“MY Rights” versus “OUR Rights” – when individual rights can result in national poverty (Transcript of Speech: Sierra Leone Grammar School Foundation Day. 25 March 2013)

MY Rights” versus “OUR Rights” – when individual rights can result in national poverty

Transcript of Speech: SLGS Foundation Day. 25 March 2013  Dr. Omodele Jones (DBA, National Competitive Strategy, Heriot-Watt), FCA(SL). Class of 1979

1.      What is this boring sounding speech about?

I have mixed feelings.

 

I am intensely proud that you chose to attend The Grammar School and will benefit from one of the few remaining citadels of a quality education in Sierra Leone. Forty years ago, I fulfilled our family tradition and experienced my first Foundation Day in the first secondary school in Africa.

 

At the same time, I am deeply saddened that our beloved school has become such an island in a national sea of underachievement and failure. You cannot hope to evade the consequences of the poor education that is being inflicted on your brothers and sisters who have had to endure the misfortune of the collapse of quality in the Sierra Leonean educational system. In this way, my generation has failed you. Our failure has been a dereliction of DUTY.

 

Today, I wish to discuss the idea of DUTY and how it can help you, when you get to address Foundation Day forty years from now, to avoid the sadness that I feel today. If you apply these principles in your lives, I will be singing your praises from whatever position I find myself – probably in the next world - in forty years time! More importantly, your children, all the children of Sierra Leone, will be singing your praises.

2.      Why should you care?

You are receiving a quality education that will see you survive anywhere in the world. So, why should you care about those, the vast majority, who do not receive a quality education?

 

The simple answer is that it is your duty to think about the people with whom you must share your country. It is in your enlightened self interest so to do. I will explain.

 

Almost one hundred years ago, an Englishman named Newland visited Sierra Leone. He spent some time touring our country and wrote a book about his travels entitled “Sierra Leone: Its People, Products and Secret Societies”. This was published in 1916. He spoke glowingly of having met very cultured Africans, including one who had studied Law, medicine and philosophy in London after a preliminary education at FBC. He noted that the city was blessed with a water supply that is exceptional in West Africa. He observed that the forests on the hillsides were essential to the maintenance of that water supply; and commended the government and people of the day for ensuring that the forested hillsides were sustained. People had learnt to look beyond their own narrow self interest and recognised that if one of them took to cutting down the mountain forests, others would follow suit. If all others followed suit, the forests would be destroyed. If the mountain forests were destroyed, the water supply would be seriously damaged. People, then, had learnt that the relentless pursuit of what is right for the individual, if copied by all, would result in disaster for all.

 

Fast forward 100 years. Look around you. The Mountain Forests have gone. What little is left will be gone within five years. The Government, once knowledgeable and wise, has been wantonly allocating the lands on the hillsides for settlements, either as slums or as luxury residences. We have a water supply crisis in our land. Everyone will be the loser in this game. You included. Me, as well. Scientists call this a Prisoners’ Dilemma i.e. when the relentless pursuit of individual self interest results in disaster for all. The lack of clean drinking water is also a health risk, linked to cholera. Last year, you were all scared by the outbreak of cholera. It did not just affect the people who did not attend the Grammar School. It affected us all.  We all had to take extra care not to be infected by the crisis of insanitary living in our capital city and countrywide.

 

You have to care. You have a duty to care if your brothers and sisters do not receive a quality education. The consequences of our forefathers’ not caring enough is that many of the advances that were once recorded in our beloved country have been lost. Today, as we face the stark reality of a country that is less developed in 2013 than it was in 1961, we realise that we have to care about what happens to those who are less fortunate than us. We have to live together. If too many lose out from a quality education, we will all suffer the consequences. We have a duty to care about others and to consider whether your instinct for self gratification “go bon good pikin” if everyone copies you.

 

The historian AP Kup noted that, in the late 19^th Century, in almost every walk of life, we had trained and qualified Africans. Our People. He noted that the English Governor, in 1872, considered that the two most intelligent men, in what was then the Parliament, were African. So was the best scholar on the West Coast. As were the most intelligent priests and the best clerks in the civil service. He observed that the local newspapers compared very favourably with British newspapers of the day. Indeed, Kup declared, “their world news coverage was often better” than that of British papers of the time. Many of these people were educated at the Grammar School. This was Sierra Leone in the late 19^th Century, well over one hundred years ago. The envy of West Africa.

 

Those days are long gone. Something has gone dreadfully wrong. On all of the areas noted above, we have deteriorated to an alarming extent. Far from being the envy of West Africa, we are now often embarrassed when people, who are conversant with our history and heritage, visit our country and ask “what happened?”.

 

Somewhere along the last one hundred years, we changed from an “US” society, where enlightened citizens and an equally enlightened government knew that there are certain common interests that can never be subjugated to selfish individual interests. We are now a “ME” society that considers that what is right for the individual is right for everyone.

 

So, the right of the wealthy man to build on Mount Sugarloaf is being championed above the collective right to a decent water supply for all. The right of the individual to dump his waste, uncontrolled, in the many streams and rivers of the city is championed above our collective interest in avoiding the contamination of our water supply which threatens the health of all of us. The individual rights of children are being championed above the society’s right to expect YOU to grow up into disciplined citizens who will contribute to the development of our country.

 

Why does YOUR RIGHT stop and why does OUR RIGHT begin? My generation has answered this very badly. We have elevated hedonism i.e. the relentless pursuit of individual pleasure at all costs. We have elevated dishonesty – where we tell lies to achieve our (often monetary) ends. We have championed the cynical exploitation of our positions in companies and in public offices to satisfy our individual ends. “Oosy den tie cow…”.  We have seldom stopped to ask one simple question: If everyone copies what I am doing “EE GO BON GOOD PIKIN?”.

 

The simple answer is NO. “EE NOR GO BON GOOD PIKIN”. We will, all of us, suffer the consequences when the majority of our brethren practice behaviours that destroy our prospects for work and a decent life.

3.      So, what can be done?

You have been fortunate to enter one of the few remaining citadels of a quality education in Sierra Leone. You have a DUTY to yourself and to your children, once you leave this esteemed institution to learn from my mistakes and that of my generation. We, adults, must now commence a NATIONAL CONVERSATION that will pave the way for you to avoid our disastrous errors. You have heard of the famous TV programme, “Life By Design”. Well, I call this National Conversation “NATION BY DESIGN”.

 

The prosperous countries of this world, where many of my generation have run away to live – and where many of you probably aspire to live - achieved their success based on virtues that strike a right balance between “ME” rights and “OUR” rights. We who remain in this country seem to think that we can invent a new way to national prosperity – based purely on selfishness, laziness, greed and hedonism. I am sorry. It has never been done before and we will not be the first to do it.

 

You must GO BACK TO GO TO THE FUTURE. You must relearn our forefathers’ virtues of service to others above self. To relearn their virtues of social discipline and self sacrifice in your interests and in the interests of others. To relearn their virtues of a content spirit that is satisfied with what it can earn honestly and does not spend its time envying the next man’s possessions. “Thou shalt not covet” is one of the most practically important of the ten Christian commandments. Above all, you must learn to take pride in your country, OUR COUNTRY i.e. to nurture its natural beauty and live your life in a way that makes foreigners respect the fact that you are a Sierra Leonean.

 

Just think. If you do this, and everyone copies you! Before you know it, Sierra Leone will be a first world country.

 

End of speech.