13 October, 2008

Abdul Bero Kamara (Chief), USA

I Will Not Allow the SLPP Negative Press to Distract Me

The visit of President Ernest Bai Koroma to the United States was of a great success. The turn out at the dinner dance organized for the President, and the successful outcome of the President’s town hall meetings at Rutger University in New Jersey, and at The American University in Washington D.C., was very remarkable. Sierra Leoneans from all works of life have never been moved by a leader who truly demonstrated the heart of leadership by articulating his vision and achievements since he took over the reign of government as president of Sierra Leone.

It was around 5:30 p.m. on September 28, 2008 - a day I will always cherish.  I eventually found a parking spot at the American University. I was so amazed when I got out of my car to see a multitude of Sierra Leoneans, Americans, and students of the American University, arriving from different directions and heading towards Ward Hall auditorium, where the town hall meeting with President Ernest Bai Koroma was underway. Even though my mind was still fresh with frustration for the twenty minutes merry-go-round I had earlier on in finding a parking spot, I finally summed up courage when I saw Sierra Leoneans, and other nationalities, old as well as young, in different attires, squeezing themselves through the entrance of the auditorium to grab the front row seats. The main auditorium was jam-packed and ran out of seats.

The crowd capacity was so immense that, others were only fortunate to see our young and dynamic leader on a TV screen placed in another auditorium to handle the overflow of crowd.

By and large, I was flabbergasted to see the hallway between the two auditoriums over crowded with people of many ethnic and religious backgrounds desperately pleading with security officers at the main entrance for clearance to the main meeting hall. I walked authoritatively towards the officer at the main entrance, identified myself, and without any resistance I was ushered into the main room of the meeting. The honest truth is that I was amazed at the record breaking turn out, and to see Sierra Leoneans attending an occasion on time.

For forty five minutes President Ernest Koroma, gave a succinct and productive outline of his achievements. He further gave a thorough narration of his vision and what he intends to do for Sierra Leone in the next four years. President Ernest Bai Koroma, believes that vision is everything for a leader and it is utterly indispensable.  The President’s ambitious plan was then followed by a question and answer session. 

During the question and answer session, a member of the audience asked the President why there is negative reporting from the SLPP media, despite his many accomplishments in the short period of his presidency.

His Excellency President Ernest Bai Koroma cautiously responded emphatically in a loud and strong voice that no amount of negative reporting from the SLPP newspapers or its hired surrogates will distract him from fulfilling his promise to the people of Sierra Leone.

The voice of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of The Republic of Sierra Leone resonated through the jam packed auditorium, and I believe his pronouncements reached every corner of the SLPP establishment. For the benefit of those who were not present, I would like to use this opportunity to pass on this declaration by President Koroma. Again, be it known by all and sundry that the president of the Republic of Sierra Leone has categorically stated that, no amount of SLPP negative publicity from cynics and detractors will derail the positive strides of accomplishing his vision to transform Sierra Leone, and rid it from the doldrums of poverty and socio-economic stagnation. It is time to stop the lies, negative reporting and misinformation to the people of Sierra Leone. There is not an aorta of doubt in my mind that, by all cost the APC will move Sierra Leone from the retrogressive state caused by President Alhaji Tejan Kabbah, and the SLPP government to a more progressive state.

The President further emphasized that twelve months was more than enough for the opposition to accept reality, that the recently concluded elections were the best in the history of Africa.  No wonder president Koroma will be going to South Africa to receive a prestigious award!

President Koroma, further appealed to the audience that if anybody still has a problem with the outcome of the elections, those people will have to deal with the issue in the next four years. What a long wait!

Honestly, one thing that is sure of President Koroma is that he is a man of his word, a man of action, and an agent of change. A change every Sierra Leonean, regardless of political affiliation, now believes is certain to come only through the APC. 

Too many people simply fall into a comfortable niche in life and stay there rather than pursue goals of significance.  President Koroma cannot afford to do that. He is not like President Alhaji Tejan Kabbah, and his marauder SLPP cabinet ministers who did not ask themselves whether they wanted survival, success, or significance. President Koroma desires significance and success and therefore expends his time and energy in pursuit of his dreams.  Look at what he has done in twelve months, even his ardent critics are commending him for the astronomical success in twelve months.

Well some people like Chernoh Bah, may refer to the above commendation as bootlicking, or currying favor for political appointment, but on the contrary, I am genuinely speaking as a Sierra Leonean who has witnessed eleven years of rampant corruption and mismanagement by the SLPP kleptomaniac regime, despite the vast amount of abundant natural resources, and funds that were available at their disposal.  Besides, as a citizen of the world, I am at liberty to express my inalienable rights as enshrined in the Constitution of Sierra Leone and the UN Charter among them is my freedom of speech.

Even though I am grammatically challenged, needless to mention my inability to properly conjugate sentences, as the Professor of English at Oxford University Chernoh Bah asserted, as an accountant, I am only doing my level best to stop the new diabolic crusade of misinformation by the disorganized SLPP establishment, which is paranoid with the illusion that it has the super educated elites from all the Ivy League educational institutions around the world. But yet, they could not organize a better campaign to defeat the party that is famous for having a whole bunch of “illiterates,” as they purport.

Mr. Chernoh Bah went further to lash out at me through “The Awareness Times,” hallucinating and day dreaming that he had hit a home run. As a melancholy child, who is pathetic and contemptible, the new kid on the block (Chernoh Bah) missed the opportunity by failing to express himself grammatically in a better standard. In other words, in figurative terms, the pot was calling the tea kettle black.

Even though my original intention was not to respond to Mr. Bah's verbosity about me, for the record, I deem it necessary and relevant to debunk some of his cheap and inconsequential assertions. For comparative purposes in the battle for supremacy in English language between Mr. Chernoh Bah and myself, I would like readers to carefully look at the extract below from my so-called Professor Bah’s “Abdul Bero Kamara misplaced response.”

“What distinguishes some of us from Abdul Bero Kamara and his likes is the fact that we are not political opportunists, bootlickers and vomit-sucking lackeys who are willing to sacrifice their consciences for menial political posts and trivial appointments in a government that remains insensitive to the real problems facing the ordinary masses whose business and interest do not go beyond their ability to have a single meal a day.”

I am not a professional journalist as opposed to Mr. Bah, but I would respectfully like the English teachers and students to analyze grammatically the above underlined sentences written by a man who spent four years reading English at College.

Meanwhile, I would like to seize this moment to dissect carefully some of the best expressions written by a professional journalist in the name of Chernoh Bah. To be candid, it might be a waste of energy and valuable time to respond fully to every statement made by Mr. Bah. Like President Koroma, I will not allow to be distracted from my noble mission, which is to expose the malicious, dangerous and pathologic lies being disseminated by the SLPP newspapers. Also, it is imperative to put to check those subjective and bias opinions from people like Mr. Chernoh Bah, who needs some vitamins or body conditioning so that he does not look any more like those Somalian peddlers, who were roaming every corner of Freetown in the late 70's.

Before I proceed with my grammatical analysis, it is essential that we know what grammar is in English. The reason is because Mr. Bah asserted that “For a long time he has never come across someone grammatically challenged as Abdul Bero Kamara”.  Well, The College Oxford Dictionary defines Grammar as the rules for forming the words and sentences of a language, or the structure and system of a language or of languages in general, usually considered to consist of syntax and morphology.

To be precise, there are very important specific rules and guidelines that govern both written and spoken English, which is covered under the umbrella of a term called GRAMMAR.  Both Mr. Bah and our readers will agree with me that in English the general rule is standard. Therefore, failure to follow every aspect of the grammatical rules, be it in the perimeter of syntax, or morphology, that individual is subjected to having committed a grammatical error. For instance, the improper use of comma, comma splice, capitalization, subject-verb agreement and the list goes on are all grammatical errors.

More importantly, in some professions like journalism, in which a student’s major concentration is in English, I believe their writings should be held to a higher standard.  Besides typographical error, there should be no excuses when a journalist is unable to write a simple, concise, coherent, and grammatical error-free sentences.

The irony is Mr. Bah, the professional journalist who believes that he has expressed himself to the best of his ability, failed miserably to write better grammatical sentences. If his intention was to prove that he is supreme in written English, unfortunately I am not impressed. And by all accounts, Mr. Chernoh Bah, the professional journalist is far worse in written English as compared to Mr. Abdul Kamara, the accountant.  Again carefully read below the underlined sentence culled from Mr. Bah's article. “So what were the circumstances that helped transform a tormented and embattled politician struggling to hold onto a mere political party leadership at the time into a president of a country overnight”?       

The above sentence is below the normal standard of journalistic writing, it is incomprehensible for any kind of readership, tautological, and above all full of grammatical errors.

Without any prejudice, the entire article was abysmal, especially when it happens to come from the penmanship of a professional journalist.  One does not have to be a grammarian to pin point many of these grammatical flaws committed by Mr. Bah. Among them are tautology, verbosity, garbled, ambiguous sentences, lack of conciseness, and lack of sentence variety, monotonous sentences, and above all Mr. Bah, inability to know when to use comma, and his persistent use of comma splice was alarming and discreditable.  If that is the best Mr. Bah can come up with as a professional journalist, I will recommend he takes a crash course in grammar.  I will leave the rest to English Professors, and students, to further analyze the Abdul Bero Kamara misplaced response from Mr. Chernoh Amadu Bah for more grammatical boo-boos. Until then, I rest my case.

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