We are a genetically narcissistic people. Status over substance indeed. And we don’t like any truth that doesn’t reinforce that mindset. Sad.
Self-enslavement masquerading as loyalty is our present day reality. A truly sad reality.
However, it will be a catastrophic act of self-harm that will turn our dream faster than a downpour nightmare if we fail to seize the initiative from the professional politicians that are taking us for a ride.
This is what I had to say some time ago: “If you’ve got a pebble in your shoes, something is really irritating you and you need to get rid of it. We can pretend that all is well with Sierra Leone as much as we want. Sooner than later, the pebble in our shoes will get beyond irritation and begin to give us blisters”.
I guess that irritation is what is manifesting in the increasing agitation to get rid of the two major political parties and indeed most of the political bed hoppers that have dominated our politics and dragged us to the present national malaise.
Sierra Leoneans are eager to believe in change, but change has to mean that the status quo that led the country to the current uncertainty and stagnation will be completely overturned to create more efficient sustainable, accountable and functional socio-political and economic institutions.
Life can’t be lonely if we have people who can have the attributes of God; just 2% of his attributes. But we don’t and that is the problem. What we have are pathological, congenital liars, disloyal, dishonest, selfish, arrogant and bloody greedy kleptomaniacs and hungry hyenas. I mean a bally lot of unpatriotic power crazy goblins.
So, as professional political massagers continue to graze the tender ego of potential ‘leaders’ and hold hands to do what they preach best, I am deeply worried about happenings on the landscape as we scurry towards 2018; because we are a microcosm of the microcosm of our polity.
My fear also stems from the fact that we are not morally rearmed to examine what we are collectively doing wrong that needs urgent attention, for corrections; since a society is a product and reflection of its inhabitants.
I realise that as another opportunity arises for us to change the course of our history and move a step forward towards the new Sierra Leone that some of us desire, we are not looking inward with sustainable reflections to rewrite our ugly history.
How did we get into this mess? How can we get out of this predicament? How did the enabling environment of our childhood turn into a cesspool of corruption and mediocrity before our eyes?
I am more than afraid of the consequences of the belated but mad rush to get strange bed-fellows together, all in the effort to ensure that the parliament of unconscionable leaders who have traded away our potentials and raped our country, are replaced.
Positive Change is truly a process but the question is: have we started the journey at all? Effectiveness in leadership is how the human race got here. And it is how it is going to move forward. Are we really and truly looking beyond tribalism, party loyalty and other hindrances in the search for a credible and worthy leader that can sacrificially steer the nation in truth towards our goal in the next dispensation?
Apart from getting rid of the existing parties, how many of those who are forming leadership in the country to date, are actually not a force of resistance? How many of them have technically abandoned old worn out clichés, contribute effectively and visibly to national improvement and does not undertake or condone wanton communal looting or political machinations while masquerading as leaders?
In our quest to borrow alien political concepts, we ended up with a system in which our Presidents run with the mentality of emperors and kings. This development has negatively affected the leadership recruitment processes, blurred vision and even appreciation of what should be, by the citizenry who currently only struggle to be peripheral collaborators in the veiled game that short-changes them.
We need to honestly look at ourselves as a people. Let’s start calling a spade a spade and nothing else. That may be the first step we need to take on the daunting journey of moral re-orientation, with a moral reset as the ultimate destination.
Our behavioural anomaly which triggered the slide of our mess and which has been left unchecked for so long has become so pervasive and has fully taken a life of its own. It is deeply embedded in our psyche that it is proving difficult to reverse.
That is the serious conundrum we now face as we match towards next year’s election. I mean, how would any of those clamouring for power, sincerely accept a change, when the leader they are replacing has not only cornered everything, but keeps all the advantages while fighting to remain the leader to boot, either by proxy or through sheer unbridled narcissism.
While there is a burning desire to effect a change and a popular will to do so, I am afraid of the completion of the process. How do you tell a council of ‘pen robbers’ that robbery is no longer in fashion; especially when the perpetual mis-education and deliberate ignorance of the masses is beyond the fresh beginning that we actually desire if we are not to end up with another car crash.
There was once a country of great people and brilliant politicians. Now there’s only a lawless cove of the shallowest of humanity, morally and intellectually. Truly, truly saddening. The rot is total and complete.
Many of us today still sugar-coat the depth or is it the magnitude of the problem that the feral, noisy and clueless minority have created, because of the random bright spots in our dark firmament and some occasional sparks of brilliance spearheaded by foreign interventions. Even though we’ve seen from experience that names or labels cannot change the nature of a thing.
What a saddening history of a once great people. To those who still believe, after reading most of my recent write-ups that this is a problem to be solved from the bottom up, I say good luck. It is my prayers however, that more and more people begin to see that what we are calling governance is nothing but a waddle in a sewage tank. We cannot be as selfish and self-centred as not to think of what mess we are leaving for our children.
If I seem to be causing a lot of knickers-twisting and upset, it is not my intention to assault anybody’s sensibilities or conscience. I’m just trying to share the truth as I see it. We learn nothing, from agreeing with each other. I think I owe it a duty in this crucial period, to say what I see as threats to our socio-political cohesion, as a result of the desperate manipulations of overnight ‘saints’.
We need to start thinking, because this generation, of which many of us are part and parcel of the leadership, as well as previous generations, have not only continued the rot that has landed us where we are, we have taken it to greater heights.
Consequently, corruption has become the inevitable endpoint of the mindset of loyalty over objectivity. It is this mindset that has made corruption thrive in our society. It is why our case is now Ichabod- the glory has departed. The house has fallen.
While not denying the existence of corrupt tendencies in other climes, you’ll discover that in our society, you go through tribalism and nepotism and nowadays even religious and political favouritism, before corruption steps out naked and with utmost impunity; revealing a deep morass which we unwittingly think we can just dialogue ourselves out of.
Though a blinding glimpse of the obvious, this lunacy is also found in our pretence that this is anything else; even though what’s needed for us as a society is introspection. Of course, the most effective antidote may not be palatable but we are already down in the dumps.
Looking inwards. That’s what is completely missing in our environment. Selfishness, no matter how thickly or thinly disguised, is usually the seed of failure – which is obviously, the history of our leadership.
Therefore, we cannot continue to pretend that the worst of us will bring about the best for us. That’s a very obvious illogic. That’s what should be assaulting our sensibilities, if we truly possess any.
It is not the length of time that a malaise has existed that will determine its extermination. It is the resolve of those who have the power to do something about it; no matter how little or insignificant it appears.
Yes, treating sexually transmitted diseases with Panadol is indeed a course of treatment but definitely its end result is the grave. To go after the various symptoms and not the root disease, is ultimately an exercise in futility.
As we enter the season where our masters of doublespeak and insincerity of purpose take over the limelight, what is obvious is that we are likely to continue running around with confused haste to nowhere, like a rat in a gum trap.
The desperation of virtually all the contestants for next year, has seen words spoken like mantra rather than a political reality. But this will not suffice for our situation right now.
Personal fantasy of potentials, which currently appear far above the grim reality and the self-indulgent egotism that we are unwittingly massaging, will not berth us at the dock of the change and desire from the shackles of poverty.
What has continued to emerge is the fact that our political class is full of lying lips which are so shallow that they will be out of their depth in a puddle. The situation has been made worse by the internal disarray within the main opposition party and the glaring opportunism of emerging politicians, which have combined to strengthen the smell of decay in our governance.
Power has become the consuming project for the political lifetime of some of the 2018 candidates whose banalities is an indication of how neophyte most of them really are. They are like someone who doesn’t know how to trap a football but is busy discussing the merits of 4-4-2; 4-5-1 and three at the back system of defence. Such utterances are not knowledge-based values but a representation.
The sad thing is that out of a lack of compelling alternatives and our collective attitude that gave rise to the place of corruption and impunity over us, we are faced with the devil and the deep blue sea.
It will take our collective commitment to eliminate this vice. Let us not continue to delude ourselves that the next set of leaders are willing agents of redeeming the collection of numbed Sierra Leoneans who have been cowered into overwhelming mediocrity.
From their utterances and desperate actions which focuses more on power rather than sign-posted prescriptions for our malaise, how can the ‘clean men’ jump into a sewage tank and come out smelling of roses.
Logic stands on its own as will its output, usually called truth. We would have ourselves to blame if ……We continue to allow the continuous slavery of our existence and values in our ‘coro-coro’ eyes.
Be the first to comment