And why should the SLPP pay Sama Banya?

People often ask me how I could write so regularly on a variety of subjects and according to them, still make my writing so easily readable and interesting. It would be immodest of me if I stated that I am not usually flattered by such glowing tribute. My answer has always been that it is because I do not invent or fabricate my stories which are usually factual; and where I have inadvertently been in error I have never hesitated to acknowledge my lapse and immediately offer my unqualified apology. At the time that I first took an interest in newspapers and journalists, and believe me that was a very long time ago, one of the first things that I learnt was that Journalism was a very honourable profession. That those who practice it must be well trained, well educated and always well informed; above all that they must possess qualities of honesty and high moral integrity. Sierra Leone has produced such a fine crop of individuals in the past of whom this country must be very proud. I can immediately think of I T A Wallace-Johnson, Thomas Decker, Bannerson Decker, Lamina Sankoh, nee Rev. E N Jones all of yester years. Today I would name Julius Spencer, Bamidele Awoonor Gordon, Sylvia Blyden and a few more. Some of the others I would describe as charlatans who ought to have nothing to do with the profession; others are what we refer to in local parlance as “Hand to mot” journalists. In this latter group also are those who like many ordinary people, may be compared to ants as they always know where the sugar is or the side of the bread slice that has the butter and marmalade. I will without any hesitation, describe the editorial team of the African champion newspaper and some of the columnists as at once belonging to all of the above.

There is hardly an edition of the African champion newspaper that does not carry a sensational but quite erroneous headline. There is hardly a gossip story that is not tainted or laced with lies and plane dishonesty. The stories are never written in ignorance; most are deliberate and meant to destroy the character and reputation of their victims. Again I say this from personal experience because there is hardly a story about me which is truthful. The paper’s Monday August 9 edition carries a story that tribalism had split the opposition Sierra Leone Peoples party SLPP. It is obvious that the editor had neither heard nor read Dr. Bobson Sesey’s statement at the reopening of the SLPP’s rehabilitated and refurbished headquarter building. And like in other of its made-up stories, there is always a highly placed member of our party who allegedly confides in the editorial team. I have written on several occasions that I joined the APC in early 1977 and entered Parliament for the first time in January 1978. Throughout my period in the House, (January 1978 – May 1986) there was only one incidence of violence in the entire Kailahun district in general and in the Kailahun south constituency in particular in which some members of my campaign team and I were in fact the victims. Yet in its Tuesday August 10 edition, the newspaper reports that I abandoned my party when we lost the election in 1967 and joined the APC, a practice which was started by me and has continued to this day. It added that “When Sama Banya became a member of the APC he immediately went on the attack against his own people and several people in Pendembu, Baiwala, Segbwema and even in Kailahun town became victims of Sama Banya and his thugs.” It accused me of committing atrocities using the name of the APC. It is people like these, who have nothing constructive to their credit who won’t bat an eyelid in when comparing the integrity of others with their own baseness.

In the same edition a Karifa Bangura asks whether the SLPP can do without Sama Banya. The answer to that is an emphatic “YES!” It was the late Siaka Stevens when he was handing over the leadership of the APC to Major-General Joseph Saidu Momoh in 1985 who said, “In this mundane world of ‘dog eats dog,’ no man is indispensable.” Need I repeat that there is a surfeit of intellectuals and leadership material that will take over the mantle of this 80 year old man the moment he lays it down. I wonder when these adolescents would cease referring to my age instead of striving to match my intellect. That’s a challenge to Karifa Bangura and his type who are obsessed with the matter of my age.

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