Alpha Amadu Jalloh: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 7 January 2026:
Sixth January nineteen ninety-nine is not merely a historical reference. It is a national scar. It is the day Sierra Leone lost control of itself, when the capital was reduced to fear, fire, and flight, when the illusion of statehood evaporated and survival became the only currency.
Families were torn apart. Children were brutalised. The elderly were abandoned. It was not a moment of politics. It was a moment of human collapse. Each year we mark it with solemn words and public silence, yet remembrance without reflection is devoid of purpose.
The question for today is whether we, as a people, learnt anything from what almost destroyed us.
That catastrophe did not arrive suddenly. It was the end product of years of decay, greed, exclusion, and indifference. Institutions weakened while warnings were dismissed. Power became detached from responsibility.
Society normalised injustice until injustice returned with a gun. Sixth January was not simply an invasion of Freetown. It was the final reckoning of a nation that had ignored the slow erosion of its moral and political foundations.
What followed that darkness was extraordinary. The international community intervened not out of charity, but necessity. The United Nations, ECOWAS, the African Union, and bilateral partners stepped in because Sierra Leone had ceased to function as a self-sustaining state.
ECOMOG soldiers died defending a country that could no longer defend itself. UNAMSIL arrived to stabilise a broken land and prevent total disintegration. Peace was not gifted. It was extracted from chaos through sacrifice.
The Abidjan Peace Accord and later the Lome Peace Accord were imperfect and deeply painful. They asked victims to accept compromises they never deserved to make. They offended our sense of justice. Yet they carried a brutal truth.
Endless war would have finished what violence had already begun. Peace was chosen not because it was clean, but because the alternative was national extinction.
Accountability followed. The Special Court for Sierra Leone made it clear that atrocity would no longer be excused as politics. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission forced a nation to confront itself, not to humiliate, but to heal. It reminded Sierra Leoneans that the war was not an accident of fate, but a consequence of human decisions, tolerated failures, and prolonged injustice.
The conflict in Sierra Leone was the result of years of bad governance, endemic corruption, and the denial of basic human rights, which created the conditions for violence to thrive.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report
Reforms came next. Elections returned. The security sector was rebuilt. Laws were passed. Parliamentary acts and agreements were introduced to manage political tension through dialogue rather than force.
The Tripartite Agreement and similar frameworks were not signs of weakness. They were safeguards, built because we had already seen what happens when restraint collapses.
Yet today, with alarming recklessness, some Sierra Leoneans once again speak the language of destabilisation. From radio discussions to online platforms, from diaspora forums to political rallies, there are voices calling openly for chaos, for the collapse of the state, for foreign intervention, or for unrest as a political shortcut. This is not bravery. It is amnesia.
Let us be honest with ourselves. Anger is justified. Frustration is real. Poverty is visible. Corruption persists. Broken promises weigh heavily on the people. Sierra Leoneans have every right to demand better governance, accountability, and reform.
But there is a moral line that must never be crossed. That line is the endorsement of violence, disorder, or national implosion as a political strategy.
Those who call for destabilisation must answer a simple question. Who paid the price in nineteen ninety-nine. History answers it without mercy. It was never the powerful. It was the poor, the children, the sick, and the voiceless. When states collapse, hospitals close before palaces. Schools shut before mansions. Markets burn before ministries. To advocate chaos is to gamble with lives that are not your own.
There is a dangerous illusion taking hold, the belief that instability can be controlled. That violence can be managed. That chaos can be temporary. Sierra Leone buried that illusion in mass graves. Once unleashed, disorder does not obey those who invite it. It devours everything in its path.
The Commission is unequivocal in stating that the events of the conflict must never be allowed to recur and that Sierra Leoneans must commit themselves to ensuring that such a tragedy is never repeated.
The frameworks built after the war were designed to guard against exactly this thinking. United Nations principles, ECOWAS protocols, African Union norms, and domestic laws exist not to shield leaders from criticism, but to protect societies from self-destruction. They recognise that the journey from protest to catastrophe is frighteningly short when restraint disappears.
Criticism of government is patriotic. Protest is democratic. Opposition is necessary. But incitement is dangerous. Encouraging unrest is not activism. It is irresponsibility dressed as courage. Those who speak lightly of violence either did not live through nineteen ninety-nine or have chosen to forget it.
This is where the conscience of the nation must be confronted. Sierra Leone does not belong to any party, tribe, region, or individual. It belongs to the unborn as much as the living. To call for its destabilisation is to rob the future. It is to declare that anger matters more than survival.
Selective memory has become one of our greatest failures. We remember suffering when it suits our arguments and discard its lessons when emotions rise. Peace did not arrive by accident. It arrived because Sierra Leoneans, exhausted and broken, chose restraint over revenge. That choice saved the country.
So, what did 6th January nineteen ninety-nine teach us. It taught us that states collapse quietly before they collapse violently. It taught us that words matter, and that normalising destruction prepares the ground for bloodshed.
It taught us that rebuilding is far harder than destroying. Above all, it taught us that no grievance justifies national suicide.
This is not a call for silence. It is a call for responsibility. Change must be pursued through institutions, not infernos. Reform must come through pressure, not implosion. Leadership must be challenged, but the country must be protected.
Sixth January nineteen ninety-nine should never be invoked as justification for chaos. It should remain a warning. A reminder of how low we fell, and how hard it was to rise again. Sierra Leone knows the cost of instability. We paid it in blood.
The only question that remains is whether we respect that knowledge enough to ensure we never invite it back.
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