By Titus Boye-Thompson :
History is littered with people who have exhibited traits of chicanery, mistrust and sedition but the ultimate end for such people is characterized by failure and deceit. To illustrate the point, it may be necessary to look at some recent examples that are still fresh in the minds of ordinary Sierra Leoneans. Valentine Strasser may have headed what was allegedly a popular coup but the truth be told, there is nothing democratic about a coup d’etat. What the NPRC did was to over throw a legitimate government elected by the people of Sierra Leone and one in fact that had set in motion a process to return the Country back to multi-party politics the very same year that it was overthrown.
So when the NPRC claim that their aim was to liberate the people of Sierra Leone, then rationally, what they meant was that they intended to dislodge the people from their hard earned move towards democracy and a legitimized change of political dispensation orchestrated by nothing other than people’s power and a responsive and responsible Government. In the end, the Coup plotters fared badly overall, they staged counter coups against each other, attempted to kill their leader by having him thrown overboard an airborne helicopter and finally had to be dragged screaming and kicking to hand over power to a democratically elected Government against their own base instincts which is to hold on to power by force. They did not fare well at all. The end for some of them is pitiful to say the least, and some of them have suffered or are suffering so much that now, the ordinary Sierra Leonean has nothing but pity for them. They were traitors, one and all and for that matter, they could not make the transition from Power hungry Soldiers to politicians. Next door in Liberia, the same can be said of General Samuel K Doe who ended up killing almost all of the people with whom he swept to power when he took over and summarily executed William Tolbert Jnr. That Country degenerated into full scale civil war and was destroyed beyond recognition. Like their counterparts in Sierra Leone, they amounted to nothing, failed to make the transition to civilian politics and in the end left their Country worse off than they met it.