Embittered indigenes and residents of Kailahun are disappointed with the Sierra Leone Peoples Party over what they claimed “the way some elders and party officials treated the burial ceremony of their fallen comrade and National Publicity Secretary, Hon. Musa Tamba Sam”.
former SLPP National Publicity Secretary
“We will wait for Somanoh and others in Kailahun!” an angry SLPP supporter said.
Most of the supporters were angry because of the party’s failure to lobby with the Government for the body to be taken to Kailahun, but the absence of the party’s Chairman, Somanoh Kapen III, Hon. Solomon Berewa and others, infuriated them more.
However, another supporter said they should not blame the former vice president and that he would have been at the ceremony had he been strong and healthy.
The supporters, most of them from Kailahun, still want the remains of the late man to be taken to Kailahun.
“We will rebury the remains after the Ebola crises,” a female supporter said determinedly.
Hundreds of supporters of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) had stormed the precincts of the Connaught Hospital mortuary in central Freetown to stop what they described as attempts to bury the remains of their fallen comrade and National Publicity Secretary, Hon. Musa Tamba Sam, “the Ebola way”.
The enraged supporters protested against the Ebola burial team taking charge of the burial of a man they considered as a “senior statesman”, describing the move as total disrespect to the former opposition lawmaker and party spokesman.
The outspoken opposition politician died at the 34 Military Hospitals in Freetown in the early hours of Monday March 2 after a protracted illness. His remains were immediately taken to the Connaught Hospital mortuary where a swap test was conducted, with the cause of death said to be unrelated to the deadly Ebola virus.
The protesters complained that it was unfair for the National Ebola Response Centre (NERC) to have allegedly ordered the Ebola burial team to go ahead and bury Mr. Sam even though plans were underway by the late man’s party and relatives to convey his remains to his home district of Kailahun for traditional funeral rites.
“We must take him to Kailahun because he did not die of Ebola,” an incensed SLPP supporter, Usman Lahai, spluttered outside the Connaught Hospital mortuary. “Tamba Sam was not only the Publicity Secretary of the main opposition party, the SLPP, but also a statesman who has served this country as former Member of Parliament. The ruling government is doing this simply because the late man belonged to the opposition party.”
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