Bai Bureh was born in 1840 in Kasseh, a village near Port Loko in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. His father was an important Temne war-chief and his mother a Loko woman from Makeni. When Bureh was a young man, his father sent him to Gbendembu, a training school for warriors where he earned the nickname "Kebalai", meaning "one who never tires of war". When Kebalai return to his home village, he was crowned ruler of Kasseh.
During the 1860s and 1870’s Bureh had become the top warrior of Port Loko and the entire Northern Province. He successfully fought and won wars against other villagers who were against his plan to establish correct Islamic and indigenous practices throughout Northern Sierra Leone. In 1882, The Susu people from French Guinea (now Guinea) were involved in a bitter land dispute over Kambia, a town in northern Sierra Leone. The Susu invaded Kambia and easily crush the local people in Kambia. The people of Kambia called on Bai Bureh to their rescue. Bai Bureh’s fighters defeated the Susu, push them back into French Guinea and returned the land to the local Kambia people. After winning several major wars, his popularity spread. The people of the northern province felt they have found a warrior who would defend their land. In 1886, Bai Bureh was crowned as the chief of the entire Northern Province.
Rebellion
As a ruler, Bureh never wanted to cooperate with the British who were living in the capital city of Freetown. Bai Bureh refused to recognise a peace treaty the British had negotiated with the Limba without his participation; and on one occasion, his warrior fighters raided the British troops across the border into French Guinea.
Bai Bureh refused to recognise the hut tax the British had imposed in 1893 in Sierra Leone. He did not believe the Sierra Leonean people had a duty to pay taxes to foreigners and he wanted all British to return to Britain and let the Sierra Leoneans solve their own problems.
After refusing to pay his taxes on several occasions, the British issued a warrant to arrest Bureh. When the British Governor to Sierra Leone Cardew offered the princely sum of 100 pounds as a reward for his capture, Bai Bureh reciprocated by offering the even more staggering sum of five hundred pounds for the capture of the Governor. In 1896 Bureh declared war on British in Sierra Leone. The war later became known as the Hut Tax War of 1898.
He brought fighters from several temne villages under his command, as well as fighters from Limba, Loko, Kissi and Kuranko villages. Bai Bureh had the advantage over the vastly more powerful British for several months of the war. By 19 February, Bai Bureh’s warrior fighhters had completely severed the British line of communication between Freetown and Port Loko. They blocked the road and the river from Freetown. Despite their arrest warrant, the British forces failed to defeat Bureh and his warrior fighters. Hundreds of British troops were killed, and hundreds of Bureh’s fighters also died during the war.
Capture and Exile
Bai Bureh was finally tracked down in swampy, thickly vegetated countryside by a small patrolling party of the newly organised West African Regiment on November 11, 1898 in Port Loko. His Temne warriors resisted to the last, but they did not evade the troops for long. Bai Bureh was taken under guard to Freetown, where crowds gathered around his quarters day and night to gain a glimpse of the great man.
The British sent Bai Bureh in exile to the Gold Coast (now Ghana), along with the powerful Sherbro chief Kpana Lewis and the powerful Mende chief Nyagua. Both Kpana Lewis and Nyagua died in exile but Bai Bureh was brought back to Sierra Leone in 1905, reinstating him as the Chief of Kasseh. Bai Bureh died in 1908.
The Legacy of Bai Bureh
The significance of Bai Bureh’s war against the British is not a matter of whether he won or lost the war but that a man who had none of what could be called formal military training was able to show that for a significant number of months he was able to take on the British who were very proud of their great military successes across the globe. The British troops were led by officers trained at the finest military academies where war is studied in the same way that one studies a subject at university. The fact that Bai Bureh was not executed after his capture has led some historians to claim that this was in admiration for his prowess as an adversary to the British.
The tactics employed by Bai Bureh in his fight against the British are very much the forerunner of tactics employed by guerilla armies worldwide. At the time these tactics were very revolutionary and he "succeeded" for the good reason he had expert knowledge of the terrain across which the war took place. Bai Bureh had pursued the war not just with sound military brain but also a sense of humour. When Governor Cardew had offered the princely sum of 100 pounds as a reward for his capture, Bai Bureh had reciprocated by offering the even more staggering sum of five hundred pounds for the capture of the Governor.
Many Sierra Leoneans view Bai Bureh today as the greatest man to ever come out of Sierra Leone. Bai Bureh is pictured on several Sierra Leonean paper bills. A football club called the Bai Bureh Warriors from Port Loko is named after him.
Source: Wikipedia.
Editor’s note: There are some errors in this account but it by and large gives a fairly accurate account of who Bai Bureh was.We have consequently done some minor editing where we believe some details were not contextualised or correctly explained.
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