By Farla Barbu

It is said that the hottest place in hell is reserved for those who in times like this today in Sierra Leone maintain silence or neutrality. My fear and hatred of keeping silent or neutral in the face of the sustained threat of war by the opposition All People’s Congress (APC) party against the government of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) of His Excellency President Julius Maada Bio has rendered me jittery, apoplectic with indignation and rage.

Sierra Leone today is being assailed by a spate of economic, political and social depression, and of late came the bang: Corona-19 pandemic. In the cut and thrust of SLPP government’s effort to salvage the sad state of the nation that it inherited barely two years ago, the opposition APC party had ever since been up in arms with threats of war, violence, chaos, national disintegration and destabilization. And indeed they are deep down the road in executing their threats.

The opposition APC party’s threat of war and chaos in the country had begun to take shape from the lips of their Leader and National Chairman, ex-president Ernest Bai Koroma. In the heat of the 2007 presidential and general elections Mr. Koroma told the international community that if his party had lost that election to the SLPP they were going to make Sierra Leone ungovernable. In fear of another war in the country, the international community connived with then Chairman of National Electoral Commission (NEC), Christiana Thorpe, and declared Mr. Koroma and his party the winner while the counting of ballots was still ongoing.

For two terms amounting to nearly eleven years ex-president Koroma ruled this country purposefully with south-easterners becoming and remaining the butt of all the unthinking cruelties of leadership. The rest is history.

In the rough and tumble of Koroma’s years at State House, at no point in time did the SLPP leadership mobilize its supporters to go on the rampage and burn down police stations, hospitals, private homes, prisons and even to kill innocent people as the opposition APC party is doing today.

At no point in time did ex-president Koroma and his family become an object of crudest profanities by SLPP supporters; at no point in time did SLPP in opposition hire Sierra Leoneans both at home and abroad to wage social media war against then APC government with the view to making the country ungovernable. At no point in time under the Koroma-led APC party government did SLPP in opposition encourage its supporters to threaten to slaughter APC government officials into bits of human flesh. Under the Koroma-led government there was no threat of violence,  chaos and/or war sponsored by the SLPP; at no point in time were innocent and peace-loving Sierra Leoneans bullied to whispers and furtive glances in fear of threat to their lives as it is the case today under the Bio government. Under the Koroma-led APC party government, SLPP supporters were permanently bullied to whispers and furtive glances afraid of being arrested by the APC party police and thugs and jailed at a drop of the hat. That is not the case today under the Bio-led SLPP government. Ex-president Koroma had even once glorified his party thugs who one night comprehensively cannibalized the SLPP headquarters and raped the women there.

At no point in time did the SLPP while in opposition resort to an act of terrorism because their supporters were sacked from their jobs en masse as does the APC party today. In other words for eleven years the SLPP while in opposition under the Koroma-led APC government, suffered in consummate composure and silence without resorting to any act of violence, murder, tribalism, and terrorism as now being done by the APC party in opposition.

WAR

From the inception of the SLPP government under His Excellency President Julius Maada Bio barely two years ago, the opposition APC party has continued to preach the threat of war in the country because they are no longer in power.  The cut and thrust of that threat is against south-easterners particularly the Mende tribe.

But does the party patriotically appreciate the meaning of war that they preach? War is defined as the waging of armed conflict against an enemy. Is the Mende tribe an enemy of the APC party as to want to wage war on them? “

“In war,” once noted the late Chinese leader Mao Tse Tsung, “there is no scruple about benevolence, righteousness or morality. One cannot afford the luxury of his/her conscience even if it is justifiable”. In other words in war especially tribal war that the APC party is preaching, people become animals with no conscience. A war is just a little man’s quarrel like the APC party that could be magnified a million times. Like the Corona Virus 19, war is pandemic; the bullets do not differentiate between Mende man, Temne and Limba man.

To hear APC party leaders and supporters threatening the elimination of the Mende tribe in the social media, one begins to wonder why they have gone so low in their estimation of politics.  Do they think in the event of war (May God forbid it a million times) the Mendes are going to sit helplessly waiting to be slaughtered needlessly and foolishly? APC party una lef such idle talks and threat.

Please APC party, do not begin something that you are not sure you will end it. You people will end up being portrayed to that of a giant that rolled a huge boulder to the peak of a mountain and afraid that it will roll out of control, he found himself in a quandary.

You may have the resources to hire mercenaries as did ex-president Koroma before the 2007 elections. We know that you are stingingly rich; richer than the country. But if you wage war against the Mende tribe, they will fight back with the strength of tigers and lions combined, with all their might, anger, wrath and fury.  In other words you people will be buying yourselves a one-way ticket to obscurity. Una lef this threat of war. Please. Can’t you appreciate the Rwanda experience until you begin it here because you are not in power? Your former and late   Vice President S.I. Koroma once threatened that a day was coming when there will be no Mende tribe in this country. He did not live to see that day.

The APC party has failed in the governance of this country because of such vain glory they nurture about political power when moderation might have civilized them. They are driven into all these acts of threat of war, terrorism, violence and naked politics out of lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and foolish pride.

To avoid war and keep the peace is the greatest asset any nation could be blessed with. Let the APC party give peace a chance so that President Bio will take the existing chaos and failures that they had left behind and shape them into national success.

APC party, una lef. Please.