Master in Our Own House

It has been a funny old military-type week in Africa. Even before that coup in Niger. This is the week when the UNICEF country representative, for unspecified sins, was expelled from The Gambia, with only 24 hours in which to pack her bags and leave.  It was also the week in which the President of Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma announced that this year, Armed Forces Day, Thursday, the 18^th February, was to be celebrated with a public holiday.

Here was a contrast in political culture. Whilst, in The Gambia, its quasi-military government peremptorily gave a member of the UN “family” her marching orders, in Sierra Leone, the head of the UN was audacious enough to tell the President that the declaration of a public holiday was not convenient for the UN. They already had their plans and schedules, you see, and it would have been too disruptive for them to re-schedule their grand designs to another day.

Now, up to the time of writing, the government has been publicly silent in expressing surprise, at least (a diplomatic way of indicating annoyance), that the UN had been too engrossed in its exertions to help the country out of its misery, that it could not find the time to observe some minimal courtesies.

I am not one to advocate hither and thither expulsions, but my disquiet became even more profound when I observed the head of the UN in Salone leave his compound that same February 18 day in his convoy of white-painted four-wheel drive Toyota Landcruisers, with UN soldiers stopping the main flow of traffic to ease his exit. And this was not the first time that I had caught the UN head behaving in a manner beloved of despotic African heads of state. Less than a week ago, we had had to endure the interruption of traffic flow, as he sped by in another white-painted convoy, escorted by motor cycle out-riders to boot.  

There has been an outcry in the local press, especially on the airwaves, where callers have called for strong action to be taken, but I suspect that nothing will be done, because we are beholden to external donors who provide considerable budget support for the government. The solution to this dependency predicament is simple: send all the vast numbers of NGO’s packing and try to live within our means. God knows, we have considerable means of our own, too many to be enumerated here. And then, we will become, in the words of Quebecoise nationalists in those heady days of not so long ago, “Maitre chez nous,” Masters in our own house.

Tell Fren Tru