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“Another 5 years of the APC not good” SLPP presidential contender claims

Author: Tatafway Tumoe - SEM

Professor Ritchard M’bayo, one of the contenders for the presidency under the SLPP says another five years of the All People’s Congress party in Sierra Leone will not be good for the country. According to M’bayo, there is no hope for the country under the APC as it is basically a continuation of the corrupt past and no amount of a new leadership can change the stigma of corruption and nepotism that the present government continues to maintain at the detriment of the country’s development aspirations. He made this statement during an exclusive interview with Sierra Express Media recently. (Photo: Prof. Ritchard M’bayo)

Already, Sierra Leone People’s Party members in Kono District in a strong display of unity have chosen Professor Ritchard M’bayo to be the presidential candidate in the 2012 elections.

A meeting comprising of highly placed SLPP stalwarts and community leaders in Kono have already agreed that Professor M’bayo becomes the District’s choice for president.

The fact that the vice president of Sierra Leone is a Kono, added to the Kono First lady has not dampened the euphoria of the Kono SLPP in choosing Ritchard M’bayo.

Kono district is seen to be the contending ground in the next elections, for both the President and the Parliamentary. As a result, the call for and support for a Kono contender in the presidential race is now the focal point in the district.

Notwithstanding the presence of a vice president in the present administration, Kono continues to be of minimal importance when it comes to national development.

“The present government has woefully failed to fulfill its promises not only to the people of Kono, but the nation as a whole,” said M’bayo, and continued: “By all accounts, the APC government is in trouble. It has failed to deliver the goods and Sierra Leoneans today are poorer than they were before that party came to power. People today are faced with unprecedented hardships all over the country; youth employment has spiraled out of control, given rise to the recent spate of armed robberies on the highways; and in the homes of our people.”

The name Ritchard Tamba M’bayo had already become a household name long before his foray into politics. As assistant professor and later professor in Bowie State University, Maryland in the United States, he has been one of the leading figures promoting Sierra Leone in that part of the world. A significant number of Sierra Leoneans in the US also benefited from the largesse and good will of the professor.

Professor Ritchard Tamba M’bayo was born in Kainkordu, Soa Chiefdom in Kono District. He attended schooling in Kainkordu from there he went on to the Yengema Secondary School and the Jaiama Secondary School before proceeding to the US where he rose to become a professor of journalism.

In a paper he presented during a conference on the rebel war in Sierra Leone in 1995 at Howard University, Washington DC, M’bayo became the first exponent of behavioral change when he presented a paper titled: “To Change Our Society, We Must Change Ourselves.” It was during this conference that Professor M’bayo made the following prophetic observation: “Greed, disorder, apathy, lethargy, unpatriotic tendencies-all provide answers to our present predicament.

“But perhapsÂ the most significant of them all is that for nearly 30 years, a handful of men and women of the APC oligarchy, while riding high in our society, had left the rest of their countrymen and women to drown in abject poverty. And while the APC led our nation towards the abyss, the rest of us found comfort in the despicable tyranny of silence which now makes all of us accomplices in the crimes committed.

“The key word in this effort is CHANGE, that is, change of a revolutionary proportion. Such a change must inevitably begin with us; with our selfish tendencies and our apathy towards the less fortunate members of our society. For us to change that society, we must inevitably change ourselves.”

Meanwhile, Professor M’bayo has returned to Nigeria where he is a Fulbright Scholar, lecturing at the American University of Nigeria.

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