Ahmad Tejan Kabbah
Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was a Sierra Leonean politician who served twice as the 3rd President of Sierra Leone, from 1996 to 1997 and again from 1998 to 2007. An economist and attorney by profession, Kabbah spent many years working for the United Nations Development Programme. He retired from the United Nations and returned to Sierra Leone in 1992.
In early 1996, Kabbah was elected leader of the Sierra Leone People's Party and was the party's presidential candidate in the country's first free presidential election later that year. He was elected with 59% of the vote, defeating his closest rival, John Karefa-Smart of the United National People's Party, who had 40% in the runoff vote and conceded defeat. International observers declared the election free and fair. Kabbah campaigned on a promise to end the civil war if elected president. During his inauguration speech as president, Kabbah repeated the promise to end the civil war, which he indeed achieved later in his presidency.
A deeply devoted Muslim, Kabbah was born in Pendembu, Kailahun District in Eastern Sierra Leone, though he was raised in the capital Freetown. Kabbah was an ethnic Mandingo. Kabbah was Sierra Leone's first and currently the only Muslim head of state of the country.
Kabbah's first marriage, in 1965, was to Patricia Tucker, a devout Christian from the Sherbro ethnic group and a native of Bonthe District in Southern Sierra Leone. He and Patricia Kabbah had five children. The two were often seen together in public before his presidency. She was very influential during his presidency, focusing mainly on humanitarian issues, and was outspoken on the need to end the civil war. She died from an illness in 1998 and thus did not live to see the war's end in 2002.
A year after he left office as president, and ten years after the death of his wife Patricia, Kabbah married Isata Jabbie Kabbah, an ethnic Mandingo and a Muslim in an Islamic wedding ceremony in Freetown. They remained married until he died in 2014.
Most of Kabbah's time in office was influenced by the civil war with the Revolutionary United Front, led by Foday Sankoh, which led to him being temporarily ousted by the military Armed Forces Revolutionary Council from May 1997 to March 1998. He was soon returned to power after military intervention by the Economic Community of West African States, led by Nigeria. Another phase of the civil war led to the United Nations and British involvement in the country in 2000.
As President, Kabbah opened direct negotiations with the RUF rebels to end the civil war. He signed several peace accords with the rebel leader Foday Sankoh, including the 1999 Lomé Peace Accord, in which the rebels, for the first time, agreed to a temporary ceasefire with the Sierra Leone government. When the cease-fire agreement with the rebels collapsed, Kabbah campaigned for international assistance from the British, the United Nations Security Council, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States to help defeat the rebels and restore peace and order in Sierra Leone.
Kabbah declared the civil war officially over in early 2002. Tens of thousands of Sierra Leoneans across the country took to the streets to celebrate the end of the war. Kabbah went on to easily win his final five-year term in office in the presidential election later that year, defeating his main opponent Ernest Bai Koroma of the main opposition All People's Congress with 70.1% of the vote–the largest margin of victory for a free election in the country's history. International observers declared the election free and fair.
Background
Youth and education
Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was born on February 16, 1932, in the rural town of Pendembu, Kailahun District in the Eastern Province of British Sierra Leone. Kabbah's father, Abu Bakr Sidique Kabbah, who worked as a businessman and a deeply religious Muslim man, was an ethnic Mandingo of Guinean descent from Kambia District in northern Sierra Leone. Kabbah's mother, Haja Adama Coomber Kabbah, was also a deeply religious Muslim and a member of the Mende ethnic group from the Coomber family, a Chieftaincy ruling house based in the rural town of Mobai, Kailahun District in eastern Sierra Leone. A devoted Muslim himself, Kabbah's first name Ahmad means "highly praised" or "one who constantly thanks God" in Arabic language. Kabbah was a fluent speaker of several languages including English, French, Susu, Mende, Krio and his native Mandinka language. Though born in the Kailahun District, Kabbah grew up in the capital, Freetown.Though a devoted Muslim, Kabbah received his secondary education at the St. Edward's Secondary School, the oldest Catholic secondary school in Freetown. He also married a Catholic, the late Patricia Kabbah, who was an ethnic Sherbro from Bonthe District in Southern Sierra Leone. Together the couple had five children.
Kabbah received his higher education at the Cardiff College of Food Technology and Commerce and University College Aberystwyth, Wales, in the United Kingdom, gaining a Bachelor's degree in Economics in 1959. He later studied law, and in 1969 he became a practicing Barrister-at-Law and a member of the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, London.
Career
Kabbah spent nearly his entire career in the public sector. He served in the Western Area and in all the Provinces of Sierra Leone. He was a District Commissioner in Bombali and Kambia, in Kono and in Moyamba and Bo. He later became Permanent Secretary in various Ministries, including Trade and Industry, Social Welfare, and Education.United Nations
Kabbah was an international civil servant for almost two decades. After serving as deputy Chief of the West Africa Division of the UN Development Programme in New York City, he was reassigned in 1973 to head the Programme's operation in the Kingdom of Lesotho, as Resident Representative. He also headed UNDP operations in Tanzania and Uganda, and just before Zimbabwe's independence, he was temporarily assigned to that country to help lay the groundwork for cooperation with the United Nations system.After a successful tour of duty in Eastern and Southern Africa, Kabbah returned to New York to head UNDP's Eastern and Southern Africa Division. Among other things, he was directly responsible for coordinating UN system assistance to liberation movements recognized by the Organization of African Unity, such as the African National Congress of South Africa, and the South West African People's Organization of Namibia.
Before his retirement in 1992, Kabbah held a number of senior administrative positions at UNDP Headquarters in New York, including those of deputy director and Director of Personnel, and Director, Division of Administration and Management.
Political career in Sierra Leone
After the military coup in 1992, he was asked to chair the National Advisory Council, one of the mechanisms set up by the military to facilitate the restoration of constitutional rule, including the drafting of a new constitution for Sierra Leone. He reputedly intended his return to Sierra Leone to be a retirement, but was encouraged by those around him and the political situation that arose to become more actively involved in the politics of Sierra Leone.First term as president
Kabbah was seen as a compromise candidate when he was put forward by the Mende-dominated Sierra Leone People's Party as their presidential hopeful in the 1996 Presidential and Parliamentary elections, the first multi-party elections in twenty-three years. The SLPP won the legislative vote overwhelmingly in the South and Eastern Province of the country, they split the vote with the UNPP in the Western Area and they lost in the Northern Province.On March 29, 1996, Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was sworn in as Sierra Leone's first freely elected president. Guided by his philosophy of "political inclusion", he appointed the most broad-based government in the nation's history, drawing from all political parties represented in Parliament, and 'technocrats' in civil society. One minority party did not accept his offer of a cabinet post.
The President's first major objective was to end the rebel war which, in four years had already claimed hundreds of innocent lives, driven thousands of others into refugee status, and ruined the nation's economy. In November 1996, in Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire, he signed a peace agreement with the rebel leader, former Corporal Foday Sankoh of the Revolutionary United Front.
The rebels reneged on the Agreement, resumed hostilities, and later perpetrated on the people of Sierra Leone what has been described as one of the most brutal internal conflicts in the world.
Coup and exile
In 1996, a coup attempt involving Johnny Paul Koroma and other junior officers of the Sierra Leone Army was unsuccessful, but served as notice that Kabbah's control over military and government officials in Freetown was weakening.In May 1997, a military coup forced Kabbah into exile in neighbouring Guinea. The coup was led by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, and Koroma was freed and installed as the head of state. In his Guinea exile, Kabbah began to marshal international support. Just nine months after the coup, Kabbah's government was revived as the military-rebel junta was removed by troops of the Economic Community of West African States under the command of the Nigerian led ECOMOG and loyal civil and military defence forces, notably the Kamajors led by Samuel Hinga Norman.