Encounter with Foday Saybana Sankoh
Since my first meeting with Foday Sankoh (photo)Â the former RUF leader, there have been many versions of the incident. Although it was covered and played over SLBS the story is still with relish and distortion, all in a vain endeavour to discredit me. I believe my readers are entitled to a separation of the truth from the myth.
The aim of my detractors has always been to show what a terrible and unacceptable person is who carries the name of Sama Banya.
It began on a fateful night in May 1977, three days to polling day in the Parliamentary election of that year. My campaign vehicles were ambushed near Mobai and attacked with gunshots. My brother and a cousin died on the spot while many more were wounded. I was shot in the head and thought I was going to die. I spent the night in Dr. Kobba’s hospital before being transferred to the Nixon hospital in Segbwema. From there I was evacuated by helicopter to the military hospital in Freetown. Before I was placed in an ambulance, I remember a photographer taking shots of me up to when I was lifted into the waiting helicopter. Dr. Sheriff the Surgeon and Medical Director, in consultation with Mr. Olu Williams advised that I should be flown abroad for more thorough investigation and treatment. On my return home several weeks later, I called at the Nixon hospital to express gratitude to the staff for their care. My photographer turned up with photographs not just of my bandaged head, but the fellow had gone to Mobai and taken photographs of the vehicle in which I had been traveling. He charged one thousand leones for all the photographs; I gave him le500 and asked him to collect the balance from me at my hospital in Kenema. I never saw or heard from again; I had not even asked for his name.
Mr. Tejan-Kabbah had won the runoff election in February 1996 and was waiting to take over from Brigadier Julius Maada Bio as President. The Ivory Coast government had begun consultations with the NPRC government and the RUF leader Foday Sankoh who was in the bush in Kailahun.
A meeting was arranged between the parties in Yamoussoukro the political capital of the Ivory Coast. At the NPRC’s invitation President-elect Tejan-Kabbah nominated me to attend as an observer; I was Not a member of the NPRC delegation and as such I made no statement at the plenary session.
I had previously criticized Foday Sankoh in the Vision newspaper for failing to start his rebellion in his native Tonkolili district but in my home district of Kailahun. In another scathing criticism, I said he was not destined to lead this country as he had missed a wonderful opportunity of making allies with the NPRC, which had overthrown the APC government, which had been the primary objective of his movement. In a call to the BBC Focus on Africa programme I had openly criticized Robin Whyte for treating Foday Sankoh like a head of state in a programme about life behind RUF lines.
There I was in Yamoussoukro, face to face with Foday Sankoh who was to make a statement and I was not. The delegations had met informally at the Presidential palace; Foday Sankoh had shaken hands with everyone, but when he got to me, it was to demand the balance of his 500 leones. He then reminded me that he was the photographer at the Nixon hospital back in 1977! All I could gasp was “YOU?†Then we went to the meeting where he attacked me for formerly being in the APC and now in the SLPP.
Contrary to the misinformation by IBM Kamara in his standard times column, I was not there as Foreign Minister and therefore Foday Sankoh could not have refused to participate in the discussions unless President-elect Tejan-Kabbah dropped me. He had not even formed his cabinet at the time. The BBC correspondent speculated in the Focus on Africa programme that afternoon that I would probably be the country’s Foreign Minister. Before the plenary rose, Sankoh asked for a one-on-one meeting “with President Kabbah’s representative.â€
That meeting in his suite lasted more than two hours and he did most of the talking. He said he attacked from Kailahun because he found the Mende people more friendly and reliable. His own village was about four miles to Magburaka; his father was a staunch SLPP who could not be persuaded to go along with Dr. Karefa-Smart after the latter had left the SLPP and joined the APC.
Then I had to listen for more than thirty minutes to an audio cassette in which he had blasted Karefa-Smart. He told with glee how he treated the European and other nationals whom the RUF captured.
When I finally threw in a word and pinned him down to the purpose of the conference, he said he was sorry that he would have to disappoint me and all of us because he had to go back to the bush to consult his fighters. Yes, Sankoh even gloated over the number of my family members who had become his wives while he was in Kailahun and began to address me thenceforth as his-in-law. He narrated how my brother Captain Kai Banya was captured, tortured and killed.
Finally, I was to warn Tejan-Kabbah that the civilians should not trust the military. Next morning when he called on Maada Bio, he cautioned him that the civilians were not to be trusted. In a private conversation with Amara Esse, the Ivorian Foreign Minister he assured me that his government would do everything to prevent Sankoh from going back to the bush and Sankoh never did. There were other meetings with Sankoh when I became the Foreign Minister, but they were never the cause of press baiting of Dr. Sama Banya.
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