Fooling around with our young people

Youth unemployment is a major problem especially in developing countries where populations continue to increase in inverse proportion to job opportunities. War ravaged districts like Kailahun, Kono and Pujehun confirm the truth of this statement as they bear the brunt of youth unemployment in Sierra Leone. (Photo: Dr Sama Banya)

This government had made promises of a Utopia for our youth if they voted APC. Sadly many fell for the gimmick and did so all over the country, although there were areas like Kailahun, Pujehun, Moyamba, Kenema and Bo where the young people were smart enough and saw through the façade of deception and refused to swallow the bait.

The same APC now in power has made Kailahun and Pujehun districts as the main objects of its devout aim to get a foothold in the South-East.

Unfulfilled flamboyant promises that they know are difficult to fulfill are now turning their focus on naked bribery. Those districts and some others are famous for cash crop production. As yet they have no mineral resources that could be stimuli for industrial production which in turn would lead to employment. The government lacks ideas on how to provide the necessary enabling environment that would allow young people to develop their full potential.

During his Excellency’s second official visit to Kailahun district the then Resident Minister for the South found his way to what could properly be described as a ghetto in Daru town and distributed cash to unemployed youth who were gathered there with a promise to do more during a subsequent visit. I disclosed in this column last week how 25 million Leones had been given to Sarti Banya for distribution to the youth of the district. Over the week end, the former Southern region minister who is now minister of internal affairs was in Kailahun town where he distributed 25 motor cycles to the young people. The question is like the 25 million Leones handed over to Sarti Banya, how are the motor cycles going to enable the youth to make full use of their potential other than adding them to an already overcrowded Okada market? But, Musa Tarawali distributed them all the same.

Last Friday I wrote that the prophets of doom who thought that the opposition SLPP was on the verge of disintegration over differences of opinion on the interpretation of the party’s constitution were left high and dry at the mature and peaceful way the Executive committee meeting ended, with a decision to call a delegates’ conference in Bo to resolve the matter. Reports of the deliberations in Bo speak of a unanimous decision by the highest decision making body of the party to extend the life of the current Executive to beyond the Flag bearer elections. What is more, like I had predicted, the party has come out of that conference more united and stronger than before. But instead of hailing it as a huge success the Standard Ttimes newspaper which was one of those which hat had predicted a conflagration at the Executive council meeting in Freetown now describes the Bo decision as the road to self-destruction.

In 2009 the ruling All Peoples Congress party APC at their convention in Makeni elected President Ernest Bai Koroma unopposed as the party’s candidate for the 2012 Presidential elections. They went a step further and decided that the next convention of the party would be held in Kono in 2013.

The Standard Times newspaper saw nothing wrong with that decision, let alone describe it as a road to self-destruction. Where lies the difference other than that the newspaper is applying different standards to similar situations, except that one party is SLPP while the other is APC. But as the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We shall overcome.”

In the meantime Puawui sends heartiest congratulations to all who participated in the deliberations and gave a very diligent, honest, determined, fearless and hard working Chairman John Benjamin a standing ovation. Paul Kamara’s team of ‘Mami Salone en pikin’ may continue to label our chairman as a German coupist etc.

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