Syl Cheney-Coker: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 5 August 2025:
It was inevitable. This fall from grace, our descent into the whirlpool of amorality, after our independence from colonialism. It was inevitable that we would allow the best inherited virtues, institutions and laws to collapse, after they fell into the hands of those who, by some acts of chicanery, managed to come to political power, and then wasted no time showing their true intentions of shameless corruption, greed, and worse, a complete disinterestedness in the welfare of the state.
Some sixty years later, the shame of opprobrium has finally caught up with us; ending, along with Guinea Bissua, our becoming only the second West African nation to be tarred with the brush of cocaine trafficking, plus hiding one of Europe’s most wanted drug lords, in some highly protected comfort.
Earlier, on March 23 ,2025, in the Standard Today newspaper, there was a report , from Karachi, that the ‘ Pakistan Customs had seized Rs 2, 8billion ( about US10 million) worth of smuggled tramodol, ‘disguised as towel export to Sierra Leone.’
In addition to all the maledictions from which we were already suffering, it transpired, from numerous sources that Sierra Leone had become a Narco State, in the eyes of the world.
As if the above was not shocking enough, here comes the latest mind-blowing piece of news: that Sierra Leonean citizenship can be obtained by four different groups, of so-called investors, who ‘ can simply pay $140k,’ in crypto-currency, to become citizens , without any background check, within ninety days.
Specifically, ‘the first target market is foreign businessmen doing business in West Africa; foreign businessmen who have issues renewing their permits and visas, in places like Ghana and Nigeria. The second target market is wealthy individuals, who want to leave a legacy for their children and grandchildren.
The Sierra Leonean citizenship by investment goes down the generations. The third target is passport freaks: people who just go around collecting passports, because it is their hobby, and, essentially, they find it funny. Target number four, are people who want flexibility; so the KYC process can be completed in less than three months, and you can pay in crypto-currency!’ LORD, what did we do to deserve this curse on our nation.
With these reports, and the rapid spread of the Kush drug problem, the Mpox crisis, and other health issues, we have undoubtedly become a pariah state; a safe haven for drug lords and other master criminals; the majority of our indigenous citizens despised, their passports stamped with ignominy and disgust, by most immigration officers abroad.
A dark cloud hangs over you, Sierra Leone! One that has been spreading its evil omen for almost sixty years: a period marked by the greatest disinterest in the welfare of any state on the continent that was ushered into independence with an abundance of natural wealth, moral rectitude, the envy of its neighbours, and a proud legacy of leadership in education and other institutional traditions.
Do we need reminding about where we were, long before we became independent? I am eighty, and one of the advantages about ageing is, hopefully, to do so with some humility and wisdom, so that we do not become the laughing stock of the younger generation; as when, during the storm scene, after King Lear had come to realise the folly of his intemperate actions, his fool said to him: ‘ If thou art my fool, I would have had thee whipped, for being old without wisdom!’
Contrast this admonition with what the great Nelson Mandela said about how to lead: ‘When I was on Robben Island, I was there with men who were better educated, well read and wiser than me. But they chose me because they thought I had the qualities of a leader. However, I soon realised that to be able to lead, you must have HUMILITY! When you are humble, people will listen to you and follow you!’
To the unprincipled, avaricious and indiscipline men and women charged with the destiny of our state, over the last sixty years, I believe that what the fool proscribed for King Lear should apply; considering what they have done to the country.
Now, many of them are gone – dead! But to borrow a line from James Baldwin ‘ they will have no name on the street’; except for, in my view, one of ignominy! As for those still alive, I am sure it won’t be long before, as we say, in Krio, ‘ den conscience begin for flag dem,’ when they start a post-prandial assessment of their gluttonous ruination of the country.
In the beginning, for those who read history, Freetown, Sierra Leone, was the administrative centre of British Colonial rule in West Africa. We were the first to give women the vote; the first to have judges and magistrates in the colonies.
The memory of how we pioneered Post- secondary and secondary school education, for boys and girls, in the early 1800s, should make us proud; although, horror of horrors, there was a time, very recently, when one of our presidents had the temerity to consider turning the hallowed grounds of the Anne Walsh Memorial School into a MARKETPLACE, for street traders, and was only stopped by the fury of some old girls! Can we imagine this happening to ACHIMOTA College in Ghana?
Blessed with abundant fertile land and several small rivers crisscrossing the country, although the rocky terrain was sometimes a challenge, we were the first to have a railway, postal service and banking system in West Africa.
Our harvests were spectacular and varied. We produced enough rice to feed ourselves and exported the rest. With a well- trained cadre of African civil servants taking care of day-to-day matters, in this then blessed land, we were a proud people- at least, some of us.
Consequently, after the independence flourish in Ghana and Nigeria, the British packed their bags and left. Thanks to the prevalence of mosquitoes, we didn’t suffer the horrors of White settler domination and carnage: the stuff that Ngugi wrote about, in Kenya, and Dambuzu Marachera’s untimely death cut short his writing about Zimbabwe.
Seldom had a country been blessed with so much, as we were, when the reins of government were handed to us. In comparison, Singapore was, basically, a backward island, in the Malaysian strait, with a reputation for some prostitution, for British soldiers, before she became independent, the same year as us.
But, Lord, look at what Lee Kwan Yoo did to it? Look at what a proud, principled, UN-CORRUPT, no-nonsense leader did for his country? With no mineral resources, but with his honest, moral and disciplined leadership, and giving his people a first-class education, he turned his island nation into the Pearl of Asia: a first world nation!!
With all of our resources, why didn’t we progress after independence, along similar trajectory?
There are those, including yours truly, who will argue that our resources were a curse, instead of a blessing! Sadly, for the people of Sierra Leone, this abundance of natural wealth produced one of the greatest social dichotomies in the region: the abandonment of any kind of moral, social conduct and relevant education, for the majority of our people, while the few got on the get rich quick Bandwagon, soon after our independence.
When Siaka Stevens came to power, after the political and military imbroglio of the early sixties, I am now quite certain he did not have a clear vision of where he wanted to take the country; bearing in mind that he was the first opposition leader to win an election against a sitting government, in the aftermath of independence, in English-speaking Africa.
Looking back at his seventeen years in power, it would seem to me, and some others, that he had no clear vision about how to develop the country; yet he embarked on a needlessly expensive OAU conference, to boost his fragile ego, removed the railway, and thus ruined our bountiful agricultural productions and, when challenged by some of his own political lieutenants, sent them to the gallows on trumped-up charges, aided by a compromised judiciary.
But none of this would have been possible if there was not the prevailing atmosphere of sycophancy, for Stevens to use what was probably his most effective weapon: the gift of the gab.
Most readers my age would recall that Siaka Stevens took over the reins of government when a new crop of graduates was either coming down from Fourah Bay College or returning home from abroad: men and women who, with their newly minted status as intellectuals, should, in most instances, have served as examples of probity, with a moral compass, in the new republic,
Regardless of what their degrees were in, it was the hope by some people not so lucky to have gone to college, that some philosophical principles about public morality would guide these new Greeks, as they assumed their various roles in the nascent republic.
It was hoped that many of these public servants (for that was what they were) would help guide the new government from any drift towards unprincipled actions, (especially as quite a good many of the new ministers were political novices) and into a new example of leadership and statehood.
Sadly, this hoped-for New Jerusalem did not come about: the REASON WAS SIMPLE.
Without any prevarication, I place the blame squarely at the feet of many members of my generation- those born between 1940-50 who, in spite of having received (on paper, at least) some of the best education that money could buy, lacked the innate quality for true moral and lasting success.
An immensity of public morality was not required; but as the Spanish- American philosopher George Santayana put it: ‘Civilization has nothing to do with the tallness of our buildings or the size of our grain crop. It is about the quality of the men and women that a nation produces!’
Indeed! I am sure there are hundreds of millions of people who, looking at those that have made their nations great, will readily agree with this contention. Yes: the scientists, farmers, artists, environmentalists, engineers, designers, sculptors, craftsmen and women, spiritual diviners, educators, housewives, architects and Human Rights lawyers, not working for the fleshpots of wealth, but for the greatness and pride of a state; these are the men and women that have built the nations that the vast majority of people admire.
Have we produced them? We did, in the past, before our toxic political expressions turned this nation upside down; before our political passions not played out on any ideological plane, but on sometimes crude, sectarian extremism and, occasionally, with violence, became the new reality!
I look at the gallery of some of the men and women of my generation, and what I see is mostly abysmal failure, on their part, when it comes to the governance of this wounded nation. For as soon as Siaka Stevens was ensconced in power, it didn’t take the wily fox long to discern that many of the so-called intellectuals were ripe for the picking; that they were really like the paw-paw plant: beautiful and calling for attention on the outside, but with a cylindrical emptiness on the inside.
Here, it should be pointed out that, with a prescience born out of what was going on in other newly independent states, the handful of old public intellectuals such as the doctor and writer Raymond Sarif Easmon, the doctor Mohammed Forna, and the journalist Ibrahim Taqi had figured out what the president might be up to, in those early days.
Even before Stevens’s obsession with turning this country into a one-party state became loud and clear, these men had raised objections about the lack of any consultation amongst people, about where he aimed to take the country.
These were not just armchair intellectuals, as those old enough to remember will recall. They were three of the handful of men and women whose patriotic and passionate opposition to Albert Margai’s earlier obsession with the same idea of a one -party state, had galvanised the Freetown intelligentsia to throw its weight, support and money behind the APC; without which, it was almost impossible for the party to have won the 1967 General Elections.
Feeling deeply betrayed by Siaka Stevens, they made their views known; for which Taqi and Dr. Forna were arrested, tried and sent to the gallows on a trumped-up charge of attempting a coup, and the venerable Raymond Sarif Easmon was detained at the Pademba Road prison.
I have it, from impeccable sources, that once Stevens realised what a terrible mistake he had made, by jailing Dr. Easmon, the then prime minister went to the doctor’s house, after his release, to try to make amends.
For those interested in the outcome of this drama, I suggest you read my second novel Sacred River, loosely based on the seventeen years of Siaka Stevens’s misrule, and on the drunken disaster that was the ten years in power of Joseph Saidu Momoh.
Some people might argue that, following his spate of executions and detentions, all the guardrails to the Stevens government were removed. And once the wily fox had discerned that the new crop of intellectuals was not going to oppose him, and not interested in imparting decency and honesty in government, he baited them with this sickening mantra: DEN SAY BAILOR BARRIE, YOU SAY DAVIDSON NICOL! And even went further, with this pernicious maxim: DEN SAY ASK FOR HED, YOU SAY YOU GO GRAMMAR SCHOOL!
Thus began the rot of the country: a place whose capital was once named the so-called Athens of West Africa: to which students from all over English- speaking Africa came for an education!
If anything typified our fall from grave, it was the collapse of the educational system; so that, only recently, a book entitled The Rise and Fall of Fourah Bay College was published. This would not have been possible if the new crop of so-called intellectuals had been interested in teaching. Instead, the college became a stepping stone to the apotheosis of their greed.
As Stevens set about starving the college of funds, and in the shameful absence of local philanthropic support, by a good many wealthy Sierra Leoneans that could afford it, the once vaunted college began to decline, so that it is now not listed amongst the top fifty African colleges or universities.
It was no secret that a good many of the teachers there would be glued to their radios and telephones, waiting for a call from His Excellency, when he was reshuffling his cabinets, to see who amongst the academics had been plucked from Fourah Bay to become a minister; after which the Jellibas and Jellimusus would troop to their houses, to sing and dance about ‘ their blessings!!
In this climate, it was only a matter of time before the other arteries of our development were cut to pieces; such as when, on the alleged advice of the IMF and a Man for all Seasons (a lawyer, accountant, surveyor, auditor and economist) our railway was uprooted and sold as scraps to a consortium headed by Jamil Saed Mohamed, who everyone realised had a virtual stranglehold on our economy. Nowhere else, on this PLANET, has a vital artery, like the railway, been uprooted and sold.
But it happened here, while other states were expanding theirs; while Ivory Coast was using theirs to get their vast agricultural produce to the sea, and thus becoming one of the richest African nations.
The unpredictable movements of history have a way of kicking us in the right places, with the results of our follies and arrogance. As those interested in the minds of the gods of ancient Greece will testify, one thing that they did not tolerate from lesser humans was HUBRIS!
And so it was, when after this calamitous act of UNRAILWAYLING our country, the 1973 Middle East war sent oil prices skyrocketing and inflicting severe damage to our already unproductive economy.
But nothing would deter some of the young Greeks from further plundering the country; as when the once productive cow of the economy – the SLPMB – was slowly killed; with the fattest portions going to build a useless casino complex called Lagoonda that was probably best suited for a production of Tennessee Williams’ play – The Glass Menagerie, than for any other purpose, because more than ninety percent of the people did not go there, for economic reasons.
When you add this extravaganza to the La Mancha style mansion on Juba Hill, both of them built by the then managing director of the S.L.P.M.B. Musa Suma, (most certainly with the approval of His Excellency), you begin to get a picture of the several economic abortions the state would suffer in the coming years.
With the Tomabum Rice Project, and other small-scale industries effectively killed, after the railway was removed in one of the most short-sighted decisions, it only took one great blow for the economy to finally collapse.
But, before then, the silence on the part of our so-called intellectuals was palpable. Where were the public intellectuals and Legal luminaries when the state was being stripped of its meat?
The handful of brave young ones such as the lecturer (later journalist) Olu Gordon and the journalist Paul Kamara were regarded as troublemakers, and either lost their jobs at F.B.C. or were jailed.
In one of our many conversations at his house, over many years, the late, revered literary critic and principal of the then highly vaunted Fourah Bay College, Professor Eldred Jones, told me about the day the then powerful VP S. I. Koroma went to see him, to appeal to him to get a brilliant law lecturer to stop attacking the government.
But in his usual charming and refined manner, Professor Jones told the politician that one of the expectations of being an academic/intellectual was the exercise of free speech in our lives; provided we did not slander or insult anyone. Consequently, he could not sanction the lecturer, as that would also run counter to the college’s charter.
They say every man has his price, and His Excellency knew how to offer the right bait; so that it wasn’t long, after S.I’s. visit to Fourah Bay College, that when an official announcement about a cabinet reshuffle came out of State House, it had the bombshell that our legal luminary / critic had been appointed the new Foreign Affairs Minister.
In his new job, one of the sickening and unpalatable acts that he was required to defend was the walk to the gallows by Dr. Forna, Ibrahim Taqi and others, after the compromised courts had sent them there, on trumped-up charges.
I was a Visiting Professor in the English Department of The University of The Phillipines when the ghastly action was carried out in Freetown. For a whole week or more, I couldn’t sleep or eat much, recalling the role that Taqi had played, as a journalist, along with Dr. Sarif Easmon, in the nascent days of the A.P.C.
If His Excellency had no conscience, in sending Taqi and Forna to the gallows, surely, the moral equivalence of intellectualism and good breeding should have prevented our new Foreign Minister from defending the indefensible. When he was studying law, or in his private readings, did he not come across this cautionary contention by the American philosopher Paul Tillich, that ‘ a moral imperative is not obedience to any order, religious or secular. It is the actualization of what we potentially are; what we can become?’
Obviously not: And I daresay that after his obedience to His Excellency’s call, it became more or less a Domino Theory, as other so-called intellectuals were easily plucked from the university, to go and sit in various central government positions.
The results were devastating for Fourah Bay College. Very little funding went into its upkeep; research program support (even when many of those ex-academics sat in the Momoh cabinet, and could have fought to expand the programmes), dwindled until finally, the college became a sad shadow of its once glorious past.
But it warms my heart to know that, not too long ago, a philanthropist – Engineer Tunde Cole donated US$1.m (One million US dollars), for new engineering school buildings; which only goes to show that charity really begins at home.
Part Two to be continued
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