Kabs Kanu: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 29 May 2024:
President Maada Bio chose the wrong time to threaten Sierra Leoneans with bullets and if you ever find yourself endorsing his perilous gambit, you must see a doctor – your mind is shrinking like your hero and, like him, you need to be comprehensively tutored about the dangerous ramification of his threats.
Bio’s mistimed, flammable threats at a time when Sierra Leoneans are struggling like slaves to keep their heads above water, are reckless, foolish, suicidal, malevolent, provocative, combustible, agitational, wicked, explosive and unnerving and they have the capacity not only to destroy Bio himself but destabilize the country further.
It is the worst of times time to antagonize and provoke your citizens when you have failed them miserably and driven everybody to their wits’ end.
Sierra Leoneans are suffering like dogs without owners under this shambolic and worthless Bio government.
The price of rice, the staple food, is racing to two million leones when the highest paid general salary is 50, 000 leones. Prices of other foods and essential items have gone through the roof. There is no light and water in the country.
The hospitals are completely empty-no drugs or technological resources or enough trained medical personnel to heal the sick. People are dying needlessly from the slightest diseases. Frustrated youths are staggering all over the country under the massive weight of unemployment. Salary delays have now a feature of life in a burnt-out country looking for a true redeemer.
Maada Bio should be ashamed himself at the ways he has trashed and destroyed Sierra Leone. He is the worst imbecile our country has been cursed with at State House.
How can a man who calls himself a president be so useless, callous, heartless, unfeeling, uncaring, full of impunity and petulance and never seeking anything good but how to either make people angry or suffer perpetually? Was Sierra Leone cursed the day Bio was born?
There is anger on the streets of Sierra Leone. Everywhere, people are fuming. On social media, people are losing their minds. Even once faithful tribesmen and women in Bio’s strongholds of the Southeast are very angry with him. Their vitriolic audios and videos against him speak volumes. How can such a man afford to endanger himself in this maelstrom of anger against him?
What does President Bio really think of himself?
Bio should realize that he is nothing but a windbag that came to power on the mercies of former President Ernest Koroma and a very gullible people. Sierra Leoneans made an irreparable error they are regretting today.
Bio is neither an astute leader nor a good fighter. When he threatens people with bullets, is Bio sure he is able to survive if the nation takes him up on it and rise up against him? Is the country militarily strong enough for the bullet-for-bullet scenario that Maada Bio is calling for? Does Bio, who cannot tear himself from a paper bag, consider himself invincible, invulnerable, unconquerable when better, more battle-tested and trained soldiers have failed in the circumstances he is provoking? We think not. There have been many presidents in Africa who developed the Bio mindset, but it backfired on them tragically.
Bio is a very politically and militarily daft man. Daftness is not only written all over his face but even in his laboured manner of communication. If not, before talking about exchanging bullets with disaffected citizens, he should have considered what happened to other African Heads of State , who underrated their people’s disenchantment , like Liberia’s Samuel K. Doe, Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara of Niger, Marien Ngouabi of the Congo Brazzaviile, Laurent-Désiré Kabila of DR Congo, Ali Soilih M’Tsashiwa of the Comoros, Robert Guéï of the Ivory Coast ( who refused to accept his elections defeat from Laurent Gbagbo and had to be forced out before he and his wife and children were wiped out in one fell swoop ! ! ) , and Ghana’s Kutu Acheampong, Fred Akuffo and Akwasi Afrifa , to name just a few.
We do not wish these fates on President Maada Bio. We want him alive so that we could put him on trial for his crimes against the people and the state. Also, we are a small country, and we are all interrelated, through family, ethnic, cultural ties and various other ways. Bloodshed is a “no-no” for us.
Besides, we do not want any more chaos in our country. We want peace and genuine reconciliation, built on the pillars of justice, inclusive governance, fairness to all, transparency and accountability. But President Bio has to realize that he also owes us, the people, a duty to keep our country free from turmoil. A clever, sensitive, good and wise president will not threaten or employ any scorch-earth policy against his own people.
Somebody must bend Bio’s ears in private that Sierra Leoneans are a very patient and resilient people, but he must stop pushing them. If he presses them to the wall for long, they will one day react and the consequences will be very, very unpleasant for Maada Bio and all the sick mobs indulging him. I saw it live with my own eyes in a once docile and stoic Liberia. You cannot keep a whole nation under your thumb for long. One day, they will respond appropriately, and they will win because nobody can fight people’s power and prevail. Not a cowardly “Brigadier”, at least.
Bio is even idiotic not to know that Sierra Leoneans do not need bullets to overthrow him and send him scampering to his utter doom with his miserable tail between his legs. A Massive civil uprising, powered by protests and civil disobedience that shut will down the whole country, will send him and his empty threats crashing like a pack of cards. Bio, you are too daft to know all this, but we the people and sensible advisers around you have seen it all and we know that it is possible, and we can tell you that.
Maada Bio, we can direct your naive mind to the Arab Spring as a distinct example. It was not a tussle between government bullets and the people’s bullets but a contest between the people’s resolve and the government’s bullets and it was the people who won. Stop tempting the people of Sierra Leone and testing their resolve, Julius Maada Wonie Bio.
We advise you, Mr. Bio, be careful with your bullets-for-bullets threats. You will be the loser if we, the people, take you up on it. You are nothing but a puffed up, over-hyped “giant” with clay feet. A whole retired “Brigadier” who is not man enough to take back Yenga from a semi-illiterate Lt. Col in Guinea will not survive a determined people’s onslaught.
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