AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL SIERRA LEONEANS FROM A SELF — SPONSORED STUDENT AT LIMKOKWING UNIVERSITY OF CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY SIERRA LEONE.
Some of you keep politicizing the fate of the students of LIMKOKWING! Callously deviating from the plight of the young students just because the party you voted for is the party in power. This is how we fail our youth as a nation.
You can have whatever opinion you want, whether APC or SLPP, killing the dreams of those young people is detrimental not only to the students and the country, but yourselves as a political party. Give yourself a chance to think beyond party sentiments and see how vague an opinion you’ve been having, that wasting the dreams of those 1200 students is the way forward.
To those of you studying politics and economics at Fourbay College, Agriculture and biology at Njala University, considering our country’s availabe human resources, I urge you to think about your lives and careers after college. No profession would survive on its own in this day and age without technology. And think about the possibilities you have hiring foreign tech experts or collaborators to work with in realizing your dreams. In developing our motherland, we’ll have to collectively work as a team, as a people. Seeing your secondary school colleagues languishing as a result of being the subject of a political thug of war between the political elites should worry you. You should be equally worried that if it can happen to them today, it can happen to you as well one day. They never brought that to themselves, they know nothing about it. Tomorrow, another government would come and end the government subsidies on your college fees and end the government granting aid that some of your colleagues in the same colleges are benefitting from, when that happens, they’d use Limkokwing as an example to support their argument that paying your fees from the national coffers is a waste of state resources. You’d organize protests upon protests, and the more you protest the more you would be gassed and jailed by the security forces just like they’re doing to your friends at Limkokwing. You would have no one to cry to, you would have no one to add voice to your voices in your struggle. There is still enough time to support your secondary school friends in their struggle. There’s more you can do than keep buying to the divisive ideas of the politicians that by paying for the students at Limkokwing would be an injustice to you. Can’t you see that they’re playing the card of turning you against your friends?! Successive governments have been subsidizing your fees for years, providing government granting aid for politically connected students in your colleges for years, maintaining you in a constant state of slumber whilst they award their children, nephews and nieces scholarships to study abroad, depriving you of the quality education that you deserve just like their children. Limkokwing offers the quality that their children are receiving abroad, they do not want your friends to come and compete with their children tomorrow because they’ve successfully kept you in a mental prison that you can’t think beyond what they want you to understand. Don’t believe them when they tell you that by helping your friends at Limkokwing would be an injustice to you, they’d be right on one condition — that they do not have any plans for you guys, you guys complain for even the basic things that one could imagine of, that’s where they want to keep you whilst their children are having the best education in the world in conducive environments in Europe and America. They’re probably thinking that if they sponsor your friends at Limkokwing for them to have the top notch education that Limkokwing offers, you guys would demand more from them, and that would in turn contradict their plan of keeping you always a step or two below their children. Wise up and support your friends. Let’s not buy into the dirty tricks of the corrupt politicians who’ve kept us at the bottom of every human development index. Our generation should look out for one another. I come in peace.
I am a private student at Limkokwing. I spent 5 years on the sidelines after completing my high school education looking for a good college to study the field of my dream, I went through so many things during that period that I can’t publish publicly, some of my friends here would remember a point of desperation and disappointment at some point in time that I almost ended my dream of becoming a software engineer. Thanks to the moral support and encouragement that I received from some of you during that period that opened the door of my enrollment at Limkokwing. As I type this letter to you, my family have invested thousands of dollars in me to study at Limkokwing, but I’ve now found myself in the middle of a political thug of war, I’ve spent two years in a single academic year, almost growing frustration to a point I can’t absorb any longer. Neither of us brought this upon ourselves, we’re just being victims of our politicians thug of war. Please help us in whatever way you can! I hope this letter reaches as much audience as possible to come into our aide.
Your friend and brother,
Amadu Mustapha Bah
