By Oswald Hanciles, The Guru
Evelyn Hanciles, my cousin based in the United Kingdom, who calls me “uncle” (since your father, late Harold Hanciles, Resident Minister, Southern Province in the APC government of Siaka Stevens in 1978, is really my uncle). I feel your angst at the rising use of extreme language by a few persons in THE OSWALD HANCILES COLUMN Whatsapp forum, where you are a co-admin: “The realization that there are no penalties has resulted into the samba gutter rudeness. No one has a monopoly over rudeness”.
In our forum, we are evolving the Admin Group in a global forum of social media. It is new technology. It is new opportunity for diverse people to meet and exchange their views, to catalyze development in our motherland of Sierra Leone.
One should be careful whilst insisting on adherence to rules not to appear to be muzzling others.
In a global forum, we have to learn tolerance.
In THE OSWALD HANCILES COLUMN Whatsapp forum of 678 members, about three persons would use foul language. Why are the over 600 members largely SILENT?
This is what must be learned about the educated elite among Sierra Leoneans: to speak out continually against big or small evil.
It is not the SINGLE Adebayor-like person who hauls insults using social media that is our main problem, it is the thousands of bachelor’s, Master’s doctorate degree holders who are silent?
Since Adebayor started raining insults on poverty-stricken poverty-strickenSierra Sierra Leone from one of the most liberal countries with the highest standard of living in the world, the Netherlands, have the Council of Imams, the Council of Churches of Sierra Leone, the evangelical associations, the academic associations, the student unions, the youth and female groups, the trade and tranportation bodies, the financial instutions, indeed, even the political parties…been addressing the issues Adebayor would raise, or, denouncing his harsh language with intensity and relentlessness? No!! And no!! No‼️‼️
There is a Conspiracy of Silence among the educated elite in Sierra Leone – implicitly aiding and abetting Grand Corruption, and all sort of evils.
I have been writing literally thousands of articles in local newspapers like Expo Times, For Di People, Standard Times, Awareness, Exclusive, Concord Times, etc since I returned home in 1995 – even when the AFRC/RUF held on to power in 1997/1998, I was a regular columinst in Pios Foray’s THE DEMOCRAT newspaper. The edition of CONCORD TIMES of January 6, 1999 had one of my articles referring to RUF Spokesman, Omrie Golley (appointed as Sierra Leone’s Ambassador to South Korea by former President Ernest Bai Koroma) as the “Devil’s Advocate”. The CONCORD TIMES Editor, Nigerian-born James Ougogou, was captured as the rebels raided where he resided in an apartment in the National Stadium hostel around January 6, 1999. Just stretch your imagination what would have happened to him after being caught by the rebels. 10 journalists were murdered by the AFRC/RUF rebels between 1997 and 1999. Why did newspaper writers like us take the risks we took in those Dark Years of our civil war, writing against murderous rebels – when our academic peers as civil servants or public officials or politicians who had largely stolen public money to enrich themselves would be silent?
There is today one of the regular writers in THE DEMOCRAT newspaper in 1997/1998. He was a science graduate in his 20s, a teacher at Prince of Wales: Osman Lahai (aka Osman One Thousand: a name given to him by his awestruck peers because when he was a pupil in secondary school in his native Bonthe District, out of 12 subjects, Osman would always score over 1,000, which meant grades of over 90+ in each subject). In 2017, I stood with Osman Lahai at Government Wharf in Freetown – Osman Lahai was the Public Relations Director of London Mining; and I was media adviser to former President Ernest Bai Koroma at State House – and Osman said to me (he is about twenty years my junior): “Oswald, I wonder what was going on in our heads during those days we took such risks” (fighting for our country)?
About 2008 or so, Chernor Alpha M. Bah of AFRICANIST PRESS in the United States, hosted a three days seminar at the British Council in Freetown to market his Socialist ideas under the aegis of the group he is founder and leader of, the African Socialist Movement. One of those days as the seminar broke up into discussion groups, late Olu Gordon came and sat by me on one of the plastic chairs. As we spoke about the rising corruption in the country, he said to me sadly: ” Oswald, is this whar we have been fighting for?”.
Olu Gordon was born in the United Kingdom, at a time when it meant automatic British citizenship by birth. When we both started attending Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone in 1975 as Intermediate Year undergraduate students, Olu Gordon who spoke the Krio language with a clear British English accent, was a regular contributor on the notice board press on FBC campus, called “Chuks Press”, and on Aureol Times, the yearly FBC magazine. He was fearless.
After the 1977 war on the populace disguised as general elections… by APC Leader, President Siaka Stevens, and the legal imposition of a One-Party State, there was palpable fear as students returned to FBC campus for the 1977/1978 academic. Everyone had seen and experienced the state-sanctioned terrorism of the APC. There were rumours of APC spies among the student body, who were being paid to identify dissidents, so the APC would not be caught off guard again like it was when on January 29, 1977, the student demonstration against the growing tyranny of Siaka Stevens erupted as the President was awarding degrees at Adjai Crowther amphitheater to students, including Ernest Bai Koroma, who became President, 2007 to 2018. (At FBC then was education minister, Alpha Wurie; planning minister, Francis Kaikai; Ambassador John Benjamin, once finance minister in SLPP government of President Tejan Kabbah; Dennis Bright, resigned NGC Leader, who was Secretary General of the FBC Student Union). Olu Gordon was the first to post on Chuks Press a defiant message to the APC that the students would not be cowered, and ‘alutua continua’. (The struggle continues).
In late 1998, Freetown was afire with rumours of imminent AFRC/RUF retake of our capital city. Most of the political and bureautic elite who had stolen the people’s money and siphoned it to banks overseas were again fleeing Sierra Leone in droves. It was then that Olu Gordon left the United Kingdom and returned to Sierra Leone. Ostensibly to restore order and discipline against mobs breaking open shops and looting them, the AFRC/RUF caught and dismembered the bodies of several alleged looters, displayed their bodies on the streets of Freetown, and would telephone the press to report it and publish it.
There was one particular grotesque spectacle of the corpse of an alleged looter put at the center of the juncture of Siaka Stevens Street/Krootown Road/Dundas Street/Brook Street. The AFRC/RUF placed the literally dismembered corpse there – with hands and legs chopped off, torso mangled, and head placed on top of it, with the man’s penis tucked inside his mouth in a lewd pornographic way. (For the penis to be put inside the dead man’s mouth, it would be the body had not gone into. Rigor mortis when it was done). It was clearly not meant to deter other armed robbers and looters. It was designed to inject fear into the populace. (Like the August 10, 2022 beating to death of 10 policemen, being recorded on mobile phones). Several of the local newspapers published that sordidly brutal photo – writing in For Di People newspaper then, Olu Gordon wrote an article with that photo, with his byeline: “By Olu Gordon”.
Olu Gordon wrote that he knew the AFRC/RUF dismembered the man to send fear into the citizenry to capitulate to their illegal government. He wrote that the very thing they want to use to send fear up the spines of the citizenry would be used to stiffen the resistance of the people against the junta. He wrote that he gave the AFRC/RUF one assurance: they would be kicked from power.
When Olu Gordon was writing that defiant piece against the AFRC/RUF, he lived in Freetown; he walked the streets of Freetown; the For Di People newspaper office was at the heart of the central business district of Freetown at No 1 Short on the fourth floor, with a narrow rugged cemented stairway, the only way into and out of the building. As I have written often, Olu Gordon, and the Publisher/Editor of For Di People newspaper were like sitting ducks, had the AFRC/RUF raided their building, which also housed several other newspapers.
For the likes of Foday Morris presenting themselves today as liberation fighters for Sierra Leone whilst living in the United States, and lack the intellect to read 500 words in any article, I break this piece into a serial. I hope pseudo-liberation fighters like Titus Boye-Thompson in England, and Sorie Tarawally in the United States, would tell us how old they were between 1991 and 2002 when one of the nastiest and most brutal wars in modern history raged in Salone; and what they were doing; and what they did for Sierra Leone.
What would be the title of this serial? “FODAY SANKOH IS ALIVE IN ADEBAYOR”. That reminds me of one of my post-war articles after Foday Sankoh had died, titled: “Foday Sankoh is Alive”.
I pause,
Oswald Hanciles, The Guru
+232-79-545715
Whatsapp Number
June 14, 2023
09:07 hours in Freetown, Sierra Leone