As a preface, I know that the President of Sierra Leone has commissioned the Constitutional Review Commission to review the 1991 National Constitution. However, until that Commission concludes and Government issues a White Paper rejecting, amending and redefining some of the recommendations and a referendum held to ascertain the peoples acceptance, the current 1991 Constitution still holds legitimacy and authority from the people of Sierra Leone. In that light, government is expected to fully comply and adhere with its dictates. It is on this ground that I wish to bring into consideration for this article a part of a key Chapter of this national document and other relevantly related sections for readers to read between the lines and make their own judgments:
Chapter II Fundamental Principles of State Policy
Section 4(b) the security, peace and welfare of the people of Sierra Leone shall be the primary purpose and responsibility of Government, and to this end it shall be the duty of the Armed Forces, the Police, Public Officers and all security agents to protect and safeguard the people of Sierra Leone;
Section 8 (2b) Social Responsibility of the State: the State shall recognise, maintain and enhance the sanctity of the human person and human dignity… (The Constitution of Sierra Leone Act No. 6 of 1991)
Behold as Muslims in the country were preparing for the feast of Eid-ul-Fitr marking the end of fasting (Ramadan) on Thursday, 8th August 2013, it happened that at about 9:00pm, some Sierra Leoneans mostly suffering youths were being crushed by a neglected falling bridge in central Freetown.
As at 17:00hrs GMT on Friday after the news had hit Freetown, seventeen bodies had been extracted from the debris with more expected to be dug out. Freetown was in mourning even as this was shrouded by continuous rain fall.
The bridge linking Wallace Johnson Street to Lightfoot Boston Street from the Connaught Hospital side; it also links the popular King Jimmy market to Wallace and Lightfoot Boston Street. By look of the concrete on this bridge, even a layman can tell that since it was reportedly constructed in the colonial era, no repairs, minor or major had been done to it prior to its collapse. This bridge is also located near one of the Divisional Headquarters of the Sierra Leone Police.
Underneath this bridge, youths, suffering youths who have no place to dwell had made there their dwelling place doing all sort of things there. These young people, male and female were in that place in full acquiescence of the government and its law enforcements agencies including those humanitarian agencies, governmental and non-governmental. None of these agencies did what they were supposed to do that should have prevented the occurrence of last Thursday which by all indication, is a national disaster. These young Sierra Leoneans were made to believe that they were safe and comfortable due to sheer neglect and institutional failures in doing what is right in ensuring the safety of citizens.
The fact remains that these young men and women were not living in that squalid and disastrous area because they wished to. Like the ‘Friends of the Dead’ at the Ascension Town Cemetery and the young men and women who make cemeteries their homes; sleep on cartons under tables and stalls in the markets, sleep under the stone that hangs over the creek at the Mo Wharf, sleep on self-embanked sea sides of Susan’s Bay, Murray Town Wharf, Wellington Wharf, Kroo Bay etc, they are doing so not oblivious of the dangers they are exposing themselves to, but because they don’t have an alternative. It is also because they are left unattended to, uncared for and they inadvertently wanted to make a case and indeed to showcase the shortfalls of the status quo, the neglect and inefficiency of the national system.
I listened to the Deputy Minister of Youths, Feremusu Konteh on SLBC Radio last Friday night. She was talking about her Ministry’s determination to uplift the status of youths in the country; she talked of plans to redefine the national youth psyche and to introduce a counseling system and a Presidential Award Scheme that will target youth role models. She elucidated how she saw determination and zeal in the eyes of some of the youths she has been interacting with; the ‘Friends of the Dead’ for example. She said she met a licensed driver, a fifth former, all of them told her, that they could not have somebody to push them to the other level. That somebody, it is obvious, is the system, it is government. Madam Feremusu Konteh did not mince her words however in acknowledging that it is not the wish of these young people to be what they are, destitute, down-casted and hopeless. I could not have agreed with her more. The Deputy Minister was merely alluding to the fact that things have not worked for the young people of this country and that they are not working!
Had this country had systems in place that ensures the development of the human capital in a fair, non political and passionate manner, the recklessness, anti social way of life and destitution associated to young people in this country would have been limited or nonexistent. It would have been a matter of choice and I believe the choice of being destitute and hopeless would not have been in our lexicon.
Where the national system was working well in the interest of the people, such disasters would have been long averted. But because the system is not sincere and honest with what it says, and because the system merely pays lip-service to constitutionality and adherence to its dictates, situations are let loose on the people because, as a state, we’re ‘turning and turning in a widening gyre and the falcon cannot bear the falconer and as a result, those things that are supposed to hold us together are fallen apart. Governments for a very long time have lost compassion for Sierra Leoneans and only show compunction when the worse hits the people in their faces.
Many questions are on the lips of people now, now that the worse has hit the people in their faces. Is it about institutional negligence or incompetence or inefficiency? Is it about governments not really serious about the welfare of the people? To say that government is unaware of the disaster-prone areas within the city and indeed around the country with people living in them is a nonstarter. To say the Sierra Leone Roads Authority (SLRA) could not tell that that bridge, built in colonial times was not weak and dangerous explains the uselessness of that institution when one considers the cries of our roads for maintenance to be done to them. Kissy Road, Fourah Bay Road, Aberdeen Road, the main Masiaka/Makeni Highway, Fourah Bay College Road, Regent Road and many other roads are badly in want of repairs in order that save human lives plying on them.
Back to King Jimmy, were cries of the young, their families and friends are loud and clear. I hope their cries do not resonate in similar manner in other parts of this city, indeed the country. But what happened there last Friday is a call to order, a call for government to sit up and be proactive rather than being reactive like the fire force. The disaster management mechanism or system has been seriously exposed. Its incapability to handle large-scale disasters has been exposed. The incapability of government to be responsive with the potency and effectiveness required has been put into question and the need for prompt action in the national interest and not for parochial partisan interest sis nay.
Politics cannot be avoided. Politics is the means by which the welfare, safety and well-being of a people in a state can be determined in their best interest. It should not therefore be used merely to attain power, but to do what is expected from that power. In Sierra Leone, it is not the politics that we have to contend with, it is what politics has done for us and is doing for us as a people, a nation and a state that we are contending with. Instead of politics making Sierra Leone one country, and one people in the dreams of our forefathers, politics has divided us and apparently alienated us from each other based on party colours, regional and ethnical backgrounds.
In Sierra Leone today, many people have been forced to dislike their usual loving dress colours because of fears of being rightly or wrongly associated with a political party. It is not that the people despise these political parties. These people believe that once elections are over, politics should be done with and over and the business of governing the state fairly and honestly should be the business of those in whom they entrusted confidence and trust to do so. But that is not the case; we eat politics, we talk politics, we get employment through politics, we get sacked through politics, we get a share of the national cake through politics. Politics has become a part of Sierra Leoneans, whether you like or not.
Yes, it so in many parts of Africa and indeed the world. But the rate at which ours is being practiced has had negative repercussions on the country’s socio-economic development. It is the cause of all of these unwarranted and sacrilegious deaths in the name of natural disasters. If we had had our thoughts rights; if we had had our minds set at achieving one objective for the general good, people in all these disaster-prone areas would have been forced to relocate to safe areas. But when one political party in power takes up an initiative in that direction, the one in opposition seizes advantage of the situation to make political capital out of it. And this has become a matter of routine and is related to every aspect of our national development aspirations.
Once this trend continues, sufferers will continue to cry and the likes of King Jimmy will continue to happen. We have no concrete national affirmative policy to address this party political madness. We the people are just complacent while the privileged few are getting jolly rides over us.
My heart goes to the victims and their families and friends for what could be irreparable losses to them. They could have died because death is an inevitable end of man. What is poignant about these King Jimmy deaths however is that it is about people who were struggling to give meaning to their lives and with hopes that never came to reality, they died as sufferers. Cry oh you sufferers wherever you may be for hope of your situation getting better is yet far away. The conditions are not favourable. Politics has eaten its entrails and the carcass cannot stand on its own. Cry oh Sufferers, cry King Jimmy. May their souls rest in peace. Amen. Amen.
August 12, 2013
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