By Berns Komba Lebbie
Dear ‘Mama Salone’,
Today is the 27th April, 2023. Sixty-two years exact, it could be recalled that, on this day in 1961, few of your politically hungry children chose to ask for a hand on the wheel of leadership from the white-man. It has been 62 years on since then, and the rest is part of the ‘told’ and ‘untold’ stories.
You see, today is NOT your birthday. Today is just a remarkable day to reminiscence over. For, we all know that, you have been in existence since creation. The first Portuguese white-man who claim to have discovered you in 1462, narrated his encounter with the land and its people already in existence and he called you ‘Serra Lyoa’ (Lion Mountain). But today is also a significant day in your existence.
Within those sixty-two years of our so called ‘independence’, it is needless to tell you what your children have been through. The entire journey on the new political trajectory that our forefathers chose for us, has been dark and gloomy - largely full of tears, bitterness and sombre. The only celebration that came after that controversial decision was short-lived – maybe just a day long. The celebration lasted just on that same day. Our parents and grandparents celebrated because they were promised many things that turned out to be lies, and those lies have forever lived with us.
On that faithful day, your children were told that the independence was going to bring them everlasting freedom – freedom from the white-man’s dictate, from political interference of the British and the Americans, from the control of the white-man over our natural resources, freedom from the shackles of poverty, from the use of the white-man’s money, from the embarrassment of begging from the white-man, from needing to travel to the white-man’s country to be re-enslaved, and from many, many things which have now become to us mere fantasies. A very little or none of those promises have been fulfilled.
Sixty-two years on, we have merely stagnated or comparatively move backward instead. When the white-man was leaving, our educational system was better. We had done so well under the white-man’s rule that we were compared to the capital of Greece, Anthem – fondly called the ‘Anthem of West Africa - because those who wanted knowledge in West Africa, would have to come to our schools and to our Fourah Bay College to get educated. We could produce scholars capable of competing for international jobs. Unfortunately, today, we have recycled our education system without injecting an iota of innovation. We have dramatically fallen from the pinnacle of the Anthem of West Africa to the least performing Western African State in the regional examinations.
Our universities keep producing graduates that won’t get the jobs they trained for and it seems nobody want them outside of your territory, Mama. Because none, including myself, can speak any other international language. The few who does, may have learnt other international languages outside your jurisdiction, in the neighbouring francophone country or those beyond.
Our engineers leave our universities searching for clerical jobs in local councils or in other government offices, instead of creating something. We cannot even produced sufficient medical doctors, and the few we have, are either finding their ways out or are waiting for the next zoom meeting with a white-man before they can administer drugs to the dying sick person on their hospital bed. Few years ago, sadly, one of those doctors operated a woman and forgot a pair of scissors in her womb. Scan results showed the piece of metal in her womb, but unfortunately, no one was ready enough to correct that error, and sadly, she died after two years. We have seen the worse since we chose to lead ourselves, Mama – among them, we can recount on a long list of many dreadful diseases from which many of your children died painful deaths. We had ‘ruff-neck, in the 90s that killed people by twisting their head round their neck, we had Lassa fever killing people from extremely high fever in their marrows which they say we got from rats. Then we had the most-dreadful one - Ebola, which kills from excessive bleeding. We were not also saved from the latest COVID19. We lost a considerable number of our relatives from that too. We could have barely survived without the white-man’s vaccine. In the fight to save lives from those breakouts, we lost a significant number of our trained medical practitioners.
Our engineers we train cannot produce anything. We import almost everything that is not natural. But even in the midst of the abundance of six months rainy season, we have imported drinking water to compete with our local brands – and many would prefer the imported brands in ostentatious ceremonies. We have wistfully destroyed our environment. The once green scenery of the Peninsula Mountain, has now become an eyesore. And we had to pay for our recklessness dearly in 2017 when we had a devastating mudslide that killed close to a thousand people.
But our soil is so fertile that seeds can grow in a thin layer of soil sliding on rocks. Yet the 2022 Global Hunger Index shows that we are among the world’s 10 hungriest countries. Rice is our staple food, and we are importing that from Pakistan, India or China without the ability to grow the sufficient amount we need to feed ourselves.
Without the Chines who now have three toll gates along the only entrance into our capital city from the inter-lands of the country, our roads could have been the worst. Two important bridges we were supposed to have built years ago, were never done until the European Union helped us with the funds. Many roads which we have generally described as ‘feeder-roads’ had tarmac at the time we chose to lead ourselves. Unfortunately, those roads have now become so deplorable that the users often refer to them as ‘death traps’.
Those who chose our independence promised to lead us with compassion – as one of theirs. They promised a fair legal system that would guarantee the rights and freedom of all. They said no more would one person group of people would be more equal than others. But, when we last checked our legal system, unfortunately, your children are not happy.
For us to trust them with leadership, they said they wouldn’t have the need to steal from us. They argued that if anyone does, the wealth would eventually circulate among us, because, they said, they would have no need to trust the white-man with our money and resources. Unfortunately, they were lying. The Swiss and many banks of the white-man are filled with undocumented and unaccounted wealth hidden there by those same leaders.
The worse that couldn’t have happened under the white-man, have now met us, Mama. So severe that many of our siblings have had the urge to seek for asylum in the embassies of the same white-man whom they told us, were bad. As it stands now, we all have that active or passive desire of leaving you, Mama. We all want to go to the white-man’s country. In fact, on a daily basis, our sisters and brothers are already leaving with the desire to be enslaved in the white-man’s country even without the entry permit into the white-man’s country. They chose death on the high seas and on the scorching deserts over living here with us, Mama.
But Mama we are not entirely despaired. We still have hope that, among us here, some people have the good heart to turn things over. At some point, we became so vexed that we chose war over peace. We fought for ten odd years and meted the most gruesome atrocities on our fellow humans. Later, we came back to our senses and chose peace. With the help of the same white-man, we have reorganized ourselves and conducted four successful democratic elections. Those elections were not as fair as we would approve, but they didn’t break us apart beyond reconciliation.
In this same year, just about two months from now, we will be holding another election. Towards that, we have already heard slogans – some have even professed the need to take us back to that single day when we ever celebrated – the day of 27th April, 1961. Others have merged, they say, for the good of the land. We know they are lying, we know they just want to win our votes, but Mama, we are already in this irreversible state, so we just have to pretend to trust them. We just don’t have any choice because the options are very few – they are just two and we have tried and tested both – unfortunately, we are still here, in a worst state that we could imagine. So, Mama, we leave everything to you now. We call on you to breed a generation of leaders who would not keep embarrassing us. We desire sincerity and true passion for ourselves and we ask this from God through the names of our Lord Jesus and our Holy Prophet Muhamad (SAW).
Copyright © 2023 Politico (03/05/23)
