On Reggie Cole, London, UK
By Suhood Komeh, London, UK. January 24, 2024.
The awful side of social media is the undue power to destroy others or share joy in their woes. Often with very little or no facts at all. Worse, the failure of conscience that provides ease of dredging up unflattering details that make salvaging a person’s character more daunting.
How easy is it, to make serious claims against those facing the challenge of their lives, knowing fully well, they are prioritising far more serious battles? Drowned by trouble and potential for untold consequences, they have no time to think properly. Let alone mount coherent rebuttals against accounts of petty encounters that may, or may not be true.
The awful side of social media is the undue power to destroy others or share joy in their woes. Often with very little or no facts at all. Worse, the failure of conscience that provides ease of dredging up unflattering details that make salvaging a person’s character more daunting.
How easy is it, to make serious claims against those facing the challenge of their lives, knowing fully well, they are prioritising far more serious battles? Drowned by trouble and potential for untold consequences, they have no time to think properly. Let alone mount coherent rebuttals against accounts of petty encounters that may, or may not be true.
All over the world, businesses have fallen in the past and continue to do so. Once eminent entrepreneurs have gone under, out of poor judgements or unforeseen circumstances. Some do rise again. Others do not. But that doesn’t make them bad people. Or candidates for our scorn. Certainly, dancing on deathbeds of their reputations compensate for nothing.
In life, often times, success or failure is dependent on starting point, opportunity, etc. Other times, the courage of daring to try, sets people apart.
A man from Sierra Leone working his way into a multi-million pounds business in the United Kingdom is not to be laughed at, ridiculed or disrespected. Period. As far as is known, the company was a legally registered interest. So whilst things may have ruptured badly along the way, huge ambition gave birth to the enterprise. To try and make its collapse as wholly criminal, without the facts, is very poor. Businesses nosedive all the time. Fundamentally, business is speculation, and speculation is not certainty.
In 2008, the entire Western financial system, effectively global capital, collapsed. Investors lost fortunes. Pensions disappeared. Billions of dollars evaporated without trace. None of the geniuses responsible for the catastrophe were shamed. Let alone criminalised. In fact, they were made beneficiaries of government bail-outs, given artificial seals of prudence to re-run the same banks they had driven down cliffs. The now infamous phrase, ‘too big to fail’ was brought to life.
Never one to buy into tarring all of Sierra Leoneans as jealousy-impaired, no. There are some rotten mangoes, of course. And they are demonstrably the minority.
Importantly, sometimes, those who come across as overzealous announcers of other people’s difficulties do so not out of genuine contempt or malice. But poor judgment. So we just leave it at that. Bearing in mind we have all made bad arguments in the past. And we were all young once.
An important disclaimer here. This comment is not impartial. I am acquainted with the brother. He knows me too. In his hay, a gem of a man. I’m sure he still is.
Inherently a showman. Exceptionally confident, of course. But, as is now apparent, he is in every quality and faculty human - prone to err. Those who want to kick him as he crawls can do so. Those who are gleeful at his tumble are within their prerogative.
One thing no one can take away from him is this. He had a run; an incredible run that not even a percentage of Sierra Leoneans can manage in two lifetimes. He will regret, big time. He is deep in humiliation that things ended this way. But, the stern hustler in him will take his fall, totally, if that’s the outcome.
That said, in matters judicial, the scariest allegations in the public domain, still have to withstand legal scrutiny from a defence perspective - often not in the public knowledge. So let the brother have his day.
Wishing you the best of luck, Reggie.
(C) Rasta Rambles
