SOME OKADA BOYS ARE ARMED ROBBERS AND IT’S GETTING SERIOUS
On Thursday morning we spoke to a woman who was badly shaken after a traumatic few minutes at the hands of criminals the night before. She was walking to her home off Kallon Drive, near the beach, about a minute after she dropped from the back of an okada. According to her, she saw another okada pulling up towards her and the next minute a man wielding a machete stopped her and asked her to hand over her hand bag or be wounded with the machete. This woman was rescued when on hearing her cries a few neighbors rushed to the scene. She fought hard to keep her bag but her fingers were badly bruised. This is serious. Let’s not even talk about the trauma.
These things happen sometimes because we have lazy people who prefer to steal from others to survive but the frequency with which these things are happening is what worries us. We are talking here about an area of Freetown that MUST be adequately covered by the police given activities that take place along that beach and the huge communities that have grown up around the place. Surely, even the police in London are normally called to crime scenes but despite all the frantic calls on Wednesday night, no Sovula boy turned up. We suspect they will even read this and ignore our calls for serious action.
Our Minister of Internal Affairs, Noah’s Ark is clueless and incompetent, in fact totally out of his depth in this role. We think his boss should re-assign him. We want somebody who can fight crimes like these on our streets all over the country. We don't want a guy who spends time on his laptop computer reading through databases not connected to fighting criminal activity in Sierra Leone.
COMPLAINING ON SOCIAL MEDIA BUT AVOIDING THE POLICE
We just read with dismay that the Police in Bo have not received any complaint from the people who posted the picture of a wounded young woman the other day claiming she had survived a kidnap at the hands of okada boys in the outskirts of Bo city. The male voice told that story in graphic detail, leaving many people absolutely terrified. Now we are left wondering why this man has still NOT REPORTED the affair to the police. The man even referred to a house where the alleged criminals operate from. So why hasn’t he taken the police to the place?
This is the state of things now in this country and we believe people either don’t know the consequences of what they are doing on social media or they are part of a wicked gang looking to create chaos or just make things look very bad in this land that we love.
The first thing any good citizen, in fact any rational human being would do after surviving a kidnap is to run to the police station and in this case seek immediate medical help. The police are now telling us that like all of us all they know about this alleged failed kidnap is what went viral on social media. Why has the man in the audio clip not visited the police station?
We now ask the police to go beyond issuing a press release. They have to do the following:
1. Find this wounded woman if she exists in Sierra Leone and interview her. We want the facts. Was this a kidnap or something else?
2. Is that picture from Sierra Leone? We don’t mean to sound so cruel if that is so but the fact that family members have refused to go to the police compels us to think twice.
3. Sovula boys should get the man behind the voice in the audio. Whether they decide to press a case or not is not the issue. As a good citizen he has a responsibility to help the police fight crime. Let him step forward right now.
4. When all of this is said and done, the police should find a new way of watching over people using okada all over Sierra Leone. It’s possible using technology. We know a group in this country that can help with such a technology. Okadas are meant to serve people and we should never allow them to be weaponized against ordinary Sierra Leoneans.
PEOPLE SMUGGLERS DESTROYING OUR IMAGE ABROAD
The other day IOM, working with our embassy in Senegal repatriated more than ONE HUNDRED Sierra Leoneans who were duped into paying good money for fake jobs in Senegal. Once in that country, the criminals who organized the trip abandoned them to the harsh realities of life in that country and the fortune-chasing Sierra Leoneans took to social media to blackmail the government of this country to rescue them. The dust around that issue is still settling down and here comes another warning from Liberia that a certain organization operating here and in Liberia is taking Sierra Leoneans to Monrovia on the promise that they will be trafficked on to Malaysia. It is our information that many of our people in Liberia have been duped and can only now dream of reaching Roberts International Airport, talk less of Malaysia. They are turning up at our embassy in Monrovia putting pressure on our diplomats for this and that.
We have reached a point where if we don’t throw the people organizing these people smuggling schemes in jail, they will destroy whatever good name we have abroad. In fact some countries will institute strong diplomatic and consular actions against us. It’s that serious.
We have no problem with the government paying huge sums of money to care for and repatriate Sierra Leoneans caught in such a trap anywhere in the world but for how long are we going to be doing this? We want the small money we have in this country to be spent on health, education and roads, not to bring back home people who despite all warnings choose to undertake some fantasy trip in search of gold.
Copyright © Politico Online 08/10/21
