Is Lansana Fadika Trying Too Hard?

Lansana Fadika

Lansana Fadika is the most glorified of the recent political party turncoats in Sierra Leone these days. Fadika, who until recently was the Western Area Chairman of the opposition Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) is now a poster boy of the ruling All People's Congress (APC). Lansana Fadika who was APC, before he became SLPP and is now APC, left the SLPP because the candidate of his choice, the much respected Usu Boie Kamara, failed in his aspiration to lead the party into the forthcoming elections. In a sign of things to come, Lansana Fadika recently gave his support to the candidacy of the incumbent president Ernest B. Koroma, while he was still an opposition strong man, in a stage managed event that was graced by the presence of the country's first lady.

SLPP Fadika

Just a few weeks after the pappy show, Fadika publicly switched his party allegiance to the APC, stating that he regretted joining the SLPP who were in his words "full of selfish people who cared only for themselves and their families". He said that all he encountered during his days as an SLPP strongman was frustration, worries and disappointment.

APC Fadika

Since he rejoined the APC, Lansana Fadika, has been trying very hard to allay the fears of some APC members who were suspicious of his intentions that he was now a true turncoat and that all his past vocal attack on the APC was now a thing of the past.

APC and Fadika have a mutually suspicious recent history that is making him try too hard in my opinion to convince members of his new party that he is not just another Judas Iscariot looking for his own 30 pieces of Silver. On Friday March 13th, 2009, while he was then an SLPP strongman, Lansana Fadika had his head bursted by APC supporters during an attack on the opposition SLPP party headquarters in Freetown, an incident that provoked international outcry as several women working in the party offices that day were brutally raped by thugs of the ruling APC. APC supporters at that time accused Fadika stage managing and inciting entire the incident. The Secretary General of the North American branch of the APC Abdul Bero Kamara at that time wrote the following:

"Contrary to the negative reports which are being circulated by the SLPP mouthpiece that the APC supporters were responsible for the melee that occurred on Friday 13th, 2009 at Wallace Johnson Street outside the SLPP headquarters, according to an independent eye witness report, the melee was provoked by the SLPP chairman for the Western Area, Mr. Lansana Fadika.On the day of the incident, Mr. Fadika mobilized SLPP supporters to put a barricade in front of his party headquarters in order to prevent jubilant APC supporters who where accompanying the Mayor Herbert G. Williams to his office after commissioning the clock tower in front of the Eastern Police Station, a project which they (SLPP) failed to implement despite of all the resources they had as a government."

Lansana Fadika has millions of miles to travel before he can really convince members of the APC that he is truly with them, because of some of his past statements, especially to the Freetown media houses. In a famous interview with Sierra leone's leading sensational tabloid Journalist Sylvia Blyden, in which she was surprised that Fadika who came from strong APC lineage would declare 100% support for SLPP, the exchange went thus:

Syvia Blyden: 100% SLPP? Are you sure? Is there no small room for doubt? No niggling doubt?
Lansana Fadika:  If it was mathematically possible to get 1 million percent, I would reply that I am 1 million percent sure. I am SLPP. I am green. I am staying green because it is freshness and fresh is healthy. Yes, I am SLPP to the backbone.

Some of these past statements are now coming to haunt Fadika in his desperation to be accepted into the inner core of the APC. To show his desperation, he publicly announced that he had all SLPP secrets and that he was going to make all this known to APC in order for the party to win the upcoming September presidential elections. Some APC people remain weary of a politician who would so easily be willing to divulge ex-party secrets, worrying that he could do the same to them in the future.

Another APC strongman Abdul Aziz Nabe, who once famously and foolishly threatened to lift the skirts of the American Ambassador to Sierra, June Carter Perry in a widely castigated article, once accused Lansana
Fadika of trading in illegal diamonds with the ambassador, in a calculated move to destroy the reputation of the ambassador.

Head bursted for SLPP

Thigh stabbed for APC

A couple of weeks ago Fadika, after promising to deliver Freetwn for the APC, a promise he also recently made for SLPP, went with a group of his henchmen to the Fourah Bay area of Freetown where local ward elections were being conducted. In a confrontation that followed, Lansana Fadika was stabbed in the leg, gaining the reputation as the only politician in Sierra leone who had had his head bursted by the APC and legs stabbed by the SLPP.

Fadika yelling as doctor pokes wound.