By Chief Alhaji Thonkla Bangura
It grieves me to my heart and I’ve got to protest and speak up against the current state of affairs in Sierra Leone.
Our country is currently in uncharted territory. Sierra Leone has never been badly riven like this before. We have benefited hugely from IMF and World Bank etc debt relief and foreign Aid has been flowing in post civil war in billion of dollars but yet still we are crawling like a feeble and hungry snail to catch up with our neighbors let alone the rest of the world.
Oh when I turn my eyes and see, the wickedness and greed that is prevalent and being carrying on against those that have little and who are desperately yearning for what to eat is so disturbing that, if Sierra Leoneans have wings like a dove they would have flown to the hills to be at rest in order to escape the nonsense and the pernicious act of sheer greed.
Vociferous ghost Civil society Organizations(CSO’s) and opposition political parties in Sierra Leone that are the watch dogs on paper have gone lips tight allowing the government to walk scot-free on fundamental national issues that are unforgivable to brush under the carpet.
How comes the battle-hardened CSO’s and politicians have refused to sprang into action but suddenly gone napping as they cannot squeeze or whip the government to account when hundreds of our very own poor unidentified Sierra Leoneans were buried in mass graves with no persuasive explanation from those in positions of trust but allowed to creep out of danger zone with sigh of relief and tails wagging?
The sense of fury over the scale of mass destruction of lives which will never happen to our next door neighbours in peace times is dangerously unconquerable.
Even, during the heightened or peak of past civil war when our country was under United Nations embargo Sierra Leone has never been bankrupt neither hungrier like now causing immense consternation to everyone in and out of Sierra Leone.
It is bitterly astonishing and shocking that our national and International banks have ran out of money days before Christmas a key date in our national calendar a smack on the faces of those that gave us debt relief.
The sad point about our current predicament is,civil society groups and political parties that are meant to hold the government to account on responsible spending , weak economic policies and those poor Sierra Leoneans that were left to die and buried as paupers are busy roasting their leftover Christmas Turkeys whilst our central Bank of Sierra Leone’s vault has been vandalized and left broke.
This is the age of advanced technology. Why DNA test was not carried out or photos of those deceased taken and displayed in mortuaries prior to disposing their bodies ?
Why the International Community, politicians, civil society groups and other relevant organizations were not informed or invited to identify those corpses before buried in mass graves?
Why our Members of Parliament did not summon the self-styled half-baked buffoon Professor and Bank Governor in the chambers of Parliament to grill and roast him for failing to create a safety net or contingency plan to avert such a gargantuan economic disaster we are facing today?
These are legitimate questions that we are craving for answers about the state of economic affairs in our country and the 80 plus unidentified citizens buried with no questions asked neither sensible explanation gave by the authorities.
If our country has returned to’One Party State’, PPRC ought to let us know if opposition political parties have been mistakenly cremated so that Sierra Leoneans can fly to the hills and be at rest with ease !!
