Is The Mo Ibrahim Foundation Preaching Koromaism? By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop) I have read media history, intensively and extensively, of developed democracies. I have also done comparative newspapers’ reportage of major African countries and even tiny The Gambia. Yet, I am still finding a country where most of its so-called patriotic journalists take pride in writing bad and negative things about their own country. For most Sierra Leonean journalists, the only good journalism is that which revolves around the “when a dog bites a man, that’s no news; but when a man bites a dog, that’s news”. In disrobed language (that is, without any figurative trapping), for many journalists in Sierra Leone anything that borders on the sensational and misinformation; anything that happens that will embarrass the current government and throw the country’s image into disrepute, and anything that will dampened the resolve of hardworking Sierra Leoneans is “fit to print” ( please pardon my journalese here). That’s why the recent report of, and by, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation in which the government of President Ernest Bai Koroma is being commended for maintaining safety and the rule of law while promoting democracy and good governance was not, and still not, published by many local newspapers. Such good tiding about their country is, or has been, very tormenting for them. In fact, it is at variance with their editorial policies of only commenting on bad and negative things about Sierra Leone as long as it is President Ernest Bai Koroma with his All People’s Congress (APC) who is at the rudder of state. For starters: the recent report of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation states that, “…Since 2000, Sierra Leone has shown its biggest improvement in the categories of governance, safety and the rule of law, participation and human rights, sustainable economic opportunities and human development”. And that’s not all. Sierra Leone has also applied for the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in order to strengthen transparency and accountability. What that recent Mo Ibrahim Foundation report highlights about Sierra Leone has been the very essence of, or heart of, the idea of what I had conceptualized, in a One Dropian dropping of yore, as Koromaism. That is: both the “Agendas” (“Change” and “Prosperity”) of the current government have been geared towards the improvement on good governance, safety and the rule of law, sustainable economic activities and human development which will make Sierra Leone a Middle-Level Income country in the next 25 years and a donor-giving country in 50 years’ time. It is like the Mo Ibrahim Foundation is cement-izing the Soyinkaian exhortation of “A prophet has honour except in his home town” (courtesy “The Trial of Brother Jero”). Albeit I will now Sierra Leone-nize that phrase to: President Koroma and his APC government have been doing very well according to international indices except in the eyes of anti-Sierra Leone Sierra Leoneans who have never seen anything positive in their country since the September of 2007. Now the questions are: Was the Mo Ibrahim Foundation bribed to publish that favourable report about Sierra Leone? Of course not, because that Foundation dishes out five million United States’ dollars annually to an ex-African Head of State. So, how could it be accused of being bribed to have come out with that report? No dice there. The second question is: Was the report a swivelchaired-airconditioned endeavour? Hell no! The Foundation sent in a team of experts which did its own investigations, conducted its own interviews, and random-sampled people on the streets. So, the credibility of that report cannot be questioned. Except that it somehow resonates with many of my One Dropian droppings which are evangelizations of Koromaism! And I won’t be surprised if the anti-Sierra Leone journalists begin to pick bones with that report with either their China House logic or “Kailahun Court Barray” fallacies. This is simply because the Mo Ibrahim Foundation might have shocked them out of their “Bad Heart” (pardon me here for writing “Kringlish” because I never did Krio as a subject in school despite 99.9% of the teachers, including the Head Teachers, at my Buxton Boys Primary School were Krios) reveries. This is what I and others have been telling the Doubting Thomases that despite the enormous challenges, the Koroma-led administration has been striving very hard to make Sierra Leone much better than it was about eight years ago. And each time some of us try to remove the wool from the Doubting Thomases’ eyes, they will engage in name-tagging. If someone writes about the massive infrastructural developments now taking place in Sierra Leone, that person will be tagged a sycophant. If another person writes about the improvement in electricity supply in the capital, that person will be labeled a bootlicker. If a Sierra Leonean notes that his country has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, that Sierra Leonean will be called a 4-4-4er. And if the Mo Ibrahim Foundation had been a local organization and has come out with such a favourable report about Sierra Leone; it would have been called a Koromaian (another new One Dropian coinage) surrogate organization. It is on that note that I will epilogue this One Dropian dropping with a quote from the book of Barack Hussein Obama, “The Audacity of Hope”, that “In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal”(page 220). Sure. Because I know that after reading this One Dropian dropping some might sigh: well, he’s a Koromaist, I’m not surprised! medsankoh@yahoo/+232-76-611-986
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 18:19:53 +0000
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