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Michael F. Kallon       Kallonb@aol.com 3-26-2014 5:08 PM
A PETITION FOR KISSI BENDU DISTRICT IN SIERRA LEONE

MAKONA BOOK CLUB, INC.
KISSI BENDU DEVELOPMENT- SIERRA LEONE
www.makonabooks.com

2115 Alfred Drive
Apartment – E
Yeadon, Pennsylvania 19050
United States of America
Email address: Kallonb@aol.com


March 24, 2014


H. E. Ernest B. Koroma
President
State House, Freetown
Republic of Sierra Leone

Re: A Petition for Kissi Bendu District in Sierra Leone

Your Excellency,

I would like to bring to your attention the cries, molestation, and biased political system that the Kissi in the northeast of Sierra Leone have been forced to endure since independence. The three Kissi chiefdoms, Kissi Teng, Kissi Kama, and Kissi Tongi, lie in a fertile land near the Guinean and Liberian borders. The area is an international trading spot and agricultural oasis, and in the good old days, they supplied Freetown with edibles like yams, rice, plantains, bananas, and cash crops such as cacao, coffee, and more.

Your Excellency, you were aware of the Guinean invasion and their encroachment on Kissi land in the Yenga area, and the uncountable shuttle diplomacies the incursion caused both the SLPP and the APC governments to regain Yenga. It is in the same respect that I am reporting to your good office that the Guinean contingent molested and also assaulted the poor Kissi farmers, and as well as other ordinary Kissi men and women; in their bid to take Yenga by overwhelming military force, the Kissi were forced to abandoned laying farms in the area since 1998.

Your Excellency, we would also like to thank your government, the APC, the SLPP, and the government of President Alpha Conde of Guinea, for the humane approach all governments have taken to resolve the Yenga land issue with superior political maturity, after exhausting myriad shuttle diplomacies between the two countries. Today, the Kissi in the Yenga area have started laying farms, and food will soon be in abundance, and be supplied all over Sierra Leone. The two countries—Guinea and Sierra Leone—have the same political landscape, the same cultures, and the same tribes that have settled along their borders. Political instability was the least that anyone could pray for between these countries since all of us have families living in both countries. We would like to thank the APC government for its superb and ebullient diplomacy to resolve the Yenga issue.

Your Excellency, the history of the Kissi is the history of the APC and the history of the SLPP. With that in mind, I would like to draw your attention to 1968 when Sierra Leone was engulfed in a messy political crisis. The late Siaka P. Stevens escaped the topsy-turvy in Freetown and traveled as far as Koindu to his friend, my uncle, the late Kissi Chief Sahr Foryoh. President Stevens stayed in Koindu for over a week, and then escaped to Guinea, through Yenga where the late President Sekou Touré assisted. President Siaka Stevens returned to Freetown where he was declared the winner of the presidential election that year when the APC was born in Sierra Leone. S.I. Koroma, if he were alive today, would tell you about the many times he drove from Koindu to Freetown as a common driver. He was known to many Kissi and other drivers in the Kailahun District. The Kissi sent Hon. Tamba E. Juana through the Ganawah ruling family in Kangama, Kissi Teng; to represent them in Parliament and created Kissi Kama, Kissi Tongi, and Kissi Teng—today called Kissi Bendu.

Your Excellency, although the people of the Kissi Bendu area have voted for governments in Sierra Leone for decades, it still remains one of the most impoverished and underdeveloped areas, with no clinics, no hospitals, and no paved roads. Our school-age children sit on cold, hard floors in tents, festooned with palm branches, called schools, with no sports equipment. Our young and pregnant women die in childbirth or from illnesses that could be cured today. Yet the Kissi are also mindful of the sons and daughters of other tribes that were born and raised in the Kissi Bendu area, whose forebears were heartily welcomed in Kissi land with opened arms, and we have considered them all our kinsmen and kinswomen.

Your Excellency, I would like to present to your good office the names of a few Kissi sons and daughters from the Kissi Bendu area in Sierra Leone, who can be considered for government of any positions in the APC or in any government on our great country:

Dr. GMT Robert – Chemistry (Njala Campus, Bo Town)
Dr. Sahr Robert – Medical (Columbus, Ohio USA)
Dr. Jonathan Tengbeh – Engineering (London, UK)
Dr. Paul Tengbeh – Geography (FBC, Sierra Leone)
Dr. Michael Tengbeh – Not sure (Germany)
Dr. George Tengbeh – Geography (Zimbabwe)
Dr. Sahr Sellu – Medical (Military, Sierra Leone)
Dr. Sahr Gevao – Medical (School of Medicine, Sierra Leone)
Dr. Malvin Gevao – Engineering (Njala University, Sierra Leone)
Dr. Bondi Gevao – Chemistry (Kuwait)
Dr. Bernald Tamba Lebbie – Medical (Australia)
Dr. Andrew Weima – Engineering/Physics (Columbus, Ohio USA)
Dr. Matthew Gboku – Agricultural Economist (Freetown, Sierra Leone)
Dr. Alfred Saffa - Chemistry (Canada)
Dr. Sakila Nyuma Bondi (New York City/USA)
Mr. Michael Fayia Kallon – Masters in Public Administration (MPA)
PhD Candidate, Criminal Justice/Public Safety
Mr. Saah James – Degree in Community Welfare/Social
Development (Australia)
Mr. Victor Sahr Kpayah – Degree in Economics/ Public Policy (Australia)
Hon. Francis D. Tengbeh – Agricultural Development Officer (Freetown, Sierra)
Hon. Sahr Kpulun (Freetown, Sierra Leone)
Hon. Sahr Ngaingah (Freetown, Sierra Leone)
Mr. Tamba George Foryoh – Lab Technician (Canada)
Mr. Tommy Tengbeh (Koindu, Sierra Leone)
Mr. Sylvester Tamba Yonda (London, UK)
Ms. Sia Jeneh Mamie Kallon (nurse, New York, USA)
Ms. Rose Marie Tamba (RN-Nurse, Chicago, (USA)
Ms. Dukay Sia Ndoinjeh – RN-Nurse (Australia)
Ms. Agnes Sia Tommy (RN-Nurse, Australia) and more….

Your Excellency, your nomination of Hon. Nyuma Kortu, the first Kissi man from Kissi-Kama, to serve as Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Security in your government demonstrates the legitimacy of our existence as people of resolve who appreciate kindness. You have demonstrated your love for the Kissi by your interest in helping to develop chiefdoms in the country that has long being neglected politically and economically.

Your Excellency, history taught us that the Kissi land stretched from Yenga on the Guinean-Makona River border area and the Baeldu-Mendekorma border with Liberia as far as to Pedembu. The famous and fearsome warrior, Kai Londu, was a Mende/Kissi man. With such great men and great women as our forebears in the historic annals of our great country—Sierra Leone—the question that comes to anyone’s mind is why can’t the Kissi Bendu area be upgraded to the KISSI BENDU DISTRICT? It means that we have remained subjected to the Mende-dominated Kailahun District, and thus we have been abandoned and completely forgotten in a country that all of us call a nation (Sierra Leone).

Your Excellency, as reported from the Awareness Times newspaper in Sierra Leone, Honorable Minister of Energy & Power Oluniyi Robbin-Coker informed the newspaper that he was instructed by you, President Koroma, to ensure that some of the solar lights, slated for ongoing installation in district headquarter towns, should be installed in Koindu town on the road to Yenga. Although Koindu in the Kissi Teng chiefdom is not a district headquarter town, the residents are amongst the most deprived in the country, having suffered the brunt of the civil war in addition to now-ended years of occupation of their farmlands within and around Yenga by Guinean troops. Koindu used to be a thriving market town that served Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

Your Excellency, it is now widely known that as Sierra Leone’s head of state, you hold the fullest revival of the formerly booming Koindu market town in the Kissi area as something close to your heart. Awareness Times further reported that the plan was to have the central roundabout and parts of Koindu town to become brightly lit in the night with solar powered street lights, especially on the road known as Guinea Road which leads into the now liberated Yenga and to all chiefdom headquarters in Kissi Bendu.

Your Excellency, we hope that our ambition of a KISSI BENDU DISTRICT with headquarters in Koindu can become a dream come true. The Kissi will be launching a delegation to the State House in Freetown to make this request official.

Long live our unity in Sierra Leone!

Respectfully,




Michael Fayia Kallon
PRESIDENT/CEO
MAKONABOOK CLUB, INC.






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