Op-ed-By Africa 24

The reality in Sierra Leone politics is that these dominant political groups have ruined this nation.

Sierra Leone is blessed with many minerals such as: gold, diamond, rutile, etc, yet the peoples’ lives are on the margins of coral reefs as they suffer in pain due to hunger and improvised living standards.

Gathering opinions from some right-thinking men of the soil in this country, they say Salone is made undeveloped because of the “bad politics” played by politicians.

It is a common belief hold by most people especially the elderly-uneducated, young men, and political local analysts, that the twin-parties’ politics ideology still plays a big part in derailing progress on the nation’s development. Instead of a “nationhood awareness” in the local country’s politics, these group of people argue that a divide and rule old-African colonial system of governance exists.

“This has, in fact, rendered our country stagnated ; we see projects started by one party are ignored by another,” says a man at a local Chinese Green Tea pub, popularly known as Ataya base.

The man highlighted examples of key priority projects which have never been endorsed by the current government of SLPP.

Such is the Mamama International Airport project initiated by the APC past government but was never implemented.

The man believes that the airport could have employed many poor Sierra Leoneans and graduates from colleges or universities to work as either construction workers or as administrators.

But the Chinese project was disapproved by the SLPP government to continue.

The man also referenced the Freetown Lungi – Bridge project which was firstly initiated, of its construction, by Late President Ahmad-Tejan Kabbah during his reign between 2002-2007.

“All these are beautiful developmental projects that could have turned this country into a booming economic zone. But because of the bad politics practiced by politicians they could not be allowed to go on.”

Since this has been an ingrained problem affecting Sierra Leone’s growth and development over the years and even still at this point, many people now believe that Sierra Leone might find it hard to develop like other countries in Africa.

While there are currently swift changes in coup-led nations like Guinea – Conakry, Niger and other African peaceful nations, Sierra Leone is back-pedalling in developments.

To resolve this crisis, many informed Sierra Leoneans have suggested that politicians need to stop the attitude of “bad politics” of promoting old party ideologies.

It means party RED and party GREEN affiliations or sentiments must stop at once.

They admonish politicians to strive only to promote quality and unprejudiced debates aimed at primarily developing the country.

In other words, in their debates, nationhood interests should override political parties ideologies and also in their governance discussions and projects implementations.