Statement by President of SLAJ, Ahmed Sahid Nasralla, at the official launch of SLAJ @ 50
Date: Saturday, 6th February, 2021
Venue: Harry Yansaneh Memorial Hall, SLAJ Headquarters, 56 Campbell Street, Freetown
IT’S A JOURNEY
Salutations
HOW FAR SLAJ HAS COME
Some 50 years ago brave men and women came together and found an association that will serve as a torch for not only a profession that is called journalism but for society at large.
At a time when the country had just introduced the one-party and critical voices were almost silenced and a law that was like an albatross on the neck of journalists had been introduced to silence a beautiful profession that comforts the afflicted, our SLAJ was born.
TRIBUTE TO THE FOUNDING FATHERS AND FALLEN HEROES
Mr Chairman, permit me to pay glowing tributes to our icons, ie our founding fathers and mothers some of whom are still around. These heroes and heroines deserve a special place in our association's history book.
They laid a foundation that generations that came after them found it easier to build upon. They weathered the storm when not many people had the courage to be counted; they sacrificed everything they had so that future generations of journalists will have the freedom to practice their profession.
We remember our colleagues who have passed on. Let's please observe a minute of silence in memory of their contribution to the development of journalism in Sierra Leone.
Those founding members who are still alive, we appreciate and recognise you: Christo Johnson, Bernadette Cole, Daisy Bona and, Hon. Alhaji Ibrahim Ben Kargbo. We want to say thank you for bequeathing to us an association that is viewed as the ‘last man standing’ in a society that continues to demonstrate a lack of commitment to the general good.
Be rest assured that we shall also handover the baton to the next generation with pride just like you did to us.
ACHIEVEMENTS:
The past 50 years have been characterised by vicissitudes and successes but the latter is what I will briefly focus on for now.
SLAJ has been able to maintain its independence and integrity. That is something worth celebrating. In a country where ugly politics has crept into all facets of society and organisations, SLAJ has remained a very solid organisation that has enjoyed the trust and confidence of its members as well as the public.
As an association we have been able to capacitate our regional bodies, making them viable and semi-autonomous as they carry out their own planned activities. We have been able to attract more members; everyone wants to be part of SLAJ because they know it is a body that epitomises independence, is forward-looking, and is progressive. We are doing our launching in our own hall, the Harry Yansaneh Memorial Hall.
As you can see, it is a refurbished hall. This executive campaigned on the platform of giving the membership a befitting Secretariat and that's exactly what we have done.
WHAT WE HOPE TO SEE IN THE NEXT 50 YEARS
I repeat if SLAJ were a man, no doubt at 50 he or she will have lofty plans for her children and grandchildren. The next decades are going to be challenging moments for the media landscape especially with the emergence of social media and the determination to avoid the ‘path dependence syndrome’, to quote Dr. Mohamed Gibril Sesay. We will not continue with ‘business as usual’.
SLAJ will position itself to fit into the next generation. Our next 50 years should see us better than we are today both in terms of membership, welfare issues, professionalism, patriotism, and self-reliance. The kind of SLAJ we want to see should be the concern of every member of this noble Association.
As an executive, we have drawn up a calendar of events that will run for the whole year, because this is a once in a lifetime event so we want to give it all the razzmatazz that it deserves.
We are going to host events throughout the country. Our regional executives will also be having activities at their district level.
We have invited foreign guests, one of them Professor Kari Kari from the MFWA in Ghana and he has consented to come to Sierra Leone and deliver a public lecture as part of the Golden Jubilee celebration if COVID-19 permits. If COVID does not permit we will still do it virtually.
We are also working hard to secure land and turn the sod for the construction of the Golden Jubilee SLAJ Headquarters.
Mr. Chairman, indeed today we begin the celebration of a turning point in our history.
In a few months from now, precisely June 5th, we will officially be celebrating 50 years of existence.
It is significant because it is also the year that we have started the journey towards free and professional media.
It is also significant as we are celebrating the death of the obnoxious Criminal Libel Law.
It would not be appropriate to say we have come of age, because that happened 29 years ago. But today we begin another journey to climb to the mountain of professionalism and economic prosperity for the media in Sierra Leone.
*So it’s a journey.*
Today, we are starting a new journey. A journey that will now take us into the millennium. As we begin that journey, it is but fitting that we celebrate the first half of the millennium.
There is an old African saying which goes … “the lizard which fell from the top of the Cotton tree said if no one will praise me, I will praise myself.” This is why when you see a lizard it is always shaking its head up and down.
Today, we will begin to celebrate the Dr. Sam Hollists and all those journalists after them who spent time in jail; locked up in cells with a single bucket containing human excreta, and having to inhale the disgusting smell throughout.
It’s a journey.
Today, we celebrate those journalists who got to experience the slaps of the Sierra Leone Police, which caused lightning to flash without any rain. The vicious kicks, the beatings with a gun butt, the solitary nights from police cells to prisons; from courtrooms to prisons again.
It’s a journey.
Today, we begin to celebrate freedom. Freedom from being called a criminal. Freedom from accusations of criminal libel without proof. Freedom from Defamation could not be defended.
It’s all a journey.
Like gold, we have been put through the fire. And like gold, we have to be polished for us to shine.
Today, we begin to celebrate the end of one journey and the beginning of another one.
Like the lizards, we must stop and celebrate. 50 years is a long time. We need to reflect from where we have come from to where we are now. This is a moment of sincere and honest introspection and a determination to leap into a brighter future. Then we will begin the journey into the second half of the millennium.
A journey for which we commit ourselves towards establishing a Free and Professional Media.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Minister, colleagues all, today we will unveil our calendar, of how we will begin to celebrate. We will do this the SLAJ way.
This 2021! I declare it the year of SLAJ!
Thank you for listening to me.
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