By Umaru Fofana
For many years – not least during the country’s civil war in the 1990s – he was the dominant voice of the BBC in Sierra Leone. So much so that when I started working for the World Service I would not only be mistaken for Lansana Fofana but got asked many a time whether he was my brother.
And I have also been asked that question umpteen times in many other African countries I have been to on BBC assignment. Some even thought that I had only decided to use a hitherto hidden middle or first name. “I am not blessed with that great baritone voice of Lansana’s” I told an old lady in Nairobi he once asked me why I had changed my name.
But who in Sierra Leone would not be left confused in a country where there are many – some would say TOO many – Fofanas in the field of journalism? So before I pay tribute to the man who inspired me in more ways than one, just a quick explanation of our consanguinity.
Lans Fofie – as he was fondly called – was a Fofana through and true. Not only was his mother – who is still alive and kicking – married to a Fofana, she was also born to a Fofana. Ta Teeda (Sister Teeda), as she is called almost by all, gave birth to two sets of twins back to back. Alusine Fofana – the current Information Attaché at the Sierra Leone High Commission in Abuja and his twin sister were followed by Lansana and his.
So both of Lansana’s parents were Fofana. Obviously his father, of blessed memory, was my uncle. But the thicker blood relationship between us is on his maternal side. And please be attentive here: Lans’s maternal grandfather was my paternal uncle – he and my father were born to the same dad. That dad of theirs – my paternal grandfather – and the father of Foday Fofana who was the first Fofana on the BBC and now works for Exclusive Newspaper, were born to the same dad. In simple lingo and in the Mandingo tradition, journalist Foday is my uncle and he is Lansana’s great uncle while I am Lansana’s uncle. Confused? Well get ready for more.
There is another Foday. You have probably not heard of Foday Bokarie Fofana if you are new to the Sierra Leone media scene but he was a very astute, courageous and fine journalist who edited the supposedly now-proscribed Punch Newspaper owned by David Tam Baryoh. He also served on the executive of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists. His mother and Foday Fofana are brother and sister.
Sorie Fofana, editor of Global Times is Lans Fofie’s younger brother. In fact Lans Fofie brought him up, educated him and I make bold to say turned him into a journalist. Siko, as Sorie is fondly called, would later serve for six years as the Information Attaché at the Sierra Leone high commission in London. So you can see that I am Lans Fofie’s uncle – albeit younger in age – and he always called me “Uncle” or “Alhaji” in apparent reference to my prayerfulness and how I would always entreat him to be not joke with his daily prayers.
In the late hours of the morning of Sunday 8 March 2015 my phone rang. It was an unusual Sunday because I was busy filming when I should be resting. I would not answer a call at this time but chose to do so because I saw “LANS FOFIE” on my screen. “Hi Lans”, I said. “This is not Lans,” his nephew Foday Marah alias Fisco said. “Lans is not well…I mean he is seriously sick” he stressed. I did not need to be assured by him about Lans’s health because I had visited him the week before and I could tell he was gravely unwell even if he tried to look his usual buoyant self.
Once I received that phone call I called Siko who tried to assure me that it was not that serious. I knew he was trying to put me at ease albeit unsuccessfully. We agreed that he would take him to a hospital and would revert to me if he needed to. To get him to the hospital that morning would require hoodwinking him because he insisted he wanted to watch a Chelsea match. A big Blues fan he was. He would later be released from the hospital to return home, just to be taken in again on Monday. He would never return.
At 50, Lans Fofie died young even by the Sierra Leonean standards where life expectancy is a lot shorter. But he lived a fulfilled life. His impact on Sierra Leonean – or even African – journalism is undeniably immeasurable. I remember listening to him in high school, and I also remember that year, in the late 1980s, when he was jailed for speaking out for his boss, Roy Stevens, who as Editor of the Chronicle newspaper had also been jailed. Lans could never have appreciated how that defiance of his to tyranny and muzzling of free speech would impact my life forever.
Another lesson I would learn from him – sadly this time in death – was when Siko and I were called upon by the undertakers to identify his body inside the Connaught hospital mortuary. I had seen him the day before struggling to breathe and open his eyes. When I saw him on the 12 March he was still. There were about a dozen other bodies lying beside his. “That is Lansana,” we said to the undertakers. As we walked out of the morgue, Siko and I spontaneously wiped our teary eyes.
“What is it about this world and this life that we want to prove to the next person that we are superior to them or we are powerful and no one stands up to us?” I kept asking myself all day, all week. When that day comes when we answer to the death knell we are very hopeless and helpless, sometimes even hapless. We will all join Lans Fofie one day, like he has joined his boss Roy Stevens and other contemporaries like Tayyib Bah, Olu Richie Gordon and Jon Foray.
It all brings back to me that moment at the Kissy Road cemetery almost exactly one year ago when we were laying to rest the late former president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. There stood his successor Ernest Bai Koroma and his then number two man Samuel Sam-Sumana as his mortal remains were being lowered. It makes me wonder whether some of us ever think that God exists save when we are in some difficulty.
What is this world that we want to make everyone feel punished by us to force them to appreciate our might or worth! We will all join Lans Fofie one day however powerful we think we are. We cuss people and damn the consequence because we have the wherewithal. We imprison people even when we know within our conscience that they have done no wrong and don’t deserve to be locked up. We libel people with utter lack of contrition by fabricating stories. We act in complete variance with the dictates of natural and manmade laws simply because we can afford to do it and prove a point. We forget to remind ourselves that tomorrow we will not be there. And then the day after tomorrow comes and death is staring at us and we are helpless.
Lans Fofie stood up for the masses, and articulated the views of people who could otherwise not express themselves. Rest in peace my colleague and nephew, we are coming to join you whether we like it or think so or not.
