Noorudin KaiKai: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 4 January 2018:
I am of the opinion that Freetown and Kono would probably decide who gets to be President in the upcoming elections, because they hold the highest percentage of swing voters in the country.
However, I do not believe that the APC party will be able to garner their usual traditional voters in this district, because of the disrespect shown, and the many unpardonable crimes committed against the Kono people by the APC government.
Against the backdrop of the many failures of previous governments to elevate the standard of living of the Kono people, the appointment of Sam Sumana (Photo) in 2007 as vice president sent a wave of energy and enthusiasm in the people of Kono district.
And the fact that the First Lady hailed from Kono, motivated many people to go out in droves and voted for the APC.
The prospect of having these two individuals close to the President and what it portends for the people of Kono District, made a lot of people euphoric and hopeful for their future.
Following his election victory in 2012, Ernest Bai Koroma profusely thanked the people of Kono for their vote. He promised them that under his leadership, Kono will be transformed into the mecca it was during the glory days.
But all this was just political posturing, A few years into his presidency, he unveiled his true colour. He made the office of the Vice President irrelevant, by first of all distancing himself from his vice president before relieving him of most of his state functions.
He appointed other Kono natives, such as Diana Konomanyi, Logus Koroma, and Karamoh Kabba to further his diabolical plan against his own elected Vice President. He encouraged them to undermine the authority of the Vice President and to create rancour among the ranks of the Kono people.
Whilst this was going on, and the Kono people were fully divided, fighting amongst themselves and not paying attention, he continued to support his mining interest in Kono through the various subsidiary companies, the he the President created.
After the Vice President Sam Sumana was finally deposed in a palace coup in March 2015, the President set his sights on getting rid of the young and dynamic Mayor of Kono.
The mayor of Kono was regarded by many as simply fighting mining companies for royalty rights and against all kinds of immoral practices, such as mining in and around the city and using explosives to blow up rocks, which has the tendency of undermining the structural foundation of buildings.
Today, Kono district is no better than the way it was a decade ago when Ernest Koroma made all those lofty promises. The fact is that, the people of Kono are more divided today and their infrastructure more degraded than they were a decade ago.
The only person who benefited from all these shenanigans is President Koroma. My surprise though is that, renowned citizens, such as David Tam Bayoh, who appeared to have guessed what President Koroma was up to at the beginning, was also compromised.
Diana Konomanyi and the rest of the sycophants used in this diabolical plan should be rejected by the people of Kono, because they are self-serving.
However, the person I most pity in all this is David Tam Bayoh. He appears to be an intellectual and should have known better. But as late Siaka Stevens used to say “na sense dae make book, nor to book dae make sense”
My hope is that the people of Kono will use their votes to destroy the APC, and finally put to rest the cliché that we Kono people are stupid and can be bought and manipulated.
Too late for NGC to make any major impact on the Konos for votes. The party would have done better had it been formed 18 months ago. The old SLPP quagmire stigmatizes the NGC and makes the promised change looks like old wine in a new bottle, with a different label.
Its time for the APC to be shown the red card and the door. After 10 years in power, a party that claims to be for the grassroots have done nothing to improve their lives. Instead they have enriched themselves and their families.
They promised jobs for these youths, but they remain unemployed in large numbers. Our decent politicians should be reminding our people about what the APC promised in their manifesto in 2007. I pity the youths of our country and it is about time they take their destiny into their own hands by voting the APC out.
We are counting the days to the end of Koroma’s Presidency – one that has been characterised by using and intimidating people to achieve his objectives, whilst boasting of his democratic credentials of no political prisoner under his watch.
Give us a break… but we will not allow you to rule us from behind the scenes, by using a puppet who cannot give a straight answer to a straight question. March 7 where art thou?
It is now time for someone to openly declare APC persona non grata in Kono District. Are the Kono people really ready for that?
We shall see on the 7th of March.
How do we deal with the disease amongst some of our politicians who believe and practise selfish and greedy personal beneficial lawlessness whilst in elected office?
The Late Siaka Stevens, etc. with current President Koroma prove that a SUPRA-ALL-POWERFUL-PRESIDENCY is unsuitable for Sierra Leone – I suggest our Constitution be re-written to accord equal powers to a presidency, an independent parliament, and, an independent judiciary, etc., for optimisations, checks and balance.
ABOUT THE FORTHCOMING SIERRA LEONE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION!
SLPP had till date disappointingly shot itself in both feet. APC continues to disappoint:-
a, its candidate had not been democratically elected – he had been imposed;
b, APC for eight years failed to introduce and practise transparent accountability of Sierra Leones’s national finances, and rampant lawlessness;
c, APC failed to control illicit, untaxed, and unaccounted for debilitating outflows of monies from/out of Sierra Leone, with rampant misappropriations of government funds, anomalous government purchasing and supplies practices;
d, APC failed to counter unemployment particularly among the young;
e, APC failed to practise ethical and meritorious equal opportunities for all citizens;
f, APC failed to respect statutory national audit functions and respond to reports by exploiting opportunities offered for optimisations and betterments in our national interest;
g, APC’s errors of commission and omission outweigh its positive contributions;
Our nations deserves a change excluding these two. NGC deserves to be granted an opportunity in the hope that it will consider accommodating my points above to optimise our future betterment. WE CAN ONLY HOPE.
In reality what Nurudeen Kaikai has written about the Kono people holds true for the entire country. It is a call for the Kono people and the country as a whole to develop enough sense to take off the blinkers to see that their future lies not with the two major parties [SLPP and APC] but with the National Grand Coalition [NGC], if only for the fact that it offers a new dawn – a fresh start.
A fresh start offers the hope that things would be looked at differently, allowing past mistakes not to be repeated, or if they were to appear, experience would be used to deal with them firmly and with refreshing ruthlessness.
For close to six decades both APC and SLPP have used ethnicity/tribalism to hoodwink us, closely followed by flattery and money to get them into office, at which point they abandon us to our fate, while they fattened their bank accounts, fill their pockets and generally recoup what they spent on electioneering, which in all dimension is our money.
These tricks by the two major parties should help explain why they have allowed our once resounding educational system to become a big laugh, a system whose stunting started with Siaka Stevens, a man who opened the eyes of all politicians to the lunacy that an educated population was a disastrous threat to their clandestine agenda to rob the country white.
This is the source of the anaemia which has caused a significant number of Sierra Leoneans not to have adequate blood flowing into their heads to enable them to think broadly to eventually ascertain the diabolic machinations of SLPP and APC.
It does appear, however, that Kandeh Yumkella and Andrew keili are on the right path in reviving something in all of us that is making people, even those who were never interested in politics [my wife included], to become very attentive to the current political scene. Just the other day I overheard my wife urging his sister to vote for Yumkella.
If indeed Nurudeen is correct I hope NGC will do their utmost to recruit former Vice President Sam Sumana, a Kono, who I am sure still holds sway among his people. I believe if NGC draws his attention to the possibility that it would be an opportunity for him to have the last laugh over APC with whom he has been at daggers-drawn, by driving his dagger into them, it should serve as a serious impetus to win him over.