ABSTRACT
The rise of ethnopolitics, while it did not do away with the rogue economy of Siaka Stevens’s neopatrimonial state, did sociologically restructure inter/intra-ethnic political relations in Sierra Leone. Under Momoh, ethnopolitical and ethnonational considerations came to matter more than wealth and influence. The nature of ethnopolitical formations and interactive/non-interactive mobilizations across ethnicities were built on marked differences. Notwithstanding the influences of ethnopolitics on student unionism, it was at the university colleges that the savisman youth were schooled in the revolutionary thinking that equipped them for the unanticipated roles as leaders and mentors of their counterparts, the rarayman in the ghetto. Zubairu Wai noted that Pan-African Union (PANAFU) molded the revolutionary ideas of youth empowerment and rejection of the ethnopolitical narratives of President Momoh’s Ekutay regime. For the PANAFU moderates, both the economic policies and interventions by the International Monetary Fund/World Bank and the Government of Sierra Leone should be subjected to the scrutiny of their members in the ghettos.
