In the Holy Christian Bible book of Romans 6:23, the Holy Spirit of God speaking through the Apostle Paul, said: “For the wages of sin is death.”
Death and sin go hand in hand, the flipsides of the same coin. Where there is death sin was the cause and whenever we sin we draw closer to our days of reckoning with our maker. This should have one circumspect as at any time anyone of us can die; there are no guarantees that any or all of us will see the end of the next 24-hour cycle. Think of that old lady or young person that just passed away in your community and you will see the sense of urgency you should treat getting things done right so that we will live godly lives.
Every sin then is the reason for our present state of being as a people. The cumulative effect has led to the advent of the theft of public spaces where at the end of the day everyone is expected to side with the crowd and say some or anything in support of a wrong done in the interest of protecting and maintaining the status quo.
For a regime that swore on oath to protect the constitution and citizenry, many of the SLPP most ardent supporters have been complicit in refusing to call a spade a spade all in the interest of maintaining hegemony over the Office of the President of Sierra Leone. Once hired by the regime these men and women who were expected to speak truth to power to the president have all become supporters of the wrongs that have become commonplace in the corridors of power since 2018.
This is so because the first casualty along the way to the wages of sin is the death of the truth. The truth is sacrificed at the altar of national cohesion and peace while still sidelining what we are morally and ethically bounded to do despite the popular or loud or rude or obnoxious. The rule of law is made to suffer as we do everything to weaken the law and circumvent it when we have to.
The rule of law has suffered massive abuse by those in power who use the law against the interest of the law and citizens. The majority of the legislations that were passed under PAOPA were done so in the interest of members of the regime, not to peg the law as the cornerstone of a democratic state or dispensation.
Still suffering under the weight of the wages of sin after a long time, society is so battered that it loses respect for the rule of law as this respect for the rules reminds them of their moral or legal obligations and expectations about the law.
The death of the truth leads to a rise in the number of despots, charlatans, gangsters and thieves who find themselves being listened to by a society that is steep in the wages of sin and happily awaiting their share of the national pie for service to society.
This way everybody becomes an authority, and the louder and more socially obnoxious and toxic you are, you become the voice of the people. The people are hard pressed that they will listen to everyone but their elected leaders, who they say were last popularly elected in 2012.
If there is anything the 2018 to 2023 Julius Maada Bio led government has accomplished is the negation of the truth as is and the propagation of certain myths all in the interest of maintaining their grip on state power. Nobody speaks the truth; everyone is in for his or her own selfish ambition, which at the end of the day always leaves the citizens on the receiving side or end of things. The law and its rule have been made to suffer massive hemorrhages since the inception of the PAOPA faction of the SLPP. Reversing the negative laws and regulations that were passed during this runaway train regime should be part of the workload of any regime that would replace the struggling Bio-led government of Sierra Leone.
A society that is heavily indebted to the wages of sin finds trust in and for people missing or severely lacking. The average Sierra Leonean does not trust his fellow citizen, not even his mother’s son.
Trust is the foundation of every relationship. Where there is no trust there is no relationship. If we are friends, business partners or lovers and don’t trust each other then all we are doing is misleading each other. Trust is sorely missing in the public space as the average Sierra Leonean does not trust his or her compatriot; he or she is scared of his cohort, which is an open secret. The reason for this is because of the dearth of the truth. Everyone has been so compromised that they continue to fail to speak truth to power and so hold this regime to their word or promises made during electioneering.
Everyone has relegated themselves to backburner behaviors that continue to make wide the chasms that already exist. The hallmark / foundation of human relationship and endeavor is trust; anything else will prove to be futile.
The average person in a society dominated by a public leadership that fails to stand up and be counted as siding with the Lord should not be expected to act according to the rule of law and his conscience. There is a general fear between the people. Nearly love and faithfulness have long since exited the scene all we have left are few remnants here and there.
The rise in personal ambition among our people to seek riches by any means necessary has left us with many business people and or leaders and not enough people working for the people, while all along the truth of the whole matter is being manipulated to stand in place of the will of the very society under peril. With so many leaders coming into public service with the wrong or different idea from the truth or respect for the rule of law, human rights, freedom of speech and the like we may not be far from Haiti where centuries of letting things be without solving or resolving them have led to a situation where the nation is now being run by criminal gangs instead of a central government. Some say the peoples have a similar history hence the Haitians admire the past 11 year civil war. See what we are being admired for!
It goes without saying that Sierra Leoneans cannot afford to be admired for violence and corruption, the two public menaces that have almost wrecked our national government. Once known for our advancement in education and public administration today Sierra Leone is a figment of its former self, far from where we should presently be as a city state that was founded in 1792. Now the nation’s youths have fallen victim to the negative effects of a drop in the standard and expectation of public leadership.
The rise of the Kush pandemic in Sierra Leone is an indication of the death of personal ambition. Young people no longer see public service as done in their interest. They would rather spend their whole days and nights in a spaced out high where they will pass the time without dealing with their realities. For those with jobs that smoke, the reason is not too far off as they fail to see how they can ever rise through the ranks to become the substantive head. The whole idea is that it is better to keep setting things aside instead of dealing with them, a whole lot better to accept that they are addicts instead of fighting to free themselves from what they didn’t use to do a few months, years ago.
As a society we have allowed our leaders to trample the rule of law all in the interest of protecting their interest while shafting the entire population in the process. Sierra Leoneans have never had the opportunity of working together to develop the state; they have always had to work apart while accomplishing relatively nothing to write home about after 232 years of Freetown.
Because no one is allowed to speak the truth according to the rule of law and their conscience the love of most has grown cold. The ridiculous rise in the price of the people’s most important food source, rice, is an indication of how the culture of sweeping things under the carpet will continue to bring dead tendencies to the society. Less than eight years ago the Jasmine rice was just NLe220 today it is NLe1,200 more at the marketplaces. Local rice that was NLe150 is now a cool NLe700.
So where are we heading with this? When we consider that the wages of sin is death and that if we stopped sinning we will not die, it then behooves us to try to put an end to all sinful activities from our elected leaders and speak the truth regardless of party or regional or tribal allegiances and consider how this affects us going forward, then we will start designing strategies to get back and much better. This herculean task starts with setting aside personal or other ambitions, respect or otherwise and speaking truth to power. This demands that we challenge and call the president or anyone else out without fear or favor for any public or private glitch.
Let no one ask had we not been here before many other times before because had things been resolved in the interest of the people then, they wouldn’t have raised their ugly heads so quickly again after making the same promise to resolve things. Instead all people got was one political intrigue after the other.
The wages of sin is death; death to the economy, people and society. Lawlessness becomes the order of the day as day and night, night and day we hear of people’s rights and privileges being trampled on for something as ridiculous as something the bribe taker will not maintain with for life. One can even get jailed for being duty bound to remind government of the expectations of, and their obligations to the rule of law.
This will only matter if we have the interest of society not any party or personality at heart.