CULLED FROM PATRIOTIC VANGUARD Tejan Kabbah: The Truth Will Set Salone Free - Friday 21 March 2014. The Oswald Hanciles Column. By Oswald Hanciles, Freetown, Sierra Leone. President Tejan Kabbah (photo) is being mourned by all the country. This Column has to do what is traditional in our country – extending my heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family of the late President. But, this Column is bound to do what every self-respecting columnist ought to do: an objective analysis of such a historic event. President Kabbah was more than a ‘person’. Kabbah is History of Sierra Leone with a capital “H”. Posterity would not lampoon me one day for not exhibiting the only human frailty that even Jesus Christ did not forgive in His lifetime: Hypocrisy!! I wanted to studiously avoid commenting on Kabbah’s transition, and continue my “slave mentality” serial. On reflection, I realized that with the spotlight turned again on Kabbah in his ‘final moment’ on earth, it would be a wonderful opportunity to educate the public about elements of the ‘slave mentality’ which are within Kabbah’s post-1995 history. My ‘case’: Tejan Kabbah should never had been elected President in the first place Tejan Kabbah should never have been elected as the presidential candidate of the SLPP in 1996 in the first place – if it were not for the “slave mentality” of those SLPP elders who lobbied Kabbah to go for the presidency after Kabbah had retired from the UN. I have been reliably informed that chief among these elders was one of my maternal uncles (his mother was a ‘Margai’) late Alusine Deen, who served as our Ambassador to China under Kabbah. By 1996, another of my maternal uncles, Charles Margai, was the key figure of the SLPP – the man who had used his personal resources to resurrect the SLPP in 1991 when APC’s General Joseph Saidu Momoh said the One Party State would come to an end. Alusine Deen and other SLPP elders in 1995 were operating on dual logic: 1. ABCFM (Anybody But Charles Francis Margai). 2. A Northerner as the SLPP’s presidential candidate. Logic Number One was because Charles Margai was perceived by the SLPP elders as too arrogant, too impetuous, too inflexible to be manipulated by anyone. Also, Alusine Deen, a blood cousin of Charles Margai, had been soundly trounced by Charles Margai in a parliamentary election in 1978 – with CFM polling about 16,000 votes to Alusine Deen’s about 360 votes. An analysis of their ‘Logic’ shows that even with Kabbah, the ‘Northern Presidential Candidate’, the SLPP got only about FIVE PERCENT of votes in the Northern Province in the 1996 General Elections. The SLPP won the 1996 General Elections in a run-off largely because Thaimu Bangura’s PDP teamed up with them. Would a candidate Charles Margai had refused to accept the reality of coalition with Thaimu Bangura? Charles Margai subordinated himself to his biological junior, Dr. John Karimu, Leader of the NUP, in 1996; and, again, gave fervent and open support to his biological junior, Hon. Ernest Bai Koroma, in 2007 – ordering his PMDC to support the ‘perceived Northern party’, the APC, in 2007. The UN was not a training ground for Kabbah to become President in 1996 About twenty years in the United Nations, about ten years before that as a civil servant in Sierra Leone, Kabbah was totally unprepared - in terms of temperament; mindset; experience - to serve as president of war-torn Sierra Leone in 1996. Unwittingly, while trying to explain himself in his autobiography –‘Coming Back From the Brink in Sierra Leone’ (EPP Book Services, Ghana, 2010) – Kabbah actually ‘prosecuted’ himself to all but the superficial reader. I would bring out excerpts from this book in the following paragraphs. Tejan Kabbah writes: “An army? What Army? “The greatest challenge I face on assuming the presidency in 1996 was in the area of peace and security....(Although) there were many dedicated soldiers who were prepared to defend the motherland, there were others whose loyalty was deeply questionable.... Outgoing NPRC ...elements who were not in favour of handing over power to a civilian administration..” Page. 40 In his book, Tejan Kabbah was good at diagnosis of the problem he faced as President: “ (a) An unreliable SLA that was incapable of counteracting the rebel offensive; (b)The collusion of some members of the SLA with the rebels; (c) Limited deployment of ECOMOG forces; (d). The apprehension, indeed the fear that the RUF and their strange bedfellows in the SLA could overrun the country once Executive Outcomes had left.....”. So, what did Tejan Kabbah do to address these problems he ‘knew’ about? Like the naive man he turned out to be, he started off with a false ‘conviction’. On Page 47 of his book, he writes: “ I was also convinced that with a civilian administration other than the APC in power, the RUF would be ready to abandon its so-called armed struggle. This conviction was based on the fact that the RUF had repeatedly stated that they had started their rebellion in order to oust the APC government from power and to liberate the people of Sierra Leone, from the perceived tyranny and corruption of the APC administration...”. Kabbah, the naive, fooled by Foday Sankoh. So, Tejan Kabbah went to meet Foday Sankoh in Yammasoukro in the Ivory Coast; and writes of this in his book on Page 47 and Page 48: “(The RUF’s ) initial reaction was one of callous indifference. They regarded me as an obstacle to their ultimate ambition of seizing power by force of arms....As far as they were concerned, the prospects for realizing their ambition would have been greater if the junta had remained in office and the elections postponed.....(From) the onset and not surprisingly Foday Sankoh appeared bellicose and arrogant.....”. Having come face-to-face with the ‘devil incarnate’, Foday Sankoh, Tejan Kabbah childishly believed that he was a saint who could exorcise the deviltry out of Sankoh. Kabbah writes of what he subsequently did on Page 49 of his book: “In November 15 as a sign of good faith, I announced a general amnesty for the RUF rebels....Incidentally, by then the civil defence militia had recorded spectacular successes over the RUF rebels.... On November 30, 1996, Foday Sankoh and I signed the Abidjan Peace Accord, in the presence of international observers....” Read on, as President Tejan Kabbah, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Sierra Leone, ‘prosecutes’ himself in Page 51 and 52 of his autobiography: “ Regrettably, it soon turned out that the RUF had deceived the people and my government.....A message from Foday Sankoh to his field commander, Sam Bockarie, alias ‘Maskita’ which was intercepted by security officials only days after the signing of the Abidjan Peace Accord, clearly demonstrated that the RUF did not enter the peace negotiations in good faith......In the same message, he ordered his commanders to resume hostilities with even greater force......(It) was apparent that the RUF gained militarily, in the sense that because of the lull in fighting during the negotiations we were left exposed with little reliable security beyond the civil defence forces....The RUF did not dispose of its foreign fighters. In fact the rebel group took advantage of the initial lull in fighting....to rearm and bolster its forces...”. What Tejan Kabbah did in lifting up the hands Foday Sankoh in Abidjan in 1996 (with Brigadier Maada Bio) was to give diplomatic fillip to the then spectral Foday Sankoh; to make Sankoh more ‘bankable’ to his diabolical financiers. Kabbah’s puerile misreading of Foday Sankoh was like a military general who is totally outwitted by his enemy, and proceeds to ensure that his enemy is given significant quantity of arms and ammunition. Kabbah heard about the May 25, 1997 coup THREE DAYS BEFORE it happened!!! Kabbah has written about the fractious and largely disloyal army he inherited; on Page 60 of his autobiography, he writes of his dealings with them: “Unfortunately, and in spite of my reassurance to the soldiers at the military celebration, there were rumours of a possible coup. Intelligence reports indicated that there was a coup in the offing, but the military leadership rather treacherously assured me that all was well... Sadly and regrettably, I believed the soldiers....” What ‘we’ all know and have been appalled about is captured by Tejan Kabbah on Page 60 of his autobiography: “......On May 23, I heard some unusual communication. I became suspicious. I immediately summoned the Army leadership to express my concern. They assured me that all was well.....”. All was well?!!! Can anyone imagine if the APC’s President Siaka Stevens had been warned of a coup attempt three days before it happened (or, ANY President in Africa for that matter) and he would call his military commanders to....Just ask them: ‘Una dae plan for make coup pan me’?!! What answer did Kabbah expect of his military commanders: ‘Yes sir. We bin dae tink for make coup pan u, Sir. But, way we done see u fine face...en yeri u Ivy League voice, we done change we mind, Sir’ (?!!). ‘Me fambul dem, una excuse me ya; ar forget say nar national berrin we dae pan so’!! As I stated at the start of this piece, we should learn from history, or, we are doomed to make the same mistake in our choice of presidential candidates and presidents in the future. One reason which has precipitated my writing this piece is the self-serving piece by Kandeh Yumkella, titled, ‘Democracy and Rule of Law: The Legacy of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah’, which I excerpt here: “Some parading today as leaders or claiming to be politicians were unknown until Pa Kabba gave them a chance at national service. In fact, they would have been in jail had not been for a forgiving President Kabba and Solomon Berewa....both of whom refused to prosecute and instead asked the nation to forgive them their sins.....” Walahi!! Hitler’s Goebell’s at its best!!! So, the “forgiving” President Tejan Kabbah had soldiers, including a lady, publicly shot on a stake for ‘treason’? So, the ‘Jesus-like’ Kabbah betrayed the man who was head of his paramilitary forces, Hinga Norman, to the international criminal court – when the man is clearly one of the celebrated war heroes of all time? Una leff!! I bridle myself here. May the departed soul of President Tejan Kabbah rest in peace. Stay tuned!!
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 10:38:19 +0000
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