Is Ernest Bai Koroma's Call to Arms Misplaced?
Titus Boye-Thompson, London
Reports that former President Ernest Bai Koroma has signaled his intention to recruit an army corps to build Africa's infrastructure has been received with some trepidation in certain capitals of the region. The former President made this call when addressing CEOs of major corporations, some of whom have major financial and economic interests in Africa, at a conference in Portugal over the weekend. Senior political observers have expressed concern that his call could well be seen as a cynical ploy to raise an insurgency in his home country under the guise of a trans African initiative.
A senior Diplomat at ECOWAS, the West African Sub regional economic grouping with head offices in Abuja, Nigeria has roundly dismissed this call as an insensitive statement or aspiration to have come from an Ex President whose country is under tension and is indeed qualified as a fragile state with a history of conflict in the background. A representative at the office of Ibn Chambas, SSRG of UNOWAS, the UN Agency with a mandate for peace and security in West Africa and the Sahel has stressed that such a call by the former President of Sierra Leone could easily be misconstrued as a call to destabilize already volatile states in the sub region or some veiled threat to the integrity of governments within nation states, particularly Sierra Leone.
Some political watchers have wondered why Koroma's handlers had not thought through the repercussions of such a call? Had he made this call under the aegis of the AU when he was Chairman of the Committee of Ten, that would have been in place but to make it now is seemingly insidious.
The call by the former President whose party lost the Presidential elections in Sierra Leone just over a year ago could not have been ill timed as he recently announced his re-emergence to front line politics in his country and has taken up office at his Party Headquarters in Freetown some months after he had announced a retirement from politics within three month of the second round vote in April, 2018.
With allegations of rampant corruption surrounding him and some members of his family, some may see this as a move to recruit outside assistance in a bid to disrupt the present Commissions of Inquiries and Anti Corruption investigations that are closing in on him and his administration.
Reports that former President Ernest Bai Koroma has signaled his intention to recruit an army corps to build Africa's infrastructure has been received with some trepidation in certain capitals of the region. The former President made this call when addressing CEOs of major corporations, some of whom have major financial and economic interests in Africa, at a conference in Portugal over the weekend. Senior political observers have expressed concern that his call could well be seen as a cynical ploy to raise an insurgency in his home country under the guise of a trans African initiative.
A senior Diplomat at ECOWAS, the West African Sub regional economic grouping with head offices in Abuja, Nigeria has roundly dismissed this call as an insensitive statement or aspiration to have come from an Ex President whose country is under tension and is indeed qualified as a fragile state with a history of conflict in the background. A representative at the office of Ibn Chambas, SSRG of UNOWAS, the UN Agency with a mandate for peace and security in West Africa and the Sahel has stressed that such a call by the former President of Sierra Leone could easily be misconstrued as a call to destabilize already volatile states in the sub region or some veiled threat to the integrity of governments within nation states, particularly Sierra Leone.
Some political watchers have wondered why Koroma's handlers had not thought through the repercussions of such a call? Had he made this call under the aegis of the AU when he was Chairman of the Committee of Ten, that would have been in place but to make it now is seemingly insidious.
The call by the former President whose party lost the Presidential elections in Sierra Leone just over a year ago could not have been ill timed as he recently announced his re-emergence to front line politics in his country and has taken up office at his Party Headquarters in Freetown some months after he had announced a retirement from politics within three month of the second round vote in April, 2018.
With allegations of rampant corruption surrounding him and some members of his family, some may see this as a move to recruit outside assistance in a bid to disrupt the present Commissions of Inquiries and Anti Corruption investigations that are closing in on him and his administration.
Sierra Leone is a country of under 7 million people, rich in natural resources and precious minerals, good agricultural land and a potential for tourism yet it is one of the poorest in Africa due in large part to public finance weaknesses, mismanagement and state centered corruption.
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