How to Remove a Dictatorship

Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni

 

By Alpha Amadu Jalloh, Author, Monopoly of Happiness: Unveiling Sierra Leone’s Social Imbalance, and Recipient, Africa Renaissance Leadership Award 2025

 

A dictatorship does not need to wear a military uniform or suspend a constitution to be dangerous. It thrives when a nation becomes too tired to care, too afraid to fight back and too broken to hope. It survives on submission. It feeds on fear. It grows stronger every time we convince ourselves that silence is safer than resistance.

 

But let me be clear. No tyrant stays in power unless we allow it. And the longer we bow, the heavier their boots will become on our necks.

 

If you want to remove a dictatorship, start by understanding the game. These people do not just want to rule. They want to control your thoughts, your voice, your future. They are not satisfied with power. They crave worship. They want you to believe that your survival depends on their generosity. That questioning them is disloyal. That the country belongs to them, not to you.

 

You remove a dictatorship by tearing down that illusion. Piece by piece. Lie by lie.

 

Fear is powerful. But silence is what gives fear its teeth. Every time you hesitate to speak, they win. Every time you stay quiet when injustice happens before your eyes, they grow bolder. Dictators survive because too many people convince themselves they are powerless.

 

You are not powerless. You are just afraid. And fear is not weakness. It is a signal. It tells you that what you are about to do matters. Speak anyway. Stand anyway. Write. March. Refuse. You do not have to be loud to be effective. Just be consistent. Truth is the loudest noise in the world when spoken clearly and repeatedly.

 

You do not ask tyrants to behave. You do not plead with oppressors to stop. You strip their power by refusing to obey unjust commands. You delegitimize them. You expose them. You withdraw your cooperation from their fraudulent systems. A dictatorship collapses not when the dictator dies but when the people stop complying.

 

If you are a teacher, stop parroting political slogans in the classroom. If you are a civil servant, stop protecting corrupt ministers. If you are a journalist, stop exchanging your pen for brown envelopes. If you are a youth leader, stop dancing for the same politicians who are destroying your future. If you are religious, stop blessing wickedness from the pulpit.

 

Enough is enough. The blood of our people is not the price for a few men’s comfort. We will not be instruments of our own oppression.

 

Tyranny survives by dividing you. Region against region. Tribe against tribe. Party against party. They know that as long as you fight each other, they will never be touched.

 

Break that cycle. Talk to someone from another district. Form alliances with those you have been told to distrust. Pain is universal. Hunger knows no tribe. Injustice does not ask for your party card. You are all suffering under the same system. So why fight each other while the real enemy sits in comfort?

 

Use your pain as fuel. Use your anger as strategy. Plan, unite and mobilise. Turn frustration into power. That is how you beat a dictatorship.

 

And if they dare to arrest one of us, let a hundred more come forward. If a hundred are arrested, let a thousand rise. Flood the system with resistance until there are no more cells left to contain our courage. Break the chain of intimidation. Stretch the capacity of the police until the entire security apparatus gives up, overwhelmed not by violence but by unshakable resolve. Show them that we are no longer afraid. That we are no longer going away.

 

Come to your junctions. Come to your communities. Stand with placards. No violence. No weapons. Just presence. Just truth. Let your silence thunder louder than their lies. Let your message be written in bold for the world to see. We are not slaves. We are citizens. And we are done being silent.

 

Some of you are still waiting for heroes. Still hoping that one man will rise up and free us all. Stop it. The very people you worship in politics have betrayed you over and over. They smile in public and kneel to the dictator in private. They want positions, not justice. They want access, not change. Wake up.

 

The only heroes we need are ordinary citizens with extraordinary courage. People like you. Like me. The mother who refuses to give her vote away for a cup of rice. The student who refuses to praise those who have destroyed his future. The worker who refuses to be silenced by a paycheck.

 

Real change does not come from palaces. It rises from the streets. It grows in the hearts of people who decide they have had enough.

 

They clap for us abroad, then turn around and fund our oppressors. They write reports about democracy, then pose for pictures with tyrants. They offer development loans that never develop anything except the dictator’s bank account. Call them out. Use your voice. Use your platforms. Let them know we see them.

 

We will no longer be used for photo ops. We are not a charity case. We are a nation of intelligent, powerful people who have been denied our dignity for far too long.

 

Yes, the dictator will fall. But that is not the end. That is the beginning. Do not fight to replace one evil with another. Fight to change the system that allowed evil to grow in the first place. Clean the courts. Free the media. Rewrite the rules. Educate the next generation to never fall for the same tricks again.

 

This is not a battle for power. It is a war for the soul of our nation.

 

To the man who thinks he owns Sierra Leone, you do not. To the ministers who act like gods, your time will come. To the cowards pretending to be leaders, history will remember your silence. And to the people, this is your country. Stand up and take it back.

 

You do not remove a dictatorship by waiting. You remove it by rising.

 

Now. Not later. Not someday. Now.

 

Let it fall. Let it all fall. And let something honest finally rise.