By Foday Kamara
Reports reaching this medium indicate that two people, Dauda H. Kargbo and Esther Ngegba, narrowly escaped death from irate Ojeh society men at Rosenor village in Kambia District, Northern Sierra Leone, on February 7, 2022.
Eyewitness accounts have it that it all started immediately after the death of Esther Ngegba’s husband when her uncle made a proposal for the surviving elder brother of the late man to inherit her but Esther vehemently opposed the proposal, calling it archaic and barbaric.
“I am not the property of my late husband to be inherited by his blood relations,” the widow Esther Ngegba is quoted as yelling in disgust, further citing how her late husband’s elder brother killed his legally wedded wife by forcefully initiating her into his Orjeh secret society.
“No, I will never be the next to fall victim to such a seeming ritualistic act.”
Eyewitnesses accounted that Esther Ngegba, the other day, introduced a man called Dauda Kargbo as the man she intended to marry next, but to her dismay, her uncle opposed her choice and insisted on his earlier proposal regarding her late husband’s elder brother.
On February 7, 2022, however, Dauda Kargbo was helping Esther transport her fruits from one of the remote villages to Rosenor when her late husband’s brother spotted them on top of a motorcycle. He immediately halted them. He rushed at them and allegedly lent Esther a heavy slap in the jaw, querying her why she should be together with Dauda Kargbo on board a motorcycle.
Dauda could not, however, maintain his cool but reacted angrily with all his might, scolding him strongly. In the interim of the scuffle, the man’s secret society colleagues coincidentally arrived at the scene and immediately got hold of Dauda, whom they manhandled and whisked to the chief of the section.
At the chief’s barry, eyewitnesses indicated that the late man’s elder brother, being the ‘Agba’ or head of the Orjeh secret cult, told Section Chief, Pa Alimamy Kamara, that Dauda and Esther had committed an offence by assaulting him and destroying the charms of the Orjeh society in his possession.
In the twinkle of an eye, therefore, large crowds of Orjeh society men stormed the place like ants over a lump of sugar, warranting the chief to lock up Esther and Dauda in one of his rooms.
The irate society men were said to be snoring angrily for revenge and strongly demanding the release of the two to be forcefully initiated for assaulting their ‘Agba’ and at the same time destroying the charms of the secret society with him.
It is said that Esther and Dauda had to carefully break the wooden window over which they jumped and escaped narrowly.
Chief Pa Alimamy Kamara said he locked up the two to prevent them from being lynched by the angry society men, but that when they eventually broke the door into the room and realised that they had escaped, they reproached him very hard and demanded that he produce Dauda and Esther.
“I also had to flee for my life to the police station because, as an Orjeh society man myself, I know it would not have been easy for me,” the chief said, lamenting how members of his household were harassed and humiliated while away.
At the time of going to press last night, we learned that Dauda and Esther had been declared wanted as their whereabouts remained unknown.
This medium is monitoring the situation.
