By: alusinerehme.wilson@awokonewspaper.sl
Makeni, SIERRA LEONE – Soft spoken Girl-Child and Women’s Rights activist turned vocalist Abdulai Tunkara alias “Tunksman” who has been speaking up for gender equity and equality for women and girls in the North for some time now, recently took his gender crusade to the stage.
To the surprise of attendees who were already jamming to his other songs, the advocate-turned-vocalist steered his performance into very convincing gender advocacy, as he told the large crowd to enjoin his advocacy for women and girls in the North and beyond.
Emotionally, the singer during his performance at the sold-out Northern Entertainment Festival (NeNFest) 1st edition, reintroduced to his fans his revolutionary joint “Woman Nor to Bata” which he had composed with his former group mate “Eyescope D-Incredible.”
Telling the large crowd in his 3 minutes and 31 seconds long song to “support the Girl child for better education, consider women and girls as partners in development and treat them well like their mothers and not to be violent and brutal towards them, but to cherish and care for them as relatives and particularly recognize that Women and Girls have the right to life as enshrined in the 2007 Domestic Violence Act,” he warned.
Tunkmans who is a field officer at Restless Development Sierra Leone’s Business Brains Program through which he has been working with both Women and Girls in Koinadugu district and other parts of the North, through focused group discussion, holding gender responsiveness training and more, further appealed to his fans to “beware of the law, ignore the negative attitudes of women and to at all times in their communities stand against segregation, early marriages, teenage pregnancy and all forms of gender-based violence in their communities.”
On a high note, Tunkman for the first time, the famous performer resident in Makeni, performed along with his fans and his performance on night with his other revolutionary song “Black Lives Matters” a song which he had composed to advocate against discrimination against the Black race, following the killing of George Perry Floyd Jr. an African-American man who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd may have used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill that saw Derek Chauvin, one of the four officers who arrived at the scene, knelt on Floyd’s neck and back for 9 nine minutes and 29 seconds which caused lack of Oxygen, on May 25, 2020. ARW/8/1/2023