ALPHA JALLOH ESCAPED FORCEFUL INITIATION AND DEATH BY MEMBERS OF THE GBANGBANI SECRET SOCIETY.

 

   By Sampha H. Kamara

    August 2019

Alpha Jalloh, a Sierra Leonean, is on the run for fear of forceful initiation and persecution by members of the Gbangbani Secret Society which, in desperate to recruit new members, is forcefully administering all sorts of wicked tricks to cow individuals to joining which poses serious threats on fundamental human rights. 

This medium as part of its investigation understands that Alpha who hails from Fadugu, Koinadugu District, at the end of July 2019, went with his father to clear land to do farming for the next season in a village of Kassasie, Koinadugu District, inadvertently burn part of the very sacred place the Gbangbani society held its initiation. Alpha, with the good intention to vanish the burning fire, eventually found himself into a very strange place that a non-member is allowed not to enter. Upon discerning the grave danger, he had involved himself into, he tried to escape his way out of the bush, but he was captured and kept in isolation for days and he could not even tell whether it was daylight or night.

ALPHA, according to my source, was brutally moved out from where he was kept waiting to be processed in a form of blading him in the back which is considered mandatory as part of the initiation which symbolizes the true ideal of their secret society…the spilling blood to be used as a sacrifice to their secrete gods. Upon waiting for him to be initiated, he narrowly escaped the society bush with an absolute force which made him WANTED and poses unwarranted threats to his family if they failed to produce him thus to face the full force of the traditional laws of the Gbagbani secret society. 

Amidst the ban on secret society, this practice keeps happening blatantly ignoring the government’s order on the temporal hold of such activities. Mostly those that are undergoing initiation hardly survive because of the profane use of traditional bewitchment; you will be given all sorts of leaves to chew, human blood and some who have managed to escape the process have strongly testified that they will be put in a pot to boil. This inhuman treatment hardly allows anyone to survive. 

According to my source, it has never happened in the history of the Gbangbani Secret Society to willingly allow somebody to enter its sacred bush without being initiated. He further said that plenty of lives had been lost trying to succumb to such inhumane practice that forcefully violated the fundamental human right of association embedded in the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone and other international bodies that are protecting the rights of humankind. 

The source further explained that people that unconsciously found themselves in such position, the decision was taken on them are driven by tribal lines that warrant heavy imposed fines such as goats as a sacrifice to their gods and drums of palm oil, with the notion that their gods are angry so they must be appeased. And also, forcefully, they must be initiated into their secret society because they had seen what non-members/initiates should not have seen. They had the staunch belief that the things that tie them together were so mightier to the extent that even the principles of human rights could not dictate its operation either putting it into a halt. 

The Gbangbani society is a feared society not only in Fadugu but also in the entire country, and members who tend to refuse their orders face death. It is largely believed that this society does practice harsh traditional rituals, and some of the inductees do die in the process. What makes this secret society powerful is that some people in high places like politicians as well civil society activists who purport to advocate for free speech and the police who are supposed to protect the rights of citizens are caught in the middle of this secret society and complicit to their actions which makes victims not to trust the system but to seek outside support.