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TRIBUTE TO ABU NOAH: A REAL MAN OF THE PEOPLE

Mr. Crispin Cole | November 24, 2005

By Arika Awuta-Coker, Freetown

Quite a number of emotional episodes occurred in Freetown and its environs when the news broke at dawn of Saturday, November 12 that Major Abu Noah (Rtd) had passed away. The initial reaction was uniform - was not this yet again one of those macabre pranks that surfaced from time to time viz that some prominent personality or other had died only for the person, after the hurly burly of tongue wagging, to turn up more alive than ever?
This time though, the hour by hour obituary announcements over the SLBS 99.9 FM and Radio Democracy 98.1 FM stations brought home the brutally cold reality - the man known to millions as simply 'Major' was gone. Yet another victim of that ultimate finality, Death!
Then the tears, wailings and grieving took over everywhere. It goes to the colossal memory of Major Abu Noah that you would have to walk literally miles to meet a Sierra Leonean or two who might not have heard of him at sometime or the other. The man was simply a household name.
Many were inconsolable as were the Foulah Town Community people and the members of the numerous social and cultural organisations that Major Noah belonged to.
Over the years, in many of these groupings the members invariably gravitated to one common objective, making him their leader or 'Ajadeh' or Grand Chief Patron as the case may be. For the 1,700 staff of the entire Mount Everest Group of Companies, this was unquestionably their own special loss too.
The story began with the young Abu Noah entering the Military educational system in 1957 after schooling at Amaria Primary, Government Model and then Methodist Boys High School. His prowess in military matters soon showed up with him rising quickly to officer rank and in his excelling as best military student at the Military Academy in Teshi, Ghana and winning the same accolades for military excellence in Netheravon and Wiltshire, in England, where he was bestowed with the prestigious baton of honour.
One thing every soldier of his time acknowledged was that Major Abu Noah was the king of marksmen. The man who often would flick a coin into the air and shoot it into spins. They knew him as a fearless though rather hot tempered soldier. He was always ready to fight anyone physically or with weapons at any point or at any time. He would tell an erring officer: "Look officer, you are a soldier, you are a trained man.
Let's settle it with any weapon of your choice!" knowing the awesome accuracy of his shooting, the errant officer always would back down.
Major Noah was fiercely loyal to his men and the military. For him, the code of honour was paramount; 'death before dishonour' was a creed for him. He was what is referred to as 'A Soldier's soldier'. He was against the military entering politics and said so often.
It was therefore a strange pique of fate that the man who never wanted to be a coupist was eventually to become a victim of trumped up treason charges that saw him jailed for fifteen years in 1971 of which sentence he served ten years and eight months.
It was also a phenomenal and rather bizarre trick of fate that on three different occasions, Major Abu Noah was put in front of a firing squad. On the first occasion, as he related himself, the execution squad were preparing to line up before shooting him when the rescind order came from higher quarters.
On the other two occasions the firing squad had already aimed their rifles at their target, Major Noah, before rescind orders arrived putting a halt to the execution.
The mysterious twist of fate played a hand also in the patterning of Major Noah's professional career, as he revealed when working on a book titled 'The Inside Story'. He told those of us around him of the night at ten o'clock when then Prime Minister Siaka Stevens told him that he was to be promoted to the rank of Colonel. The Prime Minister showed him the announcement with the Prime Ministerial seal affixed.
It was to be announced the following morning over the SLBS.
As Major Noah recalled, the "pull him down" experts now took over with some very top politicians in very high places leading a disinformation plot against him.
They rushed up to the Prime Minister ostensibly to 'warn' him that if he promoted Major Abu Noah to the rank of Colonel, the government would be destroyed as he would definitely take over power.
They added a sinister angle that they thought up that very moment (about 3 a.m.) saying Major Noah had been seen campaigning for the anti-government United Democratic Party with a microphone and loudspeaker.
They told Prime Minister Siaka Stevens that Major Noah had been atop a UDP Landrover calling on people to support the UDP and get rid of the APC.
It is now laughable that Abu Noah, the man who never ever wanted to get into politics was the victim of such nefarious politicking. But at the time it was deadly serious. The long and short of the story was that by the time the announcement of the new promotions in the army was broadcast on SLBS radio that morning, Major Abu Noah's name had been deleted.
Major Noah recalled later that one person in the Prime Minister's household who had witnessed everything eventually briefed him on what had transpired. He immediately called on the Prime Minister who confirmed that indeed such allegations had been made against Noah. Angered, the Major wanted to confront his accusers point blank and indeed, the lion that he was, he later called on each of them personally. Such was his fury that some of them fled as soon as they learnt he was at their doorsteps. One was in such panic that he jumped out of a back room window, ripping his trousers in the process.
The havoc however had been done. Even though Prime Minister Stevens assured Major Noah that his turn for promotion would come again soon enough, subsequent developments leading to the 1970 attempted coup, the counter coup led by Major Abu Noah and the political plot that saw Major Noah and some other officers being arraigned in front of a military tribunal on treason charges changed everything. Covert political directives that Major Abu Noah must at all costs, be found guilty are also part of the story. However, through divine intervention the jury could not agree on the verdict, commuting the politically expected death sentence to a custodial one, albeit fifteen years.
Thus was the course of an intrepid soldier's career altered. It is of historical note that, of the majors who were promoted to Colonels at the time in focus, Joseph Saidu Momoh rose to the rank of Major General and Forces Commander or otherwise, Head of the Army.
He later became President of Sierra Leone. The other, Sam King, rose to the rank of Brigadier before retiring from the army. Both these men recognised the exceptional talent that was Abu Noah and, as a Colonel, Joseph Saidu Momoh turned up in court to give evidence supporting the defendant, Major Noah.
Indeed it was deeply perplexing for Major Noah in the years to come that as he put it, President Joseph Saidu Momoh, knowing fully well that he, Abu Noah, was absolutely innocent did not grant him a State Pardon when he had the power to do so as Head of State. It was left to President Alhaji Tejan Kabbah who, Major Noah pointed out, was not even in Sierra Leone during those hapless times, to grant him a State Pardon in December last year. Major Noah was deeply grateful to President Kabbah for that and said so in various interviews in Sierra Leone and abroad.
President Kabbah himself clearly had a special liking and respect for this legendary retired military man, Major Noah, visiting him at the Netland Hospital, and at the Major's residence after his discharge from hospital and later visiting Major Noah's widow at the passing away of the great man. The intense grief on the President's face was palpable throughout.
But then that was one very special attribute of Abu Noah, the man who could win friends from the highest corridors to the grassroots.
I first met him on a one-to-one basis just a few years back. Our paths had only crossed marginally over the years as guests at receptions and other social occasions. But I could not during those years refer to him as a real acquaintance. I remember doing a story about his incarceration in 1971. I was then a correspondent for Radio Deutschewelle (Voice of Germany) the Cologne based international radio, a job landed me by my long lasting friend Eric James (of James International), who after moving from his BBC desk was doing what Network Africa does now. His show was called the 'Early Birdies'.
My own particular programme was 'Window on the world' and the head, Dieter Brauer was so interested in the piece I did on Abu Noah that I received instructions to do a special follow-up - more of a backgrounder.
Over thirty years later, I called on Major Noah in connection with his Mount Everest Publishing House (MEPH). I wanted to know whether he would be interested in reproducing my late father's (Henry Awuta-Coker) highly acclaimed book titled 'Sierra Leone During World War II' first published in 1951.
My father as one of the pioneer broadcasters working for the then Sierra Leone Redifussion Service that heralded the present SLBS, followed the exploits of Sierra Leone's daring soldiers in Burma, notably Myohaung and elsewhere. It is an absolute gem for historians and military archivists. Major Noah was ecstatic, clapping his hands as he recognised the potential in reproducing such a book.
He then invited me to join the MEPH team to which I readily accepted. As a literary writer myself working on various scripts of my own I was able to share with Major Noah his enthusiasm, which at any rate was infectious. The Editor of MEPH then, Professor Yulisa Pat Maddy and others including late Prof. Akintola Wyse were all reeling with the dizzying prospects of having our own home grown publishing house on Sierra Leonean soil. Converging on MESA House on a regular basis were prose writers, poets, dramatists, artists, just name who. Major Abu Noah with eight published books to his credit was at the centre of it all.
Things just had to move. And then in October 2003, tragedy struck. The Chairman Prof. Akintola Wyse died suddenly, an event that sent the nation into grief.
MEPH arduously strove to recover from the shock. With Professor Strasser-King now as Chairman the clock began moving again. But this is all just a part of the story of Major Abu Noah. The man who, aided by his wife, Michaela, built up the Mount Everest Group of Companies (MEG) which comprises the Mount Everest Security Agency (MESA), the Publishing House (MEPH), the film production company (Mount Everest Movies) and the Mount Everest Music and Entertainment Company (MEMECO) which latter was on the verge of arranging exchange visits between Sierra Leone's musicians and those of MEMECO's Washington based associates, before Major Noah's illness held the pace back. Vintage Abu Noah was a man with a tremendous visionary force that saw him striking out with new ideas and concepts at a rate that would daunt most other men. He wanted a high quality film and spent a bit of a fortune in getting the cream of Nigeria's movie world to come to Sierra Leone and act with dozens of Sierra Leoneans in producing 'Bai Bureh Goes to War'. He was never fazed by some people believing that the non-release of the film up till now means something negative. "Let's take our time" he would tell us. "This is an epic.
It will still be relevant a hundred years from now, so why rush it and allow pirates to tout it." Well, Major already had a big distributor in the U.S.A just waiting to finalise distribution arrangements for the film world-wide before his illness took over.
To do justice to the man that Major Abu Noah really was is not possible within the limited space that these columns afford me. A full length book would, perhaps, begin to meet the challenge.
Alhaji I.B Kargbo, the highly respected President of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), described Major Noah's death as "a disaster!" This was a personal friend of his. Indeed Major Noah was a friend of journalists and mass media people everywhere in Sierra Leone and the diaspora. He loved arguing with them over every subject under the sun. A voracious reader with a huge private library, he could hold his own with any and everybody at anytime. He was a prime motive force with a blazing mental vitality that would have burnt out most other minds within a short spell. When he came out of prison in 1981, he turned down lucrative offers to work in Saudi Arabia, England or the USA. His expatriate friends wanted to tap his undoubted military genius for strategic programmings of their own. Major Noah quietly told them: "I need to help my people at home.
What is money if I cannot use it to serve my nation?" With blood, sweat and tears he practically pounded the beat together with his wife, Michaela, to get the Mount Everest Security Agency (MESA) going in those early day when none of the Sierra Leoneans that he approached agreed to his request for partnership.
They myopically could not see how a private security firm could make money.
Years later, Major Noah would musingly recall how he and Michaela sometimes stayed out all night checking on the very few initial locations that their minimal number of guards were looking after. By sheer tenacity and dare-devil determination, this retired military man, with his wife as his principal ally, got the security agency within five years from May 1984 to become a stable, viable entity.
Then the offers began flooding in for partnership.
But then, the Noahs had become wary and declined each mouth-watering offer. "Almighty God has seen us through the critical days. He will help us in the better years", Major Noah usually replied.
It is a singular tribute to the tremendous acumen of its founder, Major Noah, that the Group of Companies, with a staff of over 1,700 (and still growing) is the biggest private employer in Sierra Leone - a fact that, in addition to his literary prolificity won Major Noah the 'Giant Prestigious Award for African Achievers' which he flew over to receive in Abuja, Nigeria's Federal capital city in November last year.
Other recipients at the time included the Vice President of Zambia and of the Gambia together with another big achiever from Eritrea.
As a literary writer myself who has met with a good number of artists and poets in various parts of the world especially after my work 'Comojadey' was published by the New York based 'Family Press' in 1975, I can state here with all sincerity that Abu Noah, the poet, was the fastest composer of poetry I have met.
The story is told of the initial meetings between Major Noah and the master himself, Professor Emeritus Eldred Jones. Abu Noah, the budding poet, had requested that Prof. Eldred Jones reviewed his yet unprinted anthology titled 'Measuring My Country's Heartbeats'. Professor Jones who is acclaimed world wide by Dons of Academia as one of the leading authorities in African and English Literature, listened for three months as the enthusiastic former soldier in front of him read a couple or two of his poems each Tuesday.
The Master would give his advice and urge him on with his work. One day, Professor Jones enquired in passing how long it took the retired Major to write a poem of say, six stanzas. From experience he knew most people took a week or longer to get the lines and rhythm through.
"Well, Major Noah replied, "about one hour". The Professor could not believe this and told him so.
Major Noah then requested a sheet of writing paper and began composing a poem which he titled 'I Met a Sage'.
He completed it within the hour after which he read it out to the Professor who recognised that this new poem, about him (the Master) was intact with the diction, lines and rhythm flowing with a rich poetic flavour. The Professor, not easily moved after decades in the highest echelons of academia, ecstatically shouted out to his wife, "Majorie, Majorie, come and witness a wonder!" Or something to that effect. In his introduction to 'Measuring My Country's Heartbeats, Professor Eldred Jones described it as a "Social document".
Can Sierra Leoneans ever pay enough homage to the man who always had an ear with a helping hand for the helpless and the defenceless including members of the Polio Victims Association of which he was their Grand Chief Patron? Other recipients of his kindness include students of tertiary institutions needing scholarships, numerous tear-filled parents and guardians seeking school fees for their kids, Islamic and Christian Organisations, sportsmen, artists, culture promoters, many university based clubs, scientific associations, research units at tertiary colleges, also various organisations at the University of Guinea. His circle of friends encompassed the intelligentsia, the professionals or technocrats and the grassroots. As I conclude, a quotation from the iconic English bard, William Wordsworth, comes to my mind with an elevating force: "The child is the Father of the Man And I would wish my days to be Bound each to each by Natural piety!" Can one say more?