Private Baldrick of the “cunning” but not so clever plans leaves Captain Blackadder with “the agony of choice” between culinary efforts that looked more like strategies for harm than offers of sustainment. Anyway, it is in the make-believe world of comedy television and we can all have a laugh, get off our backsides and crack on with the real issues of the day. Issues such as the ones that will or should be on the minds of Sierra Leoneans exactly ten weeks from today.

A BBC reporter’s dispatch in 1999 ended with the assessment – “Sierra Leone; a country whose agony words can no longer describe”. On 7th March 2018 the people will have an agony of choice at elections that offer a choice between very different approaches to their agony. While Fergal Keane’s report was against the backdrop of a senseless and brutal war, the story of the eighteen years since, as with the near four decades before, is of contemptuous arrogance under kleptocratic connectocracies that have taken a country with great promise into extremes of poverty, frustration and suffering. The very sorry narrative that is the Sierra Leone experience would have many assuming that the choice in 70 days will be a simple one. We must however be mindful of the valid thinking that “assumption is the mother of all f*** ups”.

The campaigns for the highest office in Sierra Leone alongside those for seats in the national legislature, Mayoral offices and local government seats have, if nothing else, given reasons to wonder how many of the candidates appreciate the seriousness of the issues that depend on the outcomes of the various contests. From the presidential campaigns have come revelations or confirmations of capability deficiencies followed by some paradoxical dismissals of leadership as a factor in making countries work. Suffice to say the utterances of some candidates and their supporters have given me enough ‘shake my head’ moments to leave one feeling punch drunk. Totally worrying and frightening is that so many Sierra Leoneans cannot see, or do not want to see, that the coming elections will be ‘for real’ and will have consequences that will last for many years. All this in the presence of a shockingly miserable job score testament to the consequences of bad government.

Over the decades, a woeful and damaging absence of integrity, discipline and conceptual depth in the political leadership has put the country in the charge of people unable to keep their fingers out of the cookie jar, devoid of substance to back up promises, and utterly desperate for jobs they haven’t the ability or willingness to carry out. After nearly fifty-seven years of madness and badness that have reduced a country with so much to so little, the choice in not lot over a couple of months will be between more of the prevailing silliness and miseries, repeats of already proven as problematic tactics, or a new path that will be a declaration of intent against unconstitutionality and legitimised banditry. Well thought-out, detailed and costed strategies are in competition with variations of the incompetence and recklessness responsible for the current situation. Worse still, evidence from various broadcasts and social media give more reasons to be fearful as we see absolute lack of understanding of the problems or potential solutions for them combined with communication abilities that will struggle to convince a fly to visit a rubbish tip.

We could take from Bob Marley crooning in ‘Crisis’ that “some people think life is a dream so they making matters worse” a warning that there will be no wake from the very bad dream that will be making the wrong choice for the country. Far from being a dream it will be a potentially catastrophic reality and the people will have no one to blame but themselves because, as George Orwell put it, “people who elect corrupt leaders are not victims but accomplices”. Some will more cruelly but factually point out that they would have chosen the government they deserve; and all because they couldn’t see that a cunning planning could also be a conning plan.

© Othame Kabia