In what may come to be recognized as the ultimate sacrifice one can ever make on politics, the signature of Dr Mathew Wilson Samura Kamara to the peace accord that followed the international community supervised dialogue in Freetown has saved a lot of anguish, false prosecution, political witchhunt, acrimony and frustration that were the hallmarks of the SLPP regime in the past 5 years. Yet above all the ramifications of the agreement, some began to blame Dr Samura Kamara for having fallen short of achieving an elections rerun or other measures that were in part unreasonable expectations in the first instance. (Photo: Sengeh and Samura after the signatures).

Dr Samura Kamara was thrown to the wolves by the very people he has now saved from financial ruin. Yes, it is true that many in the APC have succumbed to the villainous exercise of power by this government but to expect that in the twinkle of an eye, all those wrongs would be outright by just one man is a herculean task even to big to be believed. The question one should ask in the aftermath of this Dialogue is this, “who benefits?” a quick and succinct answer to this one can opine is that Dr Samura is the sorest loser and Ernest Bai Koroma the greatest winner.

To those who wish to argue this, I would suggest that the APC does not include the name of Ernest Bai Koroma in any list of beneficiaries they may have to draw up as mandated by the peace accord because, by rights, Ernest Koroma has resigned from the APC so he cannot be called into any issue that affects serving APC members. If this is done, then this talk about sabotaging the peace accord would lose traction and Ernest Bai Koroma will easily fight his legal battles in court in his own name and God help him if he is found guilty.

There are those who firmly believe that the whole structure of the peace accord was intended to harm Dr Samura Kamara and to destabilise his support within the party for the simple reason that if for any reason Ernest Koroma has it in his twisted mind he can be qualified to run as flag bearer in 2028 then he would easily defeat a discredited Dr Samura Kamara. What utter rubbish this thinking holds can only be actualized when you consider that the greatest weapon in their arsenal to bring back Ernest Koroma is Adebayor!

For the rest of the APC membership, it is critical that they see this peace accord for what it is. It was not Samura Kamara’s decision to hand over power to a party that did not win the elections in 2018. It was the evil plans of those who wanted a third term agenda for Ernest Koroma who cooked up this scheme, that handing over to Maada Bio would allow him to change some of the entrenched clauses in the Constitution such that after his two terms, Ernest would return and then hand over power again to Maada when he himself wishes to come back after another two terms of Ernest Koroma.

Unless you are not a thinking man, you would not see the utter foolishness of this plan, yet this crop of politicians wishes to impose this grand fraud on the rest of us. The peace accord did not give Samura Kamara anything he never had nor did it save him from losses. You cannot persecute an innocent man. If Palo Conteh can walk away from a treason trial so too can Dr Samura Kamara and for many of us who believe in his integrity, we are sure that he would have been acquitted of any charges against him. Interestingly, this cannot be said for many other APC members except those who were selling out to the government in secret, those who were making plans to cross over like Alpha Khan and Victor Foh or those who broke ranks like Mohamed Bangura and Thompson to save the blushes of a government under criticism of being illegitimate.

More than most, Ernest Baau Koroma not only gets to walk free from all the egregious charges against him but his daughter also gets to walk free from a murder trial for which Daramy and George-Williams were incarcerated. To say then that Koroma has helped Samura Kamara in any way during the tenure of this hiatus, from the campaign for 2023 till now would be a major lie yet Dr Samura Kamara has saved the skin of the entire APC party by just one signature. Yet the ungrateful ones still blame the man, but they did it to Christ?

Courtesy: By Titus Boye-Thompson, Prampram Ghana