\u201cTo dream the impossible dream….To fight the unbeatable foe…To tread where the brave dare not go…To reach the unreachable star….This is my quest….\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Charlie Hughes: \u2018Balls-full-ness\u2019 to \u2018Balls-less-ness\u2019?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n Highly \u2018cerebral\u2019 Charlie Hughes, the Chairman of the Monuments and Relics Commission<\/span><\/b> of the Republic of Sierra Leone, writes an incisive\u00a0 prose that can be lethally pugnacious (against our reviled RUF\/AFRC \u2018rebels\/sobels\u2019); the belligerently-looking visage of Charlie has\u00a0 underneath it gray matters possessing\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 vastness of thought\u00a0 which would elicit\u00a0 in his published works…\u00a0 words that would\u00a0 sometimes be tinctured with intellectual arrogance that disdain his lesser intellectually endowed compatriots.\u00a0 He is a \u2018man of balls\u2019 who dared to do newspaper columns against the nauseous and brutish RUF\/AFRC rebels during the Darkest Hours of our \u2018rebel war\u2019 years when most of our educated elite were cowering under their beds or fleeing to their ill-gotten posh homes in the US and UK \u2013 so, when Charlie Hughes once wrote an article during our perilous \u2018rebel war\u2019 years\u00a0 accusing our educated elite of \u2018balls-less-ness\u2019 (pathetic cowardice), he\u00a0 was apt in his condescension\u00a0 \u2013 generally; not entirely.\u00a0 Well, we may soon know whether the \u2018balls-full-ness\u2019 Charlie Hughes has been emasculated enough to have joined the ranks of the \u2018balls-less\u2019 educated elite. Or, not!!\u00a0 Charlie Hughes promised to come to my office this week with a copy of a document that touch on tribalism which had been earlier sent to me by another co-author of the document, Andrew Lavali.\u00a0 Charlie did not come.\u00a0 He called, saying \u2018little men\u2019 inside his computer have chopped the document; and… Let me quote Charlie\u2019s text message verbatim: \u201cSearch for \u2018Elections and Diversity Management\u2019 <\/b>on the web and download\u2019\u201d.\u00a0 <\/i>I tried.\u00a0 I could not succeed.\u00a0\u00a0 I will try again.<\/p>\n Over a week now since I asked Charlie Hughes\u2019 co-author of the document, Andrew Lavali, the Programme Advisor of the Access to Security & Justice Programme,<\/span><\/b>\u00a0 to \u2018re-send\u2019 the \u2018tribal document\u2019 to me. He has not.\u00a0 About a year ago, he had sent the document to me, and met me in my office to discuss it.\u00a0 An obvious\u00a0 \u2018intellectual Black Belt\u2019, Lavali spoke gravely about the issue of tribalism in Sierra Leone and its horrific potentials.\u00a0 He said he is Mende, and married to a Temne wife \u2013 so, his children now genetically belong to the two \u2018politically antagonistic tribal blocks\u2019 in our country.\u00a0 Little \u2018green men\u2019 in my computer have\u00a0\u00a0 apparently \u2018chopped\u2019 the \u2018tribalism document\u2019.\u00a0 I wonder why Lavalie has not resent the document.\u00a0 He told me that the document would have been formally launched, but, this has not been done because of the \u201csensitivity\u201d of the document.<\/p>\n \u2018Sensitive Document\u2019 Penned by \u2018Sensitive Dr. Mohamed Gibril Sesay\u2019<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n I wonder whether the \u201csensitivity\u201d could have anything to do with the third author of the \u2018tribalism document\u2019 \u2013 Dr. Mohamed Gibril Sesay.\u00a0 Dr. Sesay, a Sociology lecturer at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, was, during our rebel war years, a\u00a0 partner\u00a0\u00a0 with Charlie Hughes in the Forum for Democratic Initiatives (FORDI<\/span><\/b>) in Freetown.\u00a0 FORDI could have been Sierra Leone\u2019s first ever robust intellectual think tank, securing juicy contracts from the biggest international organizations that deal with Sierra Leone.\u00a0 Today, the self effacing\u00a0 Mohamed Gibril Sesay<\/span><\/b> (it was only about a month ago that\u00a0 Politico newspaper \u2018leaked the secret\u2019 about Gibril\u2019s\u00a0 doctorate degree)<\/i>\u00a0 – who would attempt to belie his intimidating intellect with flashy garments, and doing\u00a0 perfect imitation of the \u2018Eastend\u00a0 rahray\u00a0 man\u2019 talk and jive –\u00a0 holds the \u2018sensitive position\u2019 of\u00a0 Special Adviser to the President.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n On the authors\u2019 tribes?.\u00a0 With his dark chocolate colour, protruding Arab nose,\u00a0 Caucasian thin lips, Charlie Hughes \u2018claims\u2019 to hail from Moyamba, with maternal links to Bonthe Island.\u00a0 What I know of Charlie Hughes is that in his habits\u00a0 he is\u00a0 a global-classed\u00a0\u00a0 Cosmopolitan Man.<\/p>\n Lavalie I know very little about, but, his name does sound \u2018Mende\u2019, and he did claim that he is Mende.<\/p>\n Mohamed Gibril Sesay has been stamped with the \u2018Temne and Northerner\u2019 badge.\u00a0 I was recently reliably informed that all \u201cSesays\u201d are ethnically Madingoes, and NOT Temne.\u00a0 As for being a Northerner, well…well…\u00a0 Gibril was born and bred in \u201cFourah Bay\u201d in the Eastend of Freetown \u2013 and, every inch of him is a \u2018Freetown Man\u2019; his liberal thought patterns\u00a0 are severely reined by the\u00a0 Islamic tenets he is versed in; Islam hammered into him from the cradle –\u00a0 because his\u00a0 father was the venerated Chief Imam of the \u2018Temne Mosque\u2019 in Fourah Bay.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe, the \u2018sensitivity\u2019 of the \u2018tribalism document\u2019 could be because … parts of it are implicitly critical of the APC government that Gibril is playing a key role in….<\/b><\/p>\n Since I don\u2019t want posterity to indict me of \u2018balls-less-ness\u2019, I am writing this tribalism serial; and to give added empirical weight to my arguments, I would press for the aforementioned document. In Monrovia, Liberia,\u00a0 in 1989\/1990, I was the Director of the first-time-established Scientology Technology Office there.\u00a0 In 1990, under the direction of a \u2018Bendel Man\u2019 from Edo State, Rockson Enyem, I took courses to become a Scientology \u2018Minister\u2019 at the Scientology Dianetics Center on 190\/192 Ikorodu Road, Maryland, Lagos, Nigeria.\u00a0 In one of the 800 books published by Scientology founder, U.S. citizen, L. Ron Hubbard,\u00a0 he postulate\u00a0 that humanity\u2019s civilization march would sometimes stagnate for thousands of years because the learned elite would fail to confront problems, and be courageous enough to challenged stark Ignorance<\/b>.\u00a0 Scientology teaches that failure to confront problems is a symptom that a person suffers from serious \u2018aberration\u2019 (which, in its extreme form, is what the public would recognize as \u2018madness\u2019 or \u2018insanity\u2019 or \u2018craziness\u2019).\u00a0 Can we hazard to state that a society that fails to collectively confront its most chronic and festering problem\u00a0 is\u00a0 \u2018collectively aberrated\u2019? (Or, \u2018collectively mad\u2019?).<\/b>\u00a0 Hardly any educated Sierra Leonean would argue that we don\u2019t have a serious \u2018tribalism problem\u2019 in our country.\u00a0 As a nation, we have not yet confronted this problem \u2013 diagnose it, prescribe a cure for it, and ensure that we take the antidote to the tribalism poison.\u00a0\u00a0 Could this then mean a form of \u2018Collective Sierra Leonean Madness\u2019? Another form of insanity \u2013 individual or collective craziness \u2013 is that a person would build up a lie about who he is, and tend to believe it…<\/p>\n A mad man living in a rubbish dump would believe that he is a king and the rubbish is gold and diamonds.\u00a0 In this context, Sierra Leoneans have not confronted and \u2018cured\u2019 their tribalism disease; and they have, largely, fooled themselves that they have a \u2018country\u2019, that they are \u2018Sierra Leoneans\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 Sierra Leone, as primary school children ought to know, is a foreign construct \u2013 epistemologically, labelled by Portuguese explorers; with its boundaries\u00a0 politically demarcated\u00a0 by the British colonialists.\u00a0 The sixteen tribes that have been\u00a0\u00a0 compelled to become one country by the British still have to yet understand, and put passion into, the alien concept called \u2018Sierra Leone\u2019.\u00a0 What most \u2018Sierra Leoneans\u2019 understand, and put fervour to, are their villages of ten square miles, or, better, their chiefdoms of 40 square miles; or, at best, their \u2018tribal grouping\u2019 of the same language<\/b>.\u00a0 It is these groupings that historically have\u00a0 its Temne-speaking or Mende-speaking conquerors, its conquering heroes; and has its centuries old customs and traditions, dances and songs…. \u2013 intricacies of songs and dances during funerals and marriages, coming-of-age rituals…that strike deep chords in the average Sierra Leonean. \u2018Sierra Leone\u2019 is alien.\u00a0 Sierra Leone is distant.\u00a0 Sierra Leone is too amorphous to be grasped\u00a0 in the minds by most of those who claim to be Sierra Leoneans.<\/p>\n I have often written articles on the \u2018civil war mentality\u2019 of Sierra Leoneans (and, for that matter, most African countries).\u00a0 Democratic elections in the mindsets of most Sierra Leoneans are \u2018civil wars\u2019 \u2013 a \u2018war against the enemy tribe\u2019.\u00a0 We know this is so!! (Though, the educated Sierra Leonean elite tries to fool the white man\u00a0 in the West who insists on the \u2018foolishness of elections\u2019 that we are \u2018democratic\u2019). In Sierra Leone, the tribe or \u2018Tribal Block\u2019 that wins an election has, in its mind,\u00a0 really has won a \u2018civil war\u2019\u00a0 (An exception to this was Tejan Kabbah\u2019s 2002 election victory which won significant votes from \u2018enemy\u2019 and \u2018friend\u2019 tribes alike).<\/i>\u00a0 In ancient Rome, or traditional Africa over the\u00a0 past few hundred years, the tribe who wins a\u00a0 war takes pride in hoisting the chopped off heads of its enemies, and takes home \u2018legitimate war booty\u2019 \u2013 slaves, gold, chained sex slaves, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 The predation on the alien state called Sierra Leone (the grabbing of most of the top positions in government, the flagrant corruption, by a tribal block) by the \u2018winning tribe\u2019 would be deplored by outsiders \u2013 but, the spirit of it, the acceptability of it, is because it is \u2018legitimate war booty\u2019 in the minds of the victorious tribe.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b><\/p>\n It does appear as if \u2018God\u2019 has programmed man to be warlike \u2013 as one of the survival impulses of man as a species.\u00a0\u00a0 All great empires have been built on wars, or conquest of \u2018other peoples\u2019.\u00a0 But, those empires that would sustain themselves for centuries \u2013 ancient Rome; the modern British Empire, etc \u2013 are those that learn to simmer down, absorb the conquered people into their ranks; that would establish systems of Justice and Equity that would evolve into equality.<\/b>\u00a0 Those\u00a0 great \u2018empires\u2019 that delude themselves into believing that conquered people can be subjugated, or, enslaved, forever…are today extinct. My point, even if a \u2018tribal block\u2019 has won a \u2018civil war\u2019 in its mind, it survivability mandates the establishment of\u00a0 Holistic Justice….<\/p>\n The seemingly\u00a0 \u2018impossible dream\u2019 of President Ernest Bai Koroma that Sierra Leone would become a \u2018Middle Income Country\u2019 in 25 years, a \u2018Donor Country\u2019 in 50 years, can only be taken seriously when President Koroma is in the vanguard of fighting the seemingly \u2018unbeatable foe\u2019 of tribalism.\u00a0 I now publicly challenge Messrs Charlie Hughes, Mohamed Gibril Sesay, and Andrew Lavalie…<\/i>with this inspiring\u00a0\u00a0 poem\/song: \u201dto tread where the brave dare not go\u201d…to \u201creach the unreachable star\u201d…\u201dno matter how hopeless…now matter how far….\u201d And, \u201cto be willing to die…for a noble quest<\/i>\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 (TO BE CONTINUED)<\/p>\n Oswald Hanciles<\/i><\/p>\n Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n \u201cTo dream the impossible dream….To fight the unbeatable foe…To tread where the brave dare not go…To reach the unreachable star….This is my quest….\u201d Charlie Hughes: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":9661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[671],"tags":[896],"class_list":["post-65348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Collective Madness of Sierra Leoneans?<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n
The Tribe that has Won a Tribal War Must Establish Holistic Justice to Survive<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n
\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"