By- Aruna Rashed Toma Bangura
When he assumed the seat of presidency, His Excellency Dr. Julius Maada Bio during his first term of office promised Sierra Leoneans that he has declared war against lawlessness, poverty and corruption and in which he said that he is going to win with the support of the citizenry because they are the menaces destroying the fabrics of the society.
President Bio boastfully boasted about how he is going to make lawlessness, poverty and corruption things of the past and his good fight witnessed a lot of upheavals along the line and despite he still could not totally eradicate these societal sicknesses, some schools of thought have appraised him for scaling down on them.
Lawlessness from 2007- to date
During President Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma All Peoples Congress (APC) regime which started from 2007 and ended in 2018, lawlessness was just the order of the day where the country witnessed a hell of mischievous deeds from youth who tagged themselves as gangsters. The youths at those times got themselves involved into gangsterism purporting the life styles of American Superstar rappers such as Lil-Wayne, Wiz- Khalifa, Nas, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, to name but a few. Nearly almost 90% of the youthful population engaged in tattooing their bodies, shabby dress and high and excessive intake of inimical drugs which made them to be fearless.
They formed clicks/klicks as clubs where they appoint their leaders and called them Five Star (5’os) and that he is responsible to lead the group in any form of attack against their foes and to also defend them whenever the need arises for that. These set of youths caused a lot of mayhem for the security most especially the Sierra Leone Police who were normally chasing after these guys to see that they curtail their harmful activities by arresting and prosecuting them in court and most where sentenced to run a long term jail or placed on remand for a length of time. Majority of these youths were influenced by the hard drugs they took which made them fearless by stabbing their companions with sharp objects such as knife, scissors, broken bottle and so forth. Many of them were robbers who robbed off from women going to town early in the morning as they hung out in hideout locations to snatch market women’s money by threatening them with knives and machetes and if they attempted to resist will lead them to stab these innocent women.
During Inter Secondary School competition commonly known as ‘Intersec’ these set of youths cladded in different school attires, thus some were school pupils, but most being ghost pupils engaged in daylight robbery by forcefully grabbing phones, iPods, MP3 players from mild school boys and girls by creating stampede and on their way back home will ransack shops along the Kroo Town Road and PZ axis in a form of bitter rivalry between two schools mostly one from the East and West and see that they worked well on their mission to steal.
Stabbing someone to death by these click youths was as easy as drinking water and were not hesitated to the act bluffing that they are going to rest in goal for some time as it is their normal resting place where they will meet with others who committed similar crimes. Colour led to so many deaths as they used to have among them what was known as Red for blood, Blue for Cent Coast Crips (CCC) and Black for East Hood. These youths will target themselves if any one member of another colour dared to encroach the territory of another colour and eventually will lead to loss of lives by the use of a machete and knife.
But the appointment of Retired Major Alfred Paolo Conteh as Minister of Internal Affairs in almost the tail end of former President Koroma’s regime witnessed the drastic curtail of gangsterism in the four corners of the society as he was bent on seeing that all those who tagged themselves as 5’os were nabbed and brought to face the music of their misdeeds as most were sentenced to spend a long jail term while those whose families were better off spent money to get them release. Some became fugitive by being on the lam and running away from justice by travelling to neighbouring countries where they settled until regime changed.
Soon after President Bio took up the mantle of leadership, there was still a fraction of the youthful population engaging in Clicks and gangsterism and Mr. Bio did not waste any time to put them under control by appointing Mr. Edward Suluku aka Solution and Mr. Lahai Lawrence Leema as Minister and Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs respectively and the latter put measures in place to curb all Click and gangster activities in the country most particularly the capital city, Freetown. President Bio ordered the prohibition of masquerades (Jollay, hunting and orjeh) which he saw as a means for lawlessness and made stringent laws against perpetrators. President Bio received high accolades from the religious sector and vice versa and thus lawlessness is alive but not as rife as it was used to be during the APC’s reign.
President Bio being described as a disciplinary leader has ensured in making sure that his government eradicate lawlessness by placing an emergency on rape which is also seen as a complete lawlessness, a ban on bike riders to avoid the central business district area (CBDs) where most of them engage in snatching valuable items from pedestrians, mounting checking point on strategic locations where arm-robbery is high and the use of military aid in civilian policing (MAC-P) to help the police to curb all sort of lawlessness, arm-robbery and the likes.