Concord Times (Freetown)
Mohammed R. Swaray
20 August 2008
opinion
Freetown — I have had a steaming love relationship with the Concord Times family over a decade now. This marriage was forged and fostered by my mentor and good old friend, Lans Gberie. But unlike him, I have never worked for Concord Times except for few and far between occasional contributions to mark the paper's land mark events. This attempt is no different.
I am doing this piece in evergreen memory of our friend and brother, James Oguoguo who was snatched away from us by RUF rebels during the ignoble January 6th invasion of Freetown. My heart has been too heavy to give a cinematic account of what happened on that fateful day but after several years, I have mustered enough courage to recount the incident as I saw it.
James had joined his brother Kingsley Lington from Nigeria, where he was a practicing journalist, to ply his trade in Sierra Leone in the late 90s and was regarded in both media and readership circles as part of a breed of journalists needed to move to move the country forward and restore its old glory as the home of West African journalism.
James was an ingenious and very fearless journalist. I hardly missed anything he wrote particularly his feature articles. They were a collector's item and an irresistible read.
Other readers and I were however deprived of James' enormous potentials and our collectors' item when RUF rebels invaded Freetown and snatched James from a long queue of agonized Freetown residents fleeing their atrocities around the Syke Street/Ascension Road axis.
While in hiding at Ascension town, James was very prayerful and was glued to both his radio set and his Bible for good news and God's mercy respectively. He had two hundred dollars on him which he wrapped stealthily in his socks together with his Nigerian passport for fear that he might either be killed for the money or his Nigerianess since the rebels perceived Nigerians as having largely thwarted their governance ambitions.
Having fled the RUF atrocities from the then stadium hostel abode, which was became a must capture for RUF rebels, we sought refuge at the Ascension Town residence of one of our close friends, Morlai Kamara, where we lived for three days in perpetual fear before we were again bolted out by the rebels who broke into the house to steal and maim.
As if we were being hounded, the rebels again fired shots into the 'pan bodi' house where we took temporary refuge. This gave cause to the landlady to ask us out of her house for fear that our presence might further endanger her house. We continued our search for a safe haven not knowing that this was an exercise in futility for James as he was snatched from a long queue of fleeing residents at Kingtom roundabout.
James was slightly ahead of me in a queue of more than five hundred people when one of the rebels accused him of being a Nigerian journalist. The rebels no doubt had no magic wand to fish out Nigerians, or suspected enemies, as they classified them during the war but the level of civilian collaboration and complicity made James' identification and capture by the rebels possible.
Though I survived the war with arms and limbs intact, I have never forgotten that moment when James was snatched from our company and I still see in my minds eyes the forlorn wave as he was being carted away in an open project vehicle to an unknown destination from where we never saw him again.
We were all deeply saddened by James' abduction and had imagined how gravely devastated Kingsley felt as a similar fate might have befallen him if he were in town. From that moment on, efforts were stepped up to explore the possibility of locating James and facilitating his freedom.
No effort was spared in that direction as various ECOMOG force commanders and RUF generals were approached to help in this search and rescue mission. Concord Times spent several thousands or even millions of Leone on foot soldiers on all sides of the divide to locate and reunite James with his family and friends.
Some of the combatants who had come to town after the RUF inclusion in government even assured Kingsley and the team that James was still alive and kicking but that he needed medication and some wearing which he (Kingsley) readily sent through them. We later realized that they were pulling wool over our eyes as all efforts did not yield the desired dividend.
My devastation was compounded by a call from James' three months old pregnant wife from Nigeria to find out the whereabouts of her husband. For the first time in my life, I was tongue tied and could not say anything until the phone line went dead - courtesy of SIERRATEL.
Like his editorial colleagues 'who came, edited and conquered,' James could also be counted amongst the numbers since he was on the right side of history. His crime for which the RUF presumably butchered him in cold blood was for denouncing violence and a campaign of terror as a means of capturing state power.
As someone who died for a glorious and noble ideal, the best tribute colleagues and succeeding governments can pay him is respect for the Rule of law and professional journalism.
James' legacy will live on and the Concord Times family could not have planned a better deal for him than immortalize him through the commemorative lecture series. I will end with the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson who once noted that "it is not length, but depth of life' and that a life spent worthy is not measured by days but by deeds. James, rest is peace.
Swaray is human resource manager at the Sierra Leone Airports Authority (SLAA).
Read comments. Write your own.
Copyright © 2008 Concord Times. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
Mr. Lahai, sorry to read about your traumatic experience. Glad you survived the "attack," and, of course, everyone, even the murderers of the journalist, should or OUGHT TO pray that the deceased journalist's soul rest in peace.
However, I have a small concern: how do you know that the "AFRC," monikered by you and many others as "SOBELS," pulled the sordid deed that you recounted?
POINT OF CORRECTION: JAMES OGUOGUO WAS MURDERED BY THE AFRC; NOT BY THE RUF. I WAS NOT IN THE QUEUE WHEN JAMES WAS FINGERED AND EVENTUALLY TAKEN AWAY, BUT I WAS HIDING IN A FRIEND'S PLACE WITH MY SICK MOTHER AND NEPHEW VERY CLOSE TO THE AREA. WE COULD EASILY HAVE BEEN IN THAT QUEUE HAD IT NOT BEEN THAT MAMA WAS TOO ILL TO BE MOVED AND BEING ORDERED ABOUT BY THOSE DRUG CRAZED SOBELS. THE NIGHT BEFORE, THAT SAME GROUP RAIDED OUR HIDING PLACE AND WERE ABOUT TO KILL ALL OF US AND BURN DOWN THE "DAMN" PLACE WHEN ONE OF THE RENEGADE SLA RECOGNISED ME AS HIS FORMER TEACHER AT SL MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD SEC. SCH. BERRY STREET AND RESTRAINED THE OTHERS. THE TEACHING PROFESSION MAY NOT BE FINANCIALLY REWARDING, BUT IT CAN SOMETIMES GET ONE OUT OF TROUBLE OR EVEN SAVE LIVES, AS IT TURNED OUT TO BE ON THAT OCCASION. OUR SAVING GRACE WAS TEACHING GEOGRAPHY AT THAT SCHOOL DURING 1985/86 - 86/87 SESSIONS. THE FUNNY THING IS THAT I DID NOT EVEN KNOW THE GUY.
MAY JAMES' GENTLE SOUL REST IN ETERNAL PEACE