Freetown fell down, ending transmissions outside the capital. An analysis published in a newspaper in the capital city of Freetown in 1995 rings very true:
We continue to fight because we are tired of being perpetual victims of state sponsored poverty and human degradation visited on us by years of autocratic rule and militarism. But, we shall exercise restraint and continue to wait patiently at the rendezvous of peace— where we shall all be winners. We are committed to peace, by any means necessary, but what we are not committed to is becoming victims of peace. We know our cause to be just and God / Allah will never abandon us in our struggle to reconstruct a new Sierra Leone.
by the end of Momoh’ s rule he had stopped paying civil servants, teachers and even Paramount Chiefs. Central government had collapsed, and then of course we had border incursions,“ rebels” and all the automatic weapons pouring over the border from Liberia. The NPRC, the“ rebels” and the“ sobels” [ soldiers turned rebels ] all amount to the chaos one expects when government disappears. None of them are the causes of our problems, but they are symptoms.
The collapse of the state under Momoh, once again a consequence of the vicious circle unleashed by the extreme extractive institutions under Stevens, meant that there was nothing to stop the RUF from coming across the border in 1991. The state had no capacity to oppose it. Stevens had already emasculated the military, because he worried they might overthrow him. It was then easy for a relatively small number of armed men to create chaos in most of the country. They even had a manifesto called“ Footpaths to Democracy,” which started with a quote from the black intellectual Frantz Fanon:“ Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it.” The section“ What Are We Fighting For?” begins: