This article was first published on 18 April 2005 during the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) administration of Tejan Kabbah.
By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah
I read with amusement last Thursday Dr. Sama Banya’s statement that he has placed me and Concord Times in his “will not grant interview list.” Dr. Banya says he has granted interviews to editors and correspondents without discrimination because of his “firm belief in openness.”
“That notwithstanding if anyone breaches my confidence by taking my answers out of context and capitalizing on them, I make no fuss, no palaver, or no threat at all but to simply remove their names from my will grant interview list,” Sama Banya wrote in his Puawui column ( published in the Unity Newspaper on April 14,2005).
He says as of now Concord Times and me are now in that category and that he would not grant any personal interviews to us anymore. That is fine!
But Dr. Banya possibly omitted asking himself what benefit does someone derive in interviewing a politician who has succeeded in metamorphosing himself into virtually all-corrupt administrations in Sierra Leone? In other words, why would someone want to really interview Dr. Sama Banya?
Frankly, I have personally met Dr. Banya only once. That was not too long ago, and the circumstances of our meeting were based on him insisting on having a face-to-face interview with me. This was sometime in March, about a month ago. In fact, I had earlier called Dr. Banya to verify alleged rumors and reports that Charles Margai was returning to the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), but interestingly Dr. Banya was conspicuously furious with me because, according to him, I had published interviews and articles written by SLPP’s UK and Ireland Branch Publicity and Propaganda Secretary, Moijueh Kaikai and Sierra Leone’s former Ambassador to the United States, John Leigh, in which both politicians blamed Dr. Banya for the deteriorating image of the SLPP and the party’s abysmal failure to deliver on its electoral mandate to the people of Sierra Leone.
Dr. Banya said I had been unfair to him because, in his words, I failed to publish a three-sentence letter he had sent me in response to John Leigh and Moijueh Kaikai’s published statements a week ago. The truth is that I actually refused to publish the said letter because, like I told Dr. Banya, it was not worth publishing at all.
So, on his insistence, my colleague Ibrahim Seibureh and I agreed to meet Dr. Banya at State House for an interview. I presume Dr. Banya himself was surprised because I was not the type of person he had imagined. Of course, we gave Dr. Banya the opportunity, as any independent and objective newspaper, to respond to claims made by John Leigh and Moijueh Kaikai about the Dr. Banya’s role in the SLPP’s crisis.
Probably Dr. Banya has forgotten all that and he now considers us as biased and unfavorable to him. But this is nothing of a surprise to me and I believe I would even be left in a daze if Dr. Banya or any other chameleon-like politician would perceive our endeavors and sacrifices to this nation as a noble and patriotic venture. To be frank, I hold no grief against Dr. Banya and this is why I had avoided direct exchanges with him in the past. I now feel obliged to respond because Dr. Banya has wrongly misrepresented our stance on issues of national interest. We owe a responsibility to this nation, and it is our duty to raise alarm when issues are not done accordingly.
But I could understand why Dr. Banya feels so aggrieved over our fair and objective stance on the many issues that affect the country.
There is no need for me to state here that Dr. Banya wouldn’t be pleased with our activities because he is one of the obstacles of progress in this country. And it becomes meaningless to say that Dr. Banya is adamant to vacate the political scene of this country regardless of his obvious failure and his ineptitude to handle leadership affairs of whatever nature. This has now been confirmed by no less a person than Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Hon. Elizabeth Alpha-Lavalie who equally feels obliged to take over the party’s national chairmanship position from him. Sadly, Dr. Banya has failed to accept that it is good for him to take the exit door at least to give way for upcoming young generation leaders with the dynamic spirits of change within the SLPP.
For sure, I’m now forced to believe that John Leigh and Moijueh Kaikai’s frustrations with the party’s national leadership is solely concerned with the recalcitrant attitude of the party’s gerontocrats to allow transformations within the party’s executive structure. And this is something Dr. Banya remains culpable of, and his excuses for that are far-fetched from the reality of the party’s current situation. It is nothing secretive that Dr. Banya always sees himself fit to remain at the helm of things because, according to him, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill enjoyed the same privileges. But I doubt whether Dr. Banya has been able to make a fair comparison between Churchill’s activities and achievements to his? Sama Banya always refers to Churchill and other personalities as a way of excusing himself from visual failure or in defense of his government’s ineptitude in handling the country’s problems.
To be frank, I doubt why Sama Banya feels enthusiastic about his continuous participation in virtually all governments that have failed this nation? And I’m particularly worried over his incessant use of the past mistakes of others as excuses for his government’s woeful misperformance.
So Dr. Banya should understand that he has only succeeded in making a caricature of himself by saying that he would no longer grant any interview to Concord Times or me. At least, no one will blame us any longer if we publish any information relating to Sama Banya or the SLPP without his own version. We had bothered ourselves to interview Sama Banya in the past because of our dedication and commitment to good and objective journalism for which many excellently recognize us. But we miss nothing if Dr. Banya decides not to grant us any interview in future. His claims were that we had breached his confidence by taking his answers out of context and capitalizing on them. I really don’t know what he actually meant.
In the first place, why would someone want to misquote Sama Banya or take his answers out of context? As far as we are concerned, we report exactly what we are told by any individual we interview, and we make no mistakes in adding or omitting a word from it.
In actual fact, we owe Dr. Banya no apologies and we highly thank him for excluding us from his so-called “will grant interview list.” After all, he has already approached his Waterloo in politics. So, I really wonder, who wants to interview Sama Banya? In fact, we also henceforth declare a news blackout on Sama Banya!
This article was first published in the Concord Times in April 2025. We republish it today to help illustrate the enduring work of Africanist Press editor, Dr. Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, covering at least three regimes in postwar Sierra Leone. This article, as originally published, is still available on AllAfrica.com: https://allafrica.com/stories/200504180704.html