MANY COMPLAINTS FROM ECSL REGISTRATION CENTERS
We are closing in on one week since ECSL started registering eligible voters for the coming general and presidential elections. People are complaining about delays in the process leading to frustration and people leaving the centers to do their normal things. The process is set to last FOUR weeks but already some are calling for that period to be extended. A high turnout is expected in June next year but this is where the journey begins. Somehow, we believe things will pick up as the exercise nears conclusion but what we are hearing now is a cause for concern.
1. Some registration centers are a bit too far from the main population centers so that people can quickly jump on an okada and arrive at a registration center. Locating the center where people are required to pay transport money which is equivalent to a day’s meal is a recipe for disaster.
2. Why are people complaining so much about the computers ECSL workers are using? We know that technological challenges are bound to happen in such large scale operations but the widespread nature of the complaints is bound to worry many. Didn’t ECSL conduct test runs during their training sessions?
3. Why can’t the government provide more money so ECSL can open more centers, deploy more staff and get them to work long hours? We have to get this right.
4. Instead of tweeting away about this and that, why can’t the leaders of political parties go and have a meeting with ECSL, understand their challenges and work with them to fix the problem? Shouting wolf on social media speaks only to the base but it doesn’t move the electoral needle at all.
5. We call on the police to move fast and prosecute a few people for attempting to register when they are below the required age. Those coordinating that kind of business should also be brought to book.
6. We want ECSL to do a quick assessment after the first two weeks and tell us whether they were anywhere near their target. Maybe we are all just plain wrong with this low turnout debate raging now on social media.
SCHOOLS ARE BACK IN SESSION AND PRINCIPALS ARE IN BUSINESS
We have not heard a word from the authorities at the Ministry of Secondary Education on some of the issues we brought to their attention a few weeks back bordering on how their principals are treating people looking for placements for their children. Apart from the usually shabby treatment they get at some of these schools, we highlighted the fact that parents are being asked for big sums of money and in this era of free education, people should be excused for asking HOW FREE IS FREE?
We can’t keep telling the people that education at that level is free when they are being asked for big money for their children to be admitted to secondary school. And it’s not as if some of these children didn’t make good grades, it’s mostly just that their first choice schools had set the admission bar so artificially high that only a handful can make it. The rest are then left to fight their way into other schools where the people we are complaining about do their business.
In past editions we called on our scorpions of the ACC to visit some of these schools and sting members of this well-organized syndicate. We understand why SPECIAL ROOMS for WAEC exams are good hunting places but we absolutely fail to understand why admission periods for secondary schools are not used to capture teachers and their middlemen who impoverish our people daily.
WATERLOO WATERLOO WATERLOO
We will continue calling attention to the situation at Waterloo. On this issue, Waterloo doesn’t mean the town alone. We are talking about all the areas around Waterloo, including Lumpa right up to Newton. We are asking the authorities to move extremely fast and deal with lawlessness and crime in Waterloo itself and the surrounding area.
The events of August 10 have proved that Waterloo is a time bomb waiting to explode and it really doesn’t take much to put the conditions in place for the bomb to explode. The whole place is just too chaotic and unpredictable that the presence of that police station means nothing when criminals want to do things. We know that state resources would have to be directed at other areas but to assume that the current structures by which security is maintained at Waterloo cannot be described in any way as adequate. That will be a huge mistake and we will continue to regret it any time an explosion takes place there.
Here are some reasons why we think the security sector has to take a new approach to deal with Waterloo. At this point, we want to remind the security sector that not too long ago they organized a meeting in that place where issues of concern to the sector were discussed and recommendations made. We can now conclude that those recommendations are on the shelves inside the ONS. Otherwise what happened in that place would have been prevented or dealt with easily to avoid the kind of damage to public property we saw on the 10th of August, 2022.
1. Some of the most powerful and wicked land grabbers and their private army of thugs have set up their bases at Waterloo. They are busy grabbing and selling state land and their thugs are under instruction to kill anybody trying to disrupt that trade. That includes security personnel.
2. There was this case of a police officer who was called to a small corner of Waterloo as part of an investigation. The officer was killed and even at this moment, we have no idea whether the killers of that officer were even arrested. Waterloo is a good hiding place for hardcore criminals. Armed robberies are organized and executed from Waterloo.
3. Hundreds of ex-combatants from our civil war, including those discharged from the military are now settled at Waterloo. A good many of them grabbed parcels of land and built homes. They are dangerous when they have no jobs and social amenities around them.
4. Apart from criminals roaming the vast market area of the town, teenage pregnancy, prostitution, and high rates of school dropouts, even in the era of free education and lawlessness have taken hold in that place.
5. Most of the cars stolen on the streets of Freetown are taken to scrap yards in Waterloo. A notorious guy in that business was recently arrested in a blaze of publicity. We still don't know how that case ended. That's another lost opportunity.
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