My dear friends and family :
MANY MONTHS AGO, I warned you through the social media and Cocorioko that politics is going to get dirtier and dirtier as the years go by and as the 2018 elections draw near, and that there will be serious attempts at BLACKMAILING some of us who are leading the charge to promote the Government of President Ernest Bai Koroma and help rebrand the country. Those who are angry with the government for not employing them and unpatriotic elements within the opposition have formed a cabal to blackmail not only the person of our hardworking and progressive Head of State President Ernest Bai Koroma , ministers of the government, public officials and supporters of the ruling All People’s Congress ( APC ) but journalists busy propagating the achievements of President Koroma and the government . No longer content with just attacking us with epithets like “SYCOPHANTS”, “PRAISE-SINGERS” and “JELIBAS” , which have failed to blunt our edge, as desired, they have now decided to go for the jugular—BLACKMAIL US IN A FAILED ATTEMPT TO TAKE THE WIND OUT OF OUR SAILS AND SILENCE US.
In that article, I warned you that the very outrageous allegations being made against us at the time were child’s play and that worse allegations would emerge as the elections draw nigh.
Well, my words have come true. I am sure some of you read the INDEPENDENT OBSERVER newspaper report faking a confession by the former Special Executive Assistant to President Ernest Koroma, Dr. Sylvia Blyden that she had sexual relations with me –Which has been circulated in the social media . The fake confession , originally written by a mischief-maker impersonating Dr. Blyden, was extracted from the archives of a forum bearing the name of Cocorioko , which we never had control over . The Independent Observer report is another failed attempt to blackmail me , which I had warned you about months ago. The so-called confession , purportedly by Dr. Blyden , was fake and the allegations therein are therefore totally false and misleading.
As the IP number of the writer of the fake confession shows , Dr. Blyden was not the writer of the fake confession . The post was written by a fake profiler whose IP has been traced to North Carolina . No African woman will post her private affairs in an online discussion forum, because, first of all, it is not our tradition. And when you consider the high mental, academic and intellectual caliber , social standing and the public profile being projected by Dr. Blyden , you know that she will never sink low to that level to write about her sexual affairs and such a self-denigrating, incriminating and scandalous post about herself in a public forum , knowing the kinds of enemies she has . Any reasonable person would have known that it was fake in an age of internet mischief and perfidy. Any reasonable person would have known that known that the fake post could have only been the work of mischievous persons. But our detractors, who have lost all rational thinking and are blindly bent on blackmail at all costs , fished out the posts from the archives of the forum, which I have lambasted the former Moderator for years to remove offline without success ( I have e-mail communications between us during which I warned him about the potentially defamatory archives ) and posted it on Facebook.
A member of the opposition living in London in turn fished out the post from Facebook and sent it to the Editor of the Independent Observer and he, without trying to check the authenticity of the fake post, went on and published it in his newspaper. The Editor should have tried to verify first of all whether Dr. Blyden herself really made the fictitious confession , since it is common knowledge that lots of Sierra Leoneans criminally impersonate other people’s names to post in open and anonymous online forums. Right now, in one of the sick Sierra Leone online forums, somebody is posting as KABS, but is that me ? No. It would have cost the Editor nothing to seek clarification. But because journalism has become a tool for settling scores and damaging innocent names of political rivals in Sierra Leone, the Editor went on to gleefully publish it as news. After all, it was a golden opportunity to kill two “troublesome” birds with one stone.
The newspaper report was also designed to discourage me from continuing to propagate the activities and achievements of the Ernest Bai Koroma Government. I had lately stepped on toes for hailing President Ernest Koroma and government for their valiant fight to defeat the Ebola virus, resulting in the dramatic decrease of new transmissions. My report on the cancellation of the Census and the extension of the mandate of the constitutional review process , which detractors think would also affect the date of the 2018 Presidential Elections , had also been raising eyebrows in opposition circles. Thus, the latest blackmail attempt was executed to get me off my tangent and discourage me from continuing to write such articles . Those who follow my work in the social media know the verbal abuse and threats I suffered during the “AFTER YOU, NAR YOU ” war of words at Facebook.
Dr. Sylvia Blyden and I have our fair share of bitter enemies in a very brutal , evil and manipulative nation full of shady and evil characters who are not actually politicians and journalists but vermin masquerading as such .
The first time Dr. Sylvia Blyden and I met in person was in March 2013 when she formed part of President Koroma’s delegation to the U.S for a meeting with U.S. President Barak Obama. Our very first meeting in person was highlighted by me in an article I wrote for Cocorioko. In the article, I expressed delight at meeting Dr. Blyden for the first time and even joked about the famous and long media war we had between 2005 and 2009 , which started over the appointment of Dr. Christiana Thorpe as Chair of the Elections Commission by President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah .The media war was eventually resolved , thanks to the intervention of good citizens like Dr. Maada Mustapha and others who do not want their names mentioned . The fake confession on the then Cocorioko Forum , now being used as news , was written by one of the troublemakers whom the devil was using at the time to exacerbate my conflict with Dr. Blyden. The mischief-maker meant to add more fuel to the fire . Unknown to him, seven years after that, people who want to embarrass me and Dr. Blyden would extract it, re-polish it and publish it as truth , though they fully know that it is fake.
As to why the defunct Cocorioko forum archives still exist online and why these defamatory posts survived , even though the Moderator had assured me that all defamatory posts had been deleted , it is because the Moderator has claimed property ownership of the forum , because, according to him , he set it up and paid the initial fee for it and therefore he says that the forum belonged to him from the onset , though that was not the original agreement . He has refused to remove the archives or delete the defamatory posts from the internet. I have the full e-mail communications between us about the archives and will produce them, when necessary.
I am in consultations with friends and family, and we hope to take the appropriate legal actions in Freetown and the U.S against the originators, enablers and perpetrators of this latest outrage against human decency and failed blackmail attempt .
Politics is known to be a dirty game but these culprits have crossed the line and it is high time that they were taught that OPINION IS FREE BUT FACTS ARE SACRED. We are waiting first to see the action the IMC will take.
Thankfully , my wife , family members and congregation are fully aware of the plans by my detractors to blackmail me because of my status as Minister Plenipotentiary , promoter and propagator of the achievements of the APC Government and a member of the Presidential media corps . They had been warned ahead and thus see this latest failed attempt as part of the vendetta against me that will go on for a while . Like me, they are not surprised . They and members of the New Jersey Community , which I serve as a Minister of the Gospel, have profound respect for my character and integrity and laugh off this latest blackmail attempt as an act of desperation by political psychotics who hate the ruling APC Government.
What is surprising to me, however, is how a newspaper worth its salt would contrive to make a news story out of anonymous online forum postings that any reasonable man would quickly identify as fictitious. The newspaper has dented its credibility and sullied the profession. This is a disgrace to politics and Journalism, and Sierra Leone show bow her head in shame and cry for her malevolent, malicious, wicked and evil children who thrive at nothing good but evil against one another perpetually .
How can we ever move our beloved nation forward when all we do is seek to destroy one another for selfish, personal reasons and partisan politics ?
