POOR SIERRA LEONEANS PAY EDSA BILLS FOR RICH ONES
Many ordinary Sierra Leoneans should be very offended by what the EDSA boss and his people have discovered from their recent tour of our provincial capitals. They discovered that big businesses that make a lot of money every week are neck deep in the corrupt practice of what EDSA calls illegal abstraction of electricity. In other words, they are stealing electricity from the national grid. In a number of cases EDSA people had to disconnect supply to those establishments, causing serious embarrassment to their management and customers.
We are living in a country where people like complaining about the inadequacy of services, particularly electricity. Where electricity is available, it is so expensive that ordinary people can only afford to keep the lights on for a few hours a day. Meanwhile those with a high rate of consumption – like hotels, guest houses, bars and restaurants are busy doing illegal abstraction and to keep them on, EDSA raises tariffs and collects every penny from ordinary people. This world is unfair!
We are waiting for EDSA to explain how this game is played. Meanwhile we have some ideas they may find useful.
1. Most of those illegal connections are done by current or former EDSA workers. Ordinary folks like us will never climb any pole to steal electricity.
2. We want UNCLE JOE LAHAI to think about the possibility of some administrative and technical big people in his institution working with these big establishments to steal electricity. Let your investigation be comprehensive. In other words, follow the evidence.
3. Please tell the nation how much money EDSA has lost during the period and what you intend doing about it. We are sure EDSA has no business going to the government daily asking for subvention. They can also deal with this quarterly threat about Karpower shutting down.
REMOVE THE LOG FROM THINE EYES O MACKY SALL
We have to start by saying how much we like Senegal. It’s a peaceful country and unlike South Africa there is no xenophobic attack on anybody visiting or living in that country, which includes BLACK AFRICANS. There is no South African –style Operation Dudula. It must be noted though that the way things are going now in that country leaves us with a lot to worry about. The principal architect of the political troubles facing Senegal is President Macky Sall.
With only a few weeks left in his second term, Sall found some reason to suspend the election and stay in office for almost another year? He then asked parliament to approve his decision. This man has to be very careful about what he is doing now. His democratic credentials are still not bad even at this late stage but the picture is not looking good either.
1. Sall actually wanted to run for a third term-copying the old man in the Ivory Coast. He made some moves to signal that but dropped that ambition possibly under pressure from the streets of Senegal and ultimately from Paris.
2. The next chapter focused on Osmane Sonko who suddenly started attracting crowds. We stand to be corrected but he should still be in jail and prevented from running for the big office for this and that crime. Sall has not listened to any pleas to release him.
3. Sall has troops in neighboring Gambia keeping watch over Adama Barrow in case we wake up one morning to find Yayah Jammeh at Banjul airport fresh from Equatorial Guinea. It was the presence of his troops in particular that convinced Jammeh that his dictatorship game was over.
4. Sall was part of a recent ECOWAS team that flew to Sierra Leone to help negotiate former president Ernest Bai Koroma’s way out of treason charges. ECOWAS told the world they got involved in the interest of the peace of Sierra Leone. Time will tell.
Why is Sall busy taking the speck from the eyes of other people while a huge log is lodged in his own? The world should not allow Senegal to slide into conflict with Macky Sall presiding.
GHANA TO PROTEST AGAINST POOR FOOTBALL PERFORMANCE
So while the rest of the world would probably be consumed with Valentine’s Day celebrations, a large section of the Ghanaian population would be in a different mood. We have seen a flyer on social media announcing a protest against the quality of football in their country. Ghanaians love their football and they have every reason to. Ghana has produced some of the best footballers in Africa and the world so they cannot understand why the performance of the Black Stars has become so mediocre.
The coach has been sacked and we expect some of the players to also fall on their swords and not wait for the Football Association to sack them.
MEANWHILE IN SIERRA LEONE…
Here, we accept everything from those running our game including the fact that Liberia next door defeated our national teams at all levels recently and all we were told – not in a proper news conference but on social media is that we should use the lessons the Liberia taught us for subsequent matches, classic attempt to SPIN. We say attempt because the effort was badly handled.
We are not asking people to jump on the streets to protest in the kind of atmosphere we find ourselves in. We want more accountable leadership. We DEMAND proper explanation that makes sense for the performance of our national team in particular. We expect those in charge of our game to call the media so we hear from managers and technical staff. When somebody at the NSA once published a technical report after a disastrous outing he was slapped with serious administrative sanctions that threatened his job. Are we really serious?
We are staying away from the local game for now despite the fact that the foundation stone of our national team is planted in the local game.
The government should consider this: we should totally withdraw from all international competition for THREE years, hire proper trainers, not a man who is guessing around and possibly taking instructions from administrators from inside the SLFA.
For now we are busy doing the same thing while expecting a different result. We will not get it.
CAF SHOULD SEVERELY PUNISH MALI
Maybe they will withdraw from CAF and FIFA because with every disciplinary action that Mali is confronted with, they put on their paranoid frame and describe it as the work of their former colonial masters. When their players attacked the referee at the end of the match hundreds of millions of people saw them in real time. That attitude is totally unacceptable.
Many people in Africa and the world were really impressed with the performance of the Malian team up to that point and were holding them up as potential winners this year. They conceded in the dying minutes of the match from a mix up in their box and were hoping to steal a few more minutes to press for an equalizer and force the match into a post-game penalty situation so when the referee sounded his whistle to end the match, a handful of them rushed over to the referee and pushed the man from side to side. These are professionals who would not dare think about attacking match officials while playing for their European clubs. They think everything goes in Africa. Let Mali be severely punished for their sins.
Copyright © 2024 Politico (07/02/24)
