say that even though it breaks our hearts, we have no regrets in seeing Tom go, so long it is in the best interest of the SLPP.
To us, it is always better to have SLPP without a Tom, than to have a Tom that clandestinely sells the party’s strategies to a dying APC. So we say to Tom our good luck and we wish he never comes back. Despite the betrayal, we pray that Tom’s newly found APC lords will spare him (you our son) from another woefully disgraceful end!
Now that Tom is gone and we have wished him our blessings as our son, SLPP must refocus its strategies on winning every constituency in the East and South, including the one Tom is vying for.
There should be no complacency in this political game, more so when it has to do with the dirty tricks of the deceptively corrupt APC party.
We know today that APC is preparing its armed thugs, buying and importing alien voters and securing arms, ammunitions and mercenaries to disrupt voting in the SLPP strong holds of the Eastern and Southern Provinces of Sierra Leone.
APC is also working to increasingly stabilize its stronghold in the Northern Province of the country. APC quite well knows that effective education and communication are limited to Freetown, the capital and seat of power of Sierra Leone.
So APC has not only calculated the political landscape and continues to upgrade its calculations, but is also hell-bent on usurping the South and East through high-profile intimidations by its armed thugs, in the hope that votes from these regions can eventually be nullified.
It is therefore an opportune moment for SLPP to read through the massive facts so far reported in the newspapers of Sierra Leone, about the highly destructive activities of APC (corruption, mismanagement, bribery, tribalism, thuggery, etc.), and sell these points to the masses of the people across the country in all its campaign trails.
SLPP must know that the majority of the people outside Freetown have virtually no access to the internet, TV and radio news or even newspapers. The only one way SLPP can get these people to hear the calls for freedom, equity and quality governance is by reaching out directly to the people (in what we call “people-to-people” campaign) and spelling the facts out to them.
SLPP must know that complacency is defeat, and that is the last thing Sierra Leoneans would ever wish for again. The wicked alien APC party and Government must be silenced once and for all in Sierra Leone.
I wholly agreed with your analysis, I have been critical about Tom Nyuma since the the rebel war.
With your analysis, I can now rest my case that Tom never fought the war with a clear mind.He fought the war in a clandestine way, which at certain point people grew suspicious of him.
Is it true that he was once a friend of the RUF?