Sierra Leone is presently embroiled in bitter and devastating civil war. Millions have been displaced, tens of thousands have endured untold suffering, and thousands more have either been maimed for life or killed. We offer this proposal as a way out of the wilderness and as a first step toward rebuilding our nation.

Our plan is simple. We must return Sierra Leone to the people of Sierra Leone, allowing each community the opportunity to rebuild their homes and farms, shops and factories. We therefore propose a transitionary period of largely local governance during which national affairs would be entrusted to a council of our traditional local leaders:

• A Paramount Chief from each district, with the Mayor of Freetown, will assemble as an Executive Council to manage a transition to a new representative government.
• A distinguished panel of Commonwealth jurists will be appointed by the Commonwealth Secretariat to advise the Executive Council in the process of transition, and to adjudicate any matters pertaining to membership in the Executive Council.
• Each chiefdom shall have the authority during the transition period to form a militia to assure local security.
• The Executive Council will call a constitutional convention within two years, to which all Sierra Leoneans will be invited.

We offer this proposal in the fervent hope for peace and democracy in Sierra Leone.

Our proposal developed out of discussions on LeoneNet. LeoneNet is an Internet electronic forum devoted to discussions on Sierra Leone. As participants in this forum, we are domiciled in different parts of the world, connected only by computer networks. While many of us have never met personally, we do share one common interest: a concern for the future of Sierra Leone.

Our concern for Sierra Leone leads us to the conclusion that anything that shows promise of bringing peace and stability to Sierra Leone, whether it is unorthodox, radical or mundane, should be seriously considered for implementation as we grope for solutions to the worst nightmare our country has ever experienced.

Given the existing security situation in Sierra Leone, we believe that an election now would be inappropriate. We believe Sierra Leoneans need time to think about how they wish to be ruled in the Second Republic. We therefore propose an interim government as well as a new security arrangement. Given the stated views of the combatants in the present crisis, we sincerely hope that an Executive Council comprising of Paramount Chiefs from the provinces, administrator of the Western Area, and the Mayor of Freetown, will provide the type of politically neutral interim government that all sides will find acceptable.

We implore Sierra Leoneans to give our proposal their ultimate consideration. In particular, we urge both the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) to give the people of Sierra Leone their inalienable right to discuss this proposal freely, so that for once in a long time, they can assert their sovereignty.

 Since March, 1991, Sierra Leone has been embroiled in a senseless fratricidal war, which reportedly has killed over twenty thousand of our people, while even more have been maimed. Although a lot has happened politically since the first shot was fired, the war has continued unabated. Presently, more than a third of the nation’s population are locked in Kenema and Bo, and are dying from starvation and lack of medicine. This new development threatens to turn the war’s impact into genocide against the people who are trapped in these areas, and calls for international attention.

The RUF had claimed that they took up arms in order to liberate the people of Sierra Leone from All Peoples Congress (APC) government of General Joseph Saidu Momoh. Their actions created the environment that led to the overthrow of that government by NPRC. Hence, many Sierra Leoneans felt that, among other things, the coup would bring an end to the war, being that its perpetrators had said it was necessary to remove what appeared to be a dictatorial regime. Dozens of months later, the war continues, with dire implications on the whole country. There have been talks of peace-talk, and more recently, there was agreement to pursue a negotiated settlement, which understandably, brought delight and relief to most Sierra Leoneans. But just as surprisingly fast as the news of possible negotiated settlement raised the hopes of us all, they were quickly dashed by reports of RUF’s acts of destruction and indiscriminate killing of civilians in the Southern Province. This new development does not bode well for the peace process, which means that the country’s scarce human and other resources will continue to be wasted on the battlefield, while the rest of the country languishes in abject poverty.

This has got to stop. We need an interim system of governance that would allow peaceful transition to conventional democracy. We believe that a system that has proven itself and is respected by all Sierra Leoneans, irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds, is what Sierra Leone needs at the current moment., an interim government of Paramount Chiefs and the Mayor of Freetown (henceforth referred to in this document as The Executive Council) in our opinion, is the best system of interim governance for Sierra Leone at the moment.

We gratefully acknowledge that by keeping the country together, even in its current fractious state, the NPRC has achieved a measure of success. For their part, by starting the process that led to the overthrow of the erstwhile Momoh regime, the RUF have achieved their primary goal for taking up arms in the first place. Hence, it is now time for both NPRC and RUF to consider peace in the interest of the country whose claim is at stake. We believe that our proposed plan for an interim government of an Executive Council can facilitate a peaceful transition to civil democratic government that would appeal to all peace loving Sierra Leoneans and could in fact be a model for Africa as a whole.

Our proposal would not require any more funds than we already have since the basic institutions are already in place. We are concerned that the current security in the country is inadequate for conducting genuinely free and fair elections. Hence, we urge the NPRC to shelve that idea for now and in its place, we propose that the NPRC hand over power to an Executive Council as already explained. We propose the Executive Council to consist of one Paramount Chief from each district and the Mayor of Freetown, who shall be collectively vested with executive authority during an interim period of at least two years, using relevant sections of the independence constitution as the legal framework to guide their day-to-day actions. A reconstituted Supreme Judiciary comprising of eminent jurists from the Commonwealth with a majority of its members being West African Commonwealth citizens, shall provide the check on the Executive Council, with powers to judge whether the Executive Council’s actions are consistent with transition to a new government goal.

In addition to the day-to-day running of the interim government, the Executive Council shall be tasked to convene a constitutional convention, to which every Sierra Leonean would be invited to participate. The Convention shall be empowered to review the independence constitution for possible amendments so that it can be responsive to current situation. Such amendment(s) would then be ratified by popular vote of the Sierra Leonean electorate. Once properly ratified, and elections held, the Executive Council must then hand power over to the newly elected government.

The NPRC (in their public pronouncements) have been suing for peace, without preconditions, since they seized power. Hence, we believe that they would welcome this proposal if it would bring genuine peace to our beloved land. We believe that the RUF would also find this proposal acceptable because of their long-held position that they would only negotiate with a representative government of Sierra Leone. Therefore, an executive government of the form described, shall satisfy their basic condition for negotiating an end to this unfortunate war. With this proposal, everybody is a winner, but most importantly, Sierra Leone would again have peace, which is necessary for the arduous task of rebuilding the country into the kind of paradise it used to be.

If we have learned any lessons from the current war, the most important of them is that never again should we allow the coercive powers of the state to be used against the people of Sierra Leone for no legally defensible reasons. The use of the armed forces such as Internal Security Units (ISUs) by a political machinery to perpetuate violence on the people of Sierra Leone in order to sustain leadership was indeed, a very sad part of our recent political history. This shall have no place in a new constituted Sierra Leone should our proposal be implemented.

Another painful lesson we have learned from this war is that our current defense structure, which is centered around a Freetown-based military-cum-political elite, has shown itself to be a very ineffective arrangement. It has proven incapable of dealing with the sort of security problems that we have faced during the past four years. It is likely to be inadequate in the face of the security problems we might face in the future. That the RUF have been successful at mounting guerrilla activities at will throughout most of the country, suggests that we need to move away from the conventional defense structure. In its place, we are suggesting a two-tiered defense structure. At the bottom tier, we suggest that each chiefdom be authorized to raise a well-trained, armed militia, that shall serve as a reserve force.

Each chiefdom militia shall be under the control of the respective Paramount Chief. Paramount Chiefs shall be empowered to call the militia into action on short notice during an emergency. However, the Paramount Chief shall seek the advice of the Executive Council of Paramount Chiefs through the Provincial Secretary within 48 hours after the start of such operations. The Executive Council or the legally constituted government at the time, shall be empowered to levy punishment when a Paramount or group of Paramount Chiefs deploy the militia in way(s) determined to be inconsistent with its primary purpose; which is, to defend chiefdom(s) against present and future aggressors.

The key advantage of the chiefdom militia is that it can be called into action more quickly than the national army, which, experience has taught us, may not be capable of responding quickly to disturbances in remote parts of the country. The local militia, conversant with its turf, can therefore provide very adequate stopgap measures that would slow down the aggressors until the Republic of Sierra Leone Military forces (RSLMF) arrive. We believe that, had such a defense structure been operative when the RUF attacked Nomo Farma, for instance, the RUF’s advance would have been slowed down first by the Nomo militia. Had the attackers overwhelmed the Nomo militia by their sheer size, or by the element of surprise, the Tunkia, Koya and Dama militias would have become the necessary defense until the arrival of RSLMF. This would have given the latter a better defense posture from which to route the invaders. But, to wait for the Paramount Chief of Nomo to come to Kenema to inform the police, and for the CPO in Kenema to radio the Ministry of the Interior in Freetown, which then informs the President, who consults his national security team, before troops are sent from Daru to Nomo gives the aggressors far too much time to infiltrate the hinterland. This, in our opinion, explains why the RUF was able to rapidly capture large tracks of territory within a very short period. The chiefdom militia would militate against this in the future.

Another major advantage of the militia proposal is that it would serve as an effective deterrent to future would-be dictators who would use the nation’s armed forces against its citizens solely for political reasons. The spectre of the government unleashing ISUs in the past, in order to stifle dissent and defraud the people of Sierra Leone of the right to choose their government would belong to a distant past in our painful political history were each chiefdom to have an armed militia to defend its people against state-sanctioned political terrorism. The RSLMF shall be on the upper tier of the defense structure, their role being one of training the local militia in military tactics, on one hand, and becoming the force of last resort in future disturbances. Hence, the RSLMF shall be reconstituted such that it can function effectively as a rapid deployment force for use in disturbances that are too big for the local militia to handle alone.

Although radical and bold as it would seem, the proposal is unequivocally balanced and applicable; and we trust that judgment will be exercised in pondering over it. More so, we solicit understanding and support for the proposal.

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