July 27, 2021
By Dadson A. Musa
23rd March, 1991 was when the first gun shots were heard in Sierra Leone heralding the start of a bloody and brutal civil war. The first town of their attack (RUF) was Bomaru, in the upper Bambara chiefdom, Kailahun district east of Sierra Leone. That is the extreme end of Sierra Leone`s border with Liberia. The village was so removed from central government that it felt like they were on their own.
Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels took advantage of lack of security in that part of the country to launch his bloody civil war. It was after Charles Taylor had uttered his threats that “Sierra Leone will taste the bitterness of war” for allowing ECOMOG to use our airport as a base to launch attacks against his NPFL forces in Liberia. So he aided and abetted Sankoh’s forces to carry out their campaign of killing, burning, looting, maiming, raping, etc, in this country for eleven years. The country then was under one party dictatorship and poverty and inequality held away.
The rebel war ended in 2002, but have any lessons been learned? One of the reasons for the easy abduction of our young men and women was poverty and the inequality that was perpetrated by our political class.
Upon my visit to Bomaru, in the far eastern province of Kailahun I tried to gauge the mood of people in the town. On a hilltop in the centre of the town a war monument has been constructed with inscriptions of the names of people who lost their lives that time. Will that only make you think that government cares? But living conditions of people there remains nothing to write home about. The road leading to Bomaru from the junction town of Mobai is in very bad shape like most rural roads in this country and the bridges are narrow and dilapidated. The main road leading from Kenema to Kailahun has been done remarkably but the neglect of feeder roads from those smaller towns is worrying. The main source of livelihood for residents in that part of the country is farming which is largely subsistence.
Coffee and cocoa is their priced cash crops. But you get the sense that these farmers need to be empowered further to boost their yields and easy access to the market. The illiteracy rate among farmers is still high hence the middle men who go to buy these crops are milking them. So for most of the time these farmers have nothing to show for their year- round farming.
Since the end of the war in 2002 our politicians have not made much difference in improving on the rule of law. Tribalism still plagues our governance structures and systems.
Rural neglect and poverty is still very palpable. Decentralization is far from taking hold and if one does not go to Freetown, services are not accessible. Politicians in this country are still enriching themselves at the expense of the masses and discontent seems to be boiling under. The youths who formed the bulk of the fighting forces in this country are largely jobless and marginalized. The economy has been sliding as cost of living is becoming expensive day in and day out. The political class is living comfortably while the majority is distressed. Nobody even want to remember the day of the first gun shot in Bomaru in 1991 but something needs to be done. Services must get down to the least citizens in this country and unity must be the pathway. Those resources we have must be used for the good of all and our democratic institutions needs strengthening now more than ever before.