Success and Failure; Which is more important?

Throughout our lives we have been taught to value success and reject failure. In my country Sierra Leone, a man's worth is usually estimated by the amount of material wealth he accumulates. In our country therefore, the ultimate measure of success is material wealth one accumulates.

Failure?

During the Soviet era, many Sierra Leoneans were given friendship scholarships to go and study in the Soviet Union. Many of these fellows came back to the country eminently qualified with degrees in technical areas such as marine engineering, automotive engineering, food preservation, urban planning and many other areas that were vital to the development of our country's resource base.

But alas, since these fellows had gone to a socialist country with essentially no way of making money during their intensive study, with the exception of short holiday trips to mainland Europe and the United Kingdom, most of them came back to Sierra Leone with great academic qualifications and empty pockets. They were JCs without anything.

As material wealth was our ultimate measure of a man's worth, Soviet graduates who had not studied medicine were treated as people with inferior education and a lot of them did not get the jobs they had hoped for and just became frustrated people in Freetown.

I can remember a particular instance in which a Sierra Leone Russian graduate came to a relative of ours who was a politician, asking for help to get a job. He complained that since he came, he had written many job applications but had not even been invited for an interview once. He was completely demoralized and regretted why he had not managed to find his way to Europe, but had instead naively made his way back to Sierra Leone with the hope of contributing to national development.

Our politician relative pretended to show great concern and asked the poor fellow what he had studied back in the Soviet Union.

"Food preservation," the Soviet graduate replied, emphasizing the importance of food preservation technology in ensuring the long term use of easily perishable products. He stated that he had therefore acquired a masters degree in food preservation.

The politician waited until the fellow had left before he burst out laughing.

"What a funny man," he told the group of hang arounds he was sitting with.

"We don't have enough food in this country and yet this funny bor goes overseas and instead of studying medicine he decides to study food preservation. Where is the food to preserve?"

All the other ignorant big men sitting around the politician burst out laughing at the joke of the fellow who came from a country in which there was not enough food, but had gone to Russia to study food preservation.

The irony of the story is that the main reason why there is so much food shortage in Sierra Leone is precisely because we lack the basic skills of food preservation.

During the Mango season in our  hometown Segbwema, a town with hundreds of mango trees in those days, there would be so much mangoes that the town practically smelled of the succulent fruit. Yet the main beneficiaries of this bountiful harvest were the fruit flies and honey bees. Mangoes used to ripen, fall and just rot all over the town creating garbage and burying the town in the stench of rotting fruit. Same for Oranges and guavas. After a typical Mango or Orange season in Segbwema, you won't see mangoes again until the following year, as nobody had fruit preservation skills in our entire area

People did not learn fruit preservation as mangoes and oranges weree not rice or cassava and therefore in our area these were not considered "real food". Probably our Russian brother would have helped to preserve all that rotting fruit, but he was considered a failure and even if the fellow had decided to start his own food preservation business, he would not have had access to capital. Up to this day I wonder what became of that fellow.

My Idea of Success

So, even though most of our brothers and sisters who went to study in Russia came back after successfully completing their academic studies. They came back to a country that regarded them as failures simply because they made the mistake of coming back to Sierra Leone broke, without dollars or pounds jingling in their pockets.

This phenomenon was not only restricted to Russian graduates. I don't know if things have now changed in Sierra Leone, but when we were in college, our brothers who had finished high school and were working for Red Cross and other NGOs during the war were more respected and revered even though some of them were just entry-level staff in these organizations. As far as our relatives were concerned, we went back to Segbwema speaking big English with empty pockets and the only respect that we even got was because many rich people had gone to the college we were attending. People thought that we had finished school and instead of making money we had decided to waste time and go to college probably to become a teacher. As teachers those days were the most hard up of all government employees, we were regarded as aspiring potential failures.

In Freetown, our glorious capital, buried in those days under the weight of ill gotten gains, with corruption, bribery and fraud as rampant and common as rain, the popular saying was, "Den say Bailor Barrie, you say Davidson Nicol?" Davidson Nicol being a celebrated academic and Bailor Barrie being an extremely rich immigrant businessman who, if my memory serves me right, died in a tragic road accident in his prime. To the basic Sierra Leonean, it was considered more successful to be a Bailor Barrie than a Davidson Nicol, even though the latter was one of most celebrated academics Africa had ever produced and was at one time the head of the nation's largest University.

Some People Call Him a Failure!

So who and what is a failure. My hypothesis is that our societies have failed in defining who and what failure is, by essentially assuming that failing at something makes you a failure, especially failing to acquire material wealth.

As far as I am concerned, failing at something does not make you a failure.

The great American inventor Edison once said that for every successful invention he made, he had failed over thousands of times.

As Sierra Leoneans, we are so crippled by the fear of failing that some people do not even take risks, lest they fail.

Now imagine the transformative decision in the 60s by Americans to go to the moon, and calculate how many ways that venture could have failed. If Americans had just concentrated on the many way the Apollo mission would have failed they would never have even decided to build a rocket, let alone decide to fly to the moon, flying as fast as a bullet.

I have been part of diaspora organizations and even attempted to mobilize and form a few that would help address some of the problems we have back home. But as Sierra Leoneans, we are so programmed to focus on failure that most of the discussions are crippled by the thousands of ways the projects or programs could fail. It is as if one the first day we are born, we are bathed with water collected from the river of pessimism.

I know of a particular African organization that has been trying to build a website for 7 years. The money is available, but a focus on negatives and worrying over failure and the desire to make it outstanding has stalled the program for seven long years.

My definition of "a failure" is not a person who does not succeed. A failure in my opinion, is a person who does not even try. Failure is not the lack if success, it is the absence of effort. Based on my own belief, people who try and have failed are not failures they are simply people who did not succeed. At the least they succeeded in trying.

Failures are people who don't even try. The failure is not the man whose farm has failed, but the man who thought of making a farm, but was so crippled by fear that the farm may fail that he lacked the testicular fortitude to even start working on the farm.

So as Sierra Leoneans, we should not fear to fail. What we should fear is not trying. To me it is not a matter of whether you failed at a project, as long as you tried, you are a success, because you can always learn from your mistakes or the things you overlooked and achieve the result you want the next time around.

So to the matter of the Sierra Leone Russian graduates. These brothers were not failures, it was the society that failed them. The society failed by making the effort to engage these young men and women with the vital skills that would have contributed to the nation's progress.

So the next time when somebody laughs at you because you tried and did not succeed and hence regards you as a failure, don't let it bother you. As the Liberian musicians Zack and Gebah used to say, "Just Keep on Trying, cause as long as there is life, there is always hope."

To conclude, a failure to me is a man who has lost hope or simply lacks the motivation to try. A man who has given up. For many of us, there have been times when the future that we envisioned for ourselves has been so bleak that we simply gave up, even though we had cars, houses and everything other people may regard as success.

So before you think of yourself as a failure, think of the man who once went up a tree trying to kill himself. Another fellow walking by saw him and asked him what he was doing.

"I am tired, I want to kill myself, I want to end my sorrowful life. I am a failure"

The other man said, "Before you jump, could you please send your shirt down for me. I have beem trying to to go look for work, but have no suitable shirt. Your shirt would change my life. So please send it down." The fellow did not jump as he saw a man who had things so tough, but he was still willing to try. He saw a man with the potential to succeed.

So at the end of the day, both success and our traditional definition of failure are equally important. The main problem is not failure, the main problem is not trying at all.

Choitram Memorial Hospital Reacts to Public Outrage

Tom Nyuma

Choitram Memorial Hospital in Freetown Sierra Leone, which incurred the wrath of many in the Sierra Leone community at home and abroad last week when postmortem photos of former military strongman Tom Nyuma who passed away at the hospital surfaced on social media, seemingly taken moments after the war hero's demise, has reacted to the outrage by handing over some employees suspected of engaging in the nefarious act to the Criminal Investigations Department in the country's capital.

When some conscientious Sierra Leoneans started to object over such wanton disregard of a patient's right by employees of the hospital, a few individuals in the Sierra Leone community, those who see everything through the prism of politics and others who were unfortunately just plain ignorant about patients rights, starting stating that those who were objecting to the outrageous act were just trying to make a big deal out of nothing. Even one cyber opinion leader resident in Norway said that people were just making much ado about nothing. Afterwards, he said, there were more important things to focus on in Sierra Leone. Fortunately the majority did not share the basis of his totally incongruous outburst.

Some others were of the opinion that during the war, dead people were strewn all over the streets of Sierra Leone, being photographed, and people did not raise such an outcry. Unfortunately what these people fail to realize is that the streets of Freetown during the war is not the same as a hospital ward where people and pay for treatment, and such an analogy lacked any sensible foundation.

Ranger

The truth of the matter is that with the proliferation of social media, there are people who just want to join every conversation on the sole basis of commonsense and nothing else.

A hospital is a place where people who need medical care go and put their lives and their privacy in the hands of total strangers. Every hospital in the world, even if it is located in the furthest outpost in the most primitive country on earth has a sacred duty to provide the best standards of care, which includes not only the provision of direct medical services, but a pledge to uphold the dignity and privacy of the patients in their care even after death. Now, nobody is accusing the management of Choitram of complicity in the nefarious acts of some unenlightened few, but as the management of a health care institution, there are certain ethical standards that you should ensure that all employees under your care maintain. If an employee violates these ethical codes, the employee is accountable for his/her behavior, but the ultimate responsibility for the act  resides with the hospital management.

Over the past few years, Choitram has made a name for itself as the prime provider of modern medical services in Sierra leone and has therefore become the hospital of first choice for the affluent and those who expect high standards of care, especially those in the expatriate community, international students, tourists, and even the health conscious common citizenry. Therefore, such a wanton disregard for patients privacy, as manifested by the violation of the privacy of the deceased hero, was a serious dent in the reputation of this rising medical provider, which is trying hard to have a stellar reputation in the sub-region. It is very therefore appropriate that they are taking cogent steps to let their employees know that such ethical violations are totally unacceptable.

Harish Agnani
Hospital Mamagement

The rights of people, especially patients, all over the world are the same. The people of Sierra Leone must not settle for less. We know our country is hard, with most people struggling to barely make ends meet. But there is no price for dignity, and the dignity of a poor man, an African, an Indian an a European, must all be of equal value.

The latest development is that no criminal charges are pending against the employees as their action was not a criminal matter. But the matter has been sent to the relevant health care board in the country to see if there was any violation of the codes of health care conduct. A press realease by Choitram hospital strongly condemned the action of the staff that were involved in the mischief

Choitram Hospital's Disgraceful Conduct

Choitram Memorial Hospital

Early yesterday morning we received  news of the untimely death of Rtd. Lieutenant Colonel Tom Nyuma former Secretary of State for the Eastern Region of Sierra Leone and Undersecretary of State for Defence, after a long period of declining health. Barely some hours after the announcement of his demise, we started receiving "WhatsApp" pictures of the body of the former battlefield commander  probably taken with a cellphone camera right inside the hospital room at Choitram Memorial Hospital where he passed away at 4.30 a.m local time.

By the end of yesterday, this horrible picture was all over social media including Facebook, Google+, and electronic mail, you name it.

Many conscientious Sierra Leoneans both at home and in the diaspora were particularly miffed at such a blatant violation of all the tenets of patients rights.Why would a hospital like Choitram which is fast making a name for itself as one of the best hospitals in the country allow such wanton disregard for the memory of an individual who had played such a major role to defend the country from the insanity of depraved RUF rebels who had had no respect for human life and dignity. A man that had risked his life on hundreds of occasions to confront rebels in the jungle, when he could have been sitting comfortably as a minister in Freetown, reading about the war through reports.

Late Tom Nyuma

Even if the individual involved had not been such a notable person as Tom Nyuma, every patient regardless of their social or economic status, has the right to privacy, confidentiality, respect, freedom from harm, and dignity, among other rights. These rights are sacrosanct and should be the foundation of any modern medical practice. For you to allow an individual with a cellphone into a health care situation, particularly when the patient is at your mercy or is incapacitated, is not only crude and uncivil, but is a violation of of both the ethical and legal codes of the medical practice.

Those in the management of Choitram Hospital ought to know better. Even if you locate a hospital in the midst of the darkest jungle in Sierra Leone, the rights of patients are sacrosanct and inviolable.

The behavior of the staff of that hospital is symptomatic of all the problems that ail us as a country. Until Sierra Leoneans start to respect the basic underpinnings of decent societies, we would always continue to wallow at the bottom of every conceivable list of human development.

I sincerely hope that the management of Choitram would investigate this travesty and sanction the culprits, as a society in which there is no respect for the vulnerable, is a society that has no moral foundation.

The Tragedy of South Sudan

Independence Day

Just a year or two ago, the world was rejoicing at the birth of the brand new country of South Sudan in Sub-Saharan Africa. Here in the United States, the joy at the independence of the largely Christian South played into the anti-Muslim narrative that has gripped the country since the heinous World Trade center attacks of September 11 2001.

South Sudan has traditionally been a hub of US Christian charitable activities as many of the American Christian right saw the liberation of the largely Christian southern region of Sudan from the Muslim north as a sort of modern day crusade reminiscent of the epic struggles between Richard the Lighthearted and Saladin in the epic crusades of the middle ages.

So when South Sudan finally got their independence, black Africans were glad and proud that their brothers were finally liberated from Arab domination and rule and Christians across the world saw it as just another victorious chapter in the centuries old struggle against militant Islam.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir

For those of us who are keen students of contemporary African political history, the liberation of South Sudan was viewed with mixed feelings. Though we were immensely happy that the South Sudanese were finally free, we were also cognizant of the fact that the new leader of the country lacked the charisma and transformative leadership style of long time late South Sudan freedom fighter and symbolic leader Dr. John Garang, who had managed to become a central leadership figure for all the many disparate tribal militias and ethnic factions who had dominated the landscape of the south during the long struggle for political sovereignty .

Unfortunately, John Garang died in a helicopter crash on July 30, 2005 just as the dream of nationhood for the south was being realized and the world had to settle for his deputy Salva Kiir, a a veteran freedom fighter who lacked the formal education, charisma and political savvy of Dr John Garang de Mabior and had gained  prominence in the SPLM/LA primarily through his military exploits on the battlefields of South Sudan.

Salva Kiir joined the rebellion against northern rule as a young man in 1960. In 1962 John Garang, then a student, also joined the rebellion but the leaders were anxious to ensure that bright young men received education and persuaded him to continue his education in Tanzania, from where he won a scholarship to study in USA. After graduating with a BA in US, Garang won a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley but decided to return to Tanzania and complete his post graduate studies at the University of Dar Es Salaam. After his studies John Garang went back to South Sudan  and joined the rebellion.

Late John Garang de Mabior

In 1972 the first north-south civil war ended with the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement. John Garang was incorporated into the regular Sudanese army and became a career soldier eventually attaining the rank of  Colonel. It was during this period that he came back to USA and obtained a Masters degree in Agricultural Economics and a PhD in South Sudan agriculture. But by the early 80s, the North-South tensions were flaring up again.

In 1983 Colonel John Garang, sent to quell a rebellion of Southern military officers defected from the Sudanese military and joined the ranks of the Southern rebels who wanted nothing short of complete independence for Southern Sudan, although his vision of Sudan was a united country with a secular government. Eventually John Garang became the  military and political head of the rebellion.

In January 2005 North and South Sudan signed a comprehensive peace agreement and Dr. John Garang became Vice President of Sudan with Omar al-Bashir as President. Later that year tragedy struck the south when Garang, returning from a secret mission to visit his friend President Yoweri Museveni in Uganda was involved in a tragic accident. The Ugandan presidential helicopter that Dr. Garang was returning in crashed killing him and several of its occupants. After the initial confusion surrounding the crash, Salva Kiir head of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army was named as the successor to John Garang and became Vice President of Sudan.

Veteran Fighter Kiir

Salva Kiir who had spent all his life fighting the north saw no vision of a united Sudan wanted complete independence of the South. He was eventually able to lead the region into independence on July 9 2011, with him as President and his former rival Riek Machar as Vice President.

Riek Machar was a senior member of the SPLM/A who broke away from John Garang's faction in 1991 and formed SPLM -Nasir. Riek Machar wanted complete independence for South Sudan while John Garang wanted a secular united Sudan and the two became bitter adversaries, with Riek Machar receiving assistance from the Sudanese government in Khartoum to fight Garang's SPLA. In 1997 Machar signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese government and became a senior adviser to the President. However the relationship between Machar and the Khartoum government did not last as he mended fences with Garang returning to SPLM as a senior member. Machar had studied engineering at the University of Khartoum and later proceeded to UK where he obtained his PhD.

Dr. Riek Machar

South Sudanese independence was achieved after the death of Garang.  Salva Kiir who had always been true to the main SPLM/LA and succeeded Garang became President while his old rival Riek Machar became the nation's first Vice President. South Sudan's independence was met with celebrations all over the world, but even at the birth of this new country, its teething problems were glaring.

One of South Sudan's main problem was that the leaders of the new country were all former rebel warlords, some of whom had spent years fighting each other. During the war period Riek Machar's faction had been sponsored by the Khartoum government to fight the main SPLM of John Garang. The President and Vice President were therefore not very comfortable with each other. There were also heavy ethnic tensions as Salva Kiir and Riek Machar were from the rival Dinka and Nuer tribes who were historic rivals before and during the protracted conflict.

The other problem that South Sudan faced was huge expectations from a people who had fought many years for liberation. Unfortunately many of the youths of the south had grown up in a culture of war rather than education and the country was faced with a large population of uneducated youths hungry for a better life who had never learnt the skills to become productive citizens and who viewed themselves largely along ethnic lines.

At Independence some areas of the national boundaries between South and North Sudan were not clearly defined, especially in some oil rich regions. Also South Sudan could only export oil through the pipelines of the North. This led to tension and military conflict between the two and the situation is still volatile. 

Stoking the Embers of War

So when last year Salva Kiir decided to fire his entire cabinet, most of whom had been former warlords, the only question that was left asking was when will the conflict begin again. As the present situation demonstrates, the answer was not long in coming as the country has descended into bitter civil conflict with opposing political and ethnic factions busy tearing the young country apart.

The only hope for this conflict is that the African Union is now a mature organization, skilled in years of conflict resolution. With this body taking the initiative as African brothers and impressing upon the South Sudanese the triviality of renewed conflict after so many years fighting for liberation, the hope is that the leaders of the factions and the President will ultimately see sense in trying to negotiate a peaceful end to the current quagmire. South Sudan only needs to take a look around Sub-Saharan Africa to see example of countries like Burundi, Rwanda, Nigeria and others that have engaged in protracted ethnic conflicts and learn from their mistakes and successes. Most importantly Salva Kiir has to realize that currently his is a country of equals, all men who devoted substantial portions of their lives to the struggle for the liberation of their country. To think that he will just suddenly marginalize them at this time by political decrees is foolhardy at best and reckless at worst.

Veterans of Former Wars

The African Union has to be particularly vigilant and be on the look out for the usual foreign war hawks who exploit such conflict situations by trading in arms and ammunition while acting as conduits for the illegal exploitation of minerals and other natural resources. South Sudan has so much potential, and it is the moral responsibility of all Africa to ensure that this new country receives the technical, diplomatic, educational, and economic support it needs at this delicate time. 

The efforts of the main players of the Addis Ababa Peace Agreements signed on January 23rd, 2014 under the auspices of the East African Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) need to be lauded and bolstered. The role of countries like China who are only interested in Africa for the exploitation of mineral resources and could care less for the welfare of the people should be closely monitored.

Back to Old Business

South Sudan will face tough challenges in the future due to the enormity of its natural resources, the low supply of skilled labor, the lack of political experience, and the uneasy relationship with the North. But Given the immense mineral and Agricultural wealth of this vast country, there is hope of a very bright future, if only the leaders can free themselves off the shackles of ethnic prejudice and learn to see themselves as South Sudanese first. Salva Kiir must be educated to the fact that any political situation in which a large number of people feel marginalized is inherently unstable. Though the South Sudanese leaders have only known conflict all their adult lives, they must give peace a chance if only for the people of their country who have for so long known nothing but blood and sweat.

Segbwema Blogger
Sheku Sheriff

Author's Note. The historical references were collected from a variety of electronic sources. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author Sheku Sheriff and do not represent that of any organization with which he is associated.

Tom Nyuma Dies in Sierra Leone

Tom Nyuma aka Ranger

The Segbwema Blog reports the death this morning in Freetown Sierra Leone of Tom Nyuma, Sierra Leone's former Defense Undersecretary of Defense, Secretary of State Eastern Region, and recently Chairman of Kailahun District, Eastern Sierra Leone.

In 1992, Tom Nyuma rose to prominence as one of the members of the military insurrection that removed the immensely corrupt regime of President Joseph Saidu Momoh from Power, after almost two decades of one party rule in the country. A protest over conditions of service at the Eastern war front led to the flight of the former Major General turned president out of the country, causing the protesters to institute a National Provisional Ruling Council headed by Captain Esegrabo M. Strasser as Head of State.

During the 4 years of NPRC rule, Tom Nyuma gained prominence as one of the few cabinet ministers who frequently donned military fatigues and went to the war front to confront the rebels. Many people in the East of Sierra Leone view Tom Nyuma as a war hero who managed to defend the area against the advances of Foday Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and prevented many parts of the Eastern Region from falling into the hands of the RUF.

At the height of the civil war, Nyuma's detractors and RUF propagandists spread the news that he was collaborating with the rebels, but they could never explain how a sitting defense minister could collaborate with rebels and not have them succeed. It was later learnt that RUF had deliberately started the rumors to demoralize elements of the military. In 1994 when I had the chance to talk to Tom Nyuma about these allegations, he was deeply saddened at what he saw was the ingratitude of Sierra Leoneans.

Foday Sankoh and Nyuma in Lome

During the mid 1990s, the RUF was in awe of Tom Nyuma. In a peace conference between the RUF and the Sierra Leone government Foday Sankoh himself told Tom Nyuma that he had always wanted to meet him, as he had been on of the strongest obstacles to RUF plans during the peak of the war.

After the hand over to civilian rule, Tom Nyuma, who was now a senior officer in the military did a brief stint in the armed services and then left for USA. Tom Nyuma's sojourn in USA was unremarkable as  he mostly avoided the limelight. He was reportedly deported from the country around 2007and went back to Sierra Leone. During the 2007 Presidential elections campaign period. Tom Nyuma was violently attacked by members of opposition leader Ernest Bai Koroma's security detail. During the attack he received major head trauma but never received expert medical attention.

2007 Attack on Nyuma in Bo

In 2008, Tom Nyuma was elected as Chairman of the Kailahun District Council winning with an overwhelming 87% of the votes. However his tenure as district council chairman was not very successful. As an opposition party Councillor, he was also seen as being to close to the ruling All Peoples Congress Party. 

In the 2012 elections, Tom Nyuma threw his support behind President Ernest Koroma instead of his party candidate and former military colleague Julius Maada Bio, even though he strenously denied reports that he himself had abandoned the SLPP.

Councillor Nyuma

Over the past few years Tom had been declining in health, a condition many believe was the effect of untreated head trauma during the attack in Bo, as he had never regained his full health after the attack. Tom Nyuma grew up in Fourah Bay College where his father was a long term employee. He was from the Kissi ethnic group and will always be an integral part of the history of 1990s Sierra Leone.

Tom Nyuma died this morning at 4.30am in the Choitrams Hospital in Sierra Leone. 

Dynamic Ecobank Executive Director Dies in Sierra Leone

Mohamed Bah

Mohamed Bah the dynamic Executive Director of Ecobank in Sierra Leone, a Pan African bank that helps Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) across the country passed away this morning in Sierra Leone from a massive coronary attack and died while driving to the beach for his usual morning jog. He was pronounced dead at the Choitram's Hospital in Freetown.

Traditional commercial banking in Sierra Leone was long dominated by conventional banks which had always imposed significant hurdles to borrowing by small and medium businesses in Sierra Leone, as they preferred lending to established businesses and individuals with significant collateral to mitigate the risks of lending in the volatile region. Ecobank bucked this trend by starting to lend especially to SMEs.

Ecobank

Ecobank Sierra Leone is a member of Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI) which was established in 1985 with a view of loosening the stranglehold that foreign commercial banks had on commercial banking in Africa. It's mission was to encourage the financial integration and and development of the continent by facilitating lending to small and medium enterprises and encouraging savings among low income individuals.

Many small and medium businesses in Sierra Leone owe their success and survival to Ecobank under the exemplary leadership of Mohamed Bah. In recent times the bank engaged in promotions aimed at encouraging lending among various sectors of the Sierra Leone society, a country in which people are usually too strapped for cash to save any of their income. This poor savings culture means that most Sierra Leoneans are just a crisis away from financial disaster.

Last year, the stellar reputation of the bank was tainted by the activities of some employees of the bank who colluded with employees of the country's National Revenue Authority (NRA) to defraud the Sierra Leone government out of millions of leones of collected revenue. The bank acted very swiftly to hand the individuals to the authorities as soon as the discrepancies were discovered. Ecobank now ranks number 5 among commercial banks in Sierra Leone.

Mohamed Bah a practicing Muslim was scheduled to be buried later today in Freetown.

Dr. Julius Spencer Arrested in Freetown

Dr. Julius Spencer

News reports filtering in from Freetown indicate that one of the heroes of the civil resistance to the brief military Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC)  interregnum that almost derailed multiparty democracy in the late 90s in Sierra Leone, Dr. Julius Spencer, has been arrested in Freetown on allegations by Information Minister Alpha Kanu that the Premier News which is published by Spencer's Premier Media published an article which the authorities considered defamatory.

The exact circumstances of the case have yet to be revealed, but Dr. Spencer who is the Managing Director of Premier Media and Alusine Sesay the editor of Premier News had their offices raided earlier today by personnel of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) with the confiscation of multiple media equipment including computers and documents, all of which were taken to the CID. Both Spencer and Sesay are currently in detention at CID.

Dr. Spencer is a renowned arts lecturer at the country's premier university Fourah Bay College specializing in dramatic arts who was instrumental in setting up an anti-junta radio network during the AFRC interruption. After the AFRC/RUF junta forces were driven out of Freetown and democratic order reestablished, he was recognized for his role by ex-President Ahmed Tejan Kabba by being appointed the country's Information Minister.

Dr. Spencer and Alusine Sesay's arrest are just the latest in the current spate of media harassment and intimidation that has gripped Sierra Leone since President Koroma was reelected in 2012 vowing a crackdown on libelous media. In a policy which the government calls media sanitizing, the few independent journalists remaining in the country have been subject to threats, arrests, denial of bail, public humiliation and trumped up court charges, while those who write favorably about the government are awarded diplomatic press attache positions and given other incentives.

In the overzealous restriction on media freedoms in Sierra Leone, even those close to the powers that be are not being spared. This was the case in the recent arrest of radio propagandist David Tam-Baryoh, who was detained for seven hours just for texting the Transport and Aviation Minister seeking clarification about his complicity in rumors of a planned attack on his radio station, in an excessive display of third world authority.

As stated by the minister himself, David Tam Baryoh had been at the beck and call of the ruling party during the last elections in 2012. Recently however, he is seen as too close to the Vice President who has reportedly fallen out of the good favor of the country's President.

Sierra Leone is a country that went through a decade of civil war in the 90s followed by a smooth transition from military to civilian rule and a peaceful handover of power by a ruling party to the opposition at elections.

Recently viewed  as a beacon of multiparty politics in an otherwise autocratic region, there are growing fears that President Ernest Bai Koroma is being influenced by his minions to hang on to power after his constitutional two-term limit is up, with the excuse that he has done so much for the country, in spite of an increased incidence of corruption, bribery, nepotism, tribalism and economic stagnation all in the face of increased exploitation of natural and mineral resources. The President and his Vice President are locked in a bitter political and personality clash that is being used by those close to the President to publicly humiliate his deputy.

The 1991 Sierra Leone constitution is currently under review, a process headed by a close ally of the President. Some months ago the results of two Parliamentary seats won by the opposition were annulled and the seats declared for the ruling party, giving the President control over both the executive and the legislative arms of government. With the control of these two organs of government and a judiciary that is traditionally allied to whatever government is in power, combined with undue influence over the constitutional review process, many Sierra Leoneans with a knowledge of the country's history see all the variables in place for the reemergence of one party dominance and the disruption of genuine democracy in the country.

Last year Dr. Spencer went to court to challenge the constitutionality of the country's notorious criminal and seditious libel laws which are regarded by many as negative vestiges of the country's past history. These laws are now used by the country's authorities with religious devotion.

As details of the arrest of Dr. Spencer become known we will keep you updated.