By Sallieu T. Kamara
There’s a popular quote by the American educator, author, businessman and keynote speaker, Stephen Richards Covey, which says "seek first to understand, then to be understood." He goes further to say people that uphold this naturally are more inclined to be great leaders because they know the value of not only collecting all necessary information before they come to a conclusion, but also the need to make others feel heard.
Invariably, people who do not uphold this are more disposed to be bad leaders. This is because when people or leaders don’t seek first to understand others, and yet at the same time expect to be understood by others, it is double standard that breeds animosity in every given environment. It’s this double standard that has besieged our illustrious Kasseh chiefdom, home of the great warrior and trail blazer of Pan-Africanism, Bai Bureh Kabalai, in recent times.
The Paramount Chief of Kasseh Chiefdom in Port Loko District is Bai Bureh Sallu Lugbu II. He was elected in a landslide victory in December 2002. He has always enjoyed the unwavering loyalty, respect, cooperation and support of his people. But he’s never reciprocated in equal measure. If anything, he has embarked on further closing down the already shrinking civic space in an unprecedented rapidity, paying little or no heed to the rights and freedoms of the people as they are enshrined in our law books and in international legal instruments to which Sierra Leone has acceded. He personifies himself as the “Mr Know It All” and he doesn’t listen to anyone, not even his chiefdom advisors. Nor does he seek to first understand his subjects before running into unfounded conclusions. He believes he’s always right and against the rest of the chiefdom, his word must always stand no matter the consequential effect on the peace and wellbeing of the chiefdom. One of the tools he uses most effectively to accomplish this is “public humiliation”. He takes great pleasure in humiliating and embarrassing people in public, including even his sub-chiefs and wives, knowing very well that a mean-spirited person will not be confident enough to stand up for their rights. Instances abound.
This has drawn much muted criticism from both within and outside the chiefdom. It’s now evident that this approach is working very well for him, as most of our people have now been seemingly cowed into submission to his sheer whims and caprices.
This brings to mind what Andrew Lawrence Crown says in his essay titled Advice for Tyrants and the Possibility of the Good Life in Aristotle’s Politics: “[A] tyrant dislikes everyone who has dignity or independence since he wants to be alone in his (ignominious) glory. Anyone who claims equal dignity or asserts his independence encroaches on the prerogative of the tyrant and he is consequently hated by him as an enemy to his power”.
The desire of tyrants for doing this is simple: they want to ensure the people are weakened and are not capable of taking any action, thereby creating humbled subjects who are powerless. Consequently, the relationship between the ruled and the ruler will then be driven by fear rather than love and mutual respect. This is what our beloved Kasseh has become today under the ruler-ship of PC Bai Bureh Sallu Lugbu II.
Whilst critically reflecting on recent happenings in Kasseh chiefdom, two things evidently popped up. First, PC Lugbu II is suspicious of anyone whom he believes is not a “yes man” or “yes woman” to him, and he will do everything to limit the civil liberties of such people to come together and form associations or to assemble in total violation of their fundamental constitutional rights. For ease of reference, Section 26 (1) of the Sierra Leone 1991 Constitution states: “Except with his own consent, no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom of assembly and association, that is to say, his right to assemble freely and associate with other persons and in particular to form or belong to any political party, trade unions or other economic, social or professional associations, national or international, for the protection of his interests”.
This is a fundamental right whose enjoyment by descendants of Kasseh has blatantly come under serious attack under the reign of PC Lugbu II. Second, he is deliberately and repeatedly misinforming the public, even when he’s confronted with unalloyed facts. The objective for doing this is to create mistrust and cause some of the people to doubt the truth, and to believe in fictions that support his personal insular objective.
The creation of mistrust among his subjects also serves to preserve despotism since people can only be able to pursue their collective desires and aspirations and take collective actions when they have trust and confidence in one another. Though the facts are always very clear, our own PC Lugbu II most often chooses to egregiously consign them to the waste paper basket and concoct his own fictions to accomplish his motive at any given time.
When sons and daughters of Kasseh chiefdom who were attending different institutions of learning across the country formed themselves into the Kasseh Students’ Union, PC Lugbu II stopped them from holding meetings in Kasseh to launch the association. This was after the leadership of the nascent union had officially written to him to inform him about the Union and its objectives and also to invite him and his section chiefs to the event. He waited until the very morning of the event to stop the launch from taking place, claiming that his consent for the formation of the union had not been sought by the students, first. Therefore, he would not allow the meeting to take place in his chiefdom or in “my own Court Barray, which I built”.
The Court Barray he claims to own is a community structure built with poor tax payers’ money. He further accused the innocent students of having a hidden agenda for forming the union. He didn’t tell which agenda it was, though. Additionally, he demanded that the students change the name of their union from Kasseh Students’ Union to Kagbanthama Junior Secondary School Old Boys’ Association.
This left many people baffled as to whether PC Bai Bureh Sallu Lugbu II knew the difference between a students’ union and an alumni association? If at all he did, he should have known that a students’ union such as the Kasseh Students’ Union is broader than an alumni association such as Kagbanthama Junior Secondary School Old Boys’ Association whose membership is limited to past pupils of the school. Or is it that he was just trying to be mischievous in order to achieve his veiled objective? In any case, he didn’t allow the meeting to hold
What makes many people to believe that PC Bai Bureh Sallu Lugbu II knew what he was doing and that he was doing it on purpose is the fact that he perpetuated the same actions to the Light of Kasseh. The Light of Kasseh is a Community-Based Organization (CBO) established by sons, daughters and well-wishers of Kasseh to mobilize their individual and collective resources to contribute towards the development of the chiefdom. It’s registered with the Port Loko District Council. Just like he stopped the Kasseh Students’ Union from holding their meeting in Kasseh, he also made frantic efforts to stop the Light of Kasseh from holding their meeting at Kagbanthama on New Year’s Day 2021 to formally launch the organization. This time he failed, though. All his antics resulted in naught.
In his quest to create unnecessary barriers for the Light of Kasseh and in order to create mistrust of the association among the people of Kasseh, the Paramount Chief told a crowded Court Barray at Kagbanthama that the Light of Kasseh neither invited him, nor discussed the intended launch with him. This is not true, with all due respect to him. This was a classic case of spreading falsehood. In a letter dated 11th December 2020, the Light of Kasseh wrote to PC Bai Bureh Sallu II informing him about the formation of the association and inviting him to its formal launching ceremony as the Chief Launcher. The letter was delivered to him at his residence in Port Loko by a two-person delegation that specifically left Freetown for the purpose. The letter was delivered to him together with the constitution of the association and the draft programme for the launch. The reception he accorded them was hostile and intimidating.
Also, PC Bai Bureh Sallu Lugbu II waited until after all preparations for the launch had almost been finalized to come up with several irrelevant objections and demands. Amongst them were: his consent to form the association was not first sought, he wasn’t comfortable with the name of the association and it must therefore be changed, he didn’t like some provisions in the constitution of the association and as such they must be expunged, and he wanted to sit with the one who wrote the constitution of the association to seek justification for the inclusion of certain provisions therein.
Additionally, he demanded that he be the one to chair the meeting even though he had been listed on the programme to officially launch the association as the first gentleman of the chiefdom. He insisted that if he wasn’t allowed to chair the meeting, he would cause all his chiefs to walk out. This was after his earlier threats to stop the meeting from holding had withered away. He subsequently walked out of the meeting together with his sub-chiefs. Not even the intervention of some of his chiefs, chiefdom advisors and even the Chairman of the Port Loko District Council, who graciously consented to give the keynote statement, could make him change his mind. But to his utter disappointment, only he and his chiefs walked out. No one else walked out with them as the Court Barray remained jam-packed. So, the meeting continued to a successful end.
The next thing PC Bai Bureh Sallu Lugbu II did was to go straight away to the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) to paint a different picture of what had happened at Kagbanthama. Many people, especially those who were armed with the real facts, were shocked when they heard him on the SLBC Morning Coffee programme of 5 January 2021 making spurious claims about events surrounding the launch of the Light of Kasseh. I will not bother to respond to all of the issues he raised on that radio prograamme, at least for now. But I’ll rather only highlight the one where he implicitly branded members of the association as deceivers and liars who are moving around spreading falsehood about their objectives. He further claimed there’s no mentioning of “development” in the entire constitution of the Light of Kasseh. People knew he wasn’t saying the truth, but they were not surprised. The constitution of the Light of Kasseh is very clear on the need for concerted efforts to develop Kasseh.
Let’s take a quick look at the constitution a copy of which was given to PC Bai Bureh Sallu Lugbu II. The Preamble states, among others: “Conscious of the fact that the descendants of Kasseh in the Port Loko district, north-western region of Sierra Leone, are in dire need of diverse resources necessary for development; And whereas for the purpose of achieving these development aspirations, it is essential that the people of Kasseh form themselves into an Association and mobilize all their resources (human, financial, technical, technological and material) with the view to stimulating and supporting worthwhile human capital, infrastructural and socio-economic development in Kasseh; Now, therefore, we the sons, daughters and well-wishers of Kasseh chiefdom, Port Loko district, north-western region of the Republic of Sierra Leone, have resolved to form an Association to serve as an interactive forum for the people of Kasseh and to provide quality leadership in promoting sustainable development in the said Kasseh chiefdom”. There are several other provisions in the constitution that reinforce this.
Let me conclude by quoting former UN Special Rapporteurs Maina Kiai and Christof Heyns, in their 2016 Joint Report on Recommendations for Managing Assemblies, which states: “Freedom of peaceful assembly is a right and not a privilege and as such its exercise should not be subject to prior authorization by the authorities”.
Editor’s Note
Sallieu T. Kamara is a human rights and social justice activist, and an indigene of Kasseh chiefdom
Copyright © 2021 Politico Online
