ROGUE CENSUS ENUMERATORS vs. THE PEOPLE OF SIERRA LEONE
Some trained census enumerators collected our tablets and money and SSL sent them to the field to simply count the good people of Sierra Leone within a given location but all they did was to chop our money and go to sleep. They have effectively stolen the tablet and some are even brazen enough to turn up at SSL headquarters to collect more money alongside those decent Sierra Leoneans who did the job even in such very difficult conditions. We understand some are now at the CID answering questions for taking the money and pad without doing the job and perhaps for even attempting to get more money from the national purse. How can anybody explain this?
We’ve been trying to understand why any good Sierra Leonean would behave this way and we could only find the following reasons. Meanwhile we absolutely think there is no reason for such a behavior but let’s just put a few lines down to get the conversation underway.
1. It could well be that the vast majority of those who refused to go to the field even after collecting our money and pads are supporters of Tolongbo and they were simply giving practical effect to Yansaneh’s call for a total boycott of the process by their members. Maybe we should just add for good measure that Yansaneh actually asked all Tolongbo members not to even serve as enumerators.
2. We also suspect that among those people are outright criminals who went into the training simply to carry out the criminal enterprise that SSL just exposed.
3. We know that many of those trained as enumerators are University students. Let’s now ask very serious questions about what it means to be a University student. Honestly, society expects so much from people in our institutions of higher learning but see how disgraceful this behavior is.
4. We call on SSL to publish the full details of those rogue enumerators in at least FIVE national newspapers over a whole week. We don’t want such people to even approach public service anymore. They’ve lost their chance through laziness and partisan politics.
Let the census continue with the new hotline for targeted enumeration areas.
THE PROBLEM OF EMPTY STADIUMS AT AfCON CAMEROON: WE OFFER SOLUTIONS
The host country of AfCON should now be very ashamed of what they have produced so far in terms of match attendance. Let’s not hide this behind African solidarity: the stadiums are empty. Apart from the opening ceremony and that country’s match with Burkina Faso (well, even that was not impressive in terms of turn out), all other matches have been played in empty stadiums. It’s almost as if it’s a FIFA order for the matches to be played behind closed doors or it’s a measure against COVID-19.
It’s a shame that after all the hype and the health risk, given the rampaging OMICRON COVID-19 virus, the stadiums are empty. The government of Paul Biya should do something immediately to rescue the tournament. He had a long time to prepare for this showpiece. What he has produced is bad. Very bad indeed! He should do the following:
1. Make the rest of the matches in the group stages FREE but admit on a first come first serve basis the exact number of people required for that facility.
2. Consider extending such a gift to the knockout stage if attendance doesn’t improve.
3. Open land borders and bus in your neighbors to watch those matches. If Cameroonians are not moved by what has been given to them by CAF, other Africans want to prove that AfCON is as big as any other continental tournament.
4. Finally, there is nothing wrong with outsourcing some of the matches to neighboring Nigeria. They will pack the stadiums.
Hope the old man finds this useful.
200 MILLION LEONE FOR EACH PLAYER IF SIERRA LEONE WINS AfCON
Please forgive us but how would you react to us saying that Beresford Victor Williams is one Sierra Leonean that is desperately praying for our national team to return home empty-handed but after our first match, things are not going his way. That’s because he has put himself in a very tight corner with his promise that our players would receive 200 million Leones each from him should they win AfCON. While the whole country wants Leone Stars to win the trophy, all the realistic analyses we’ve read, suggest that this country would accept our boys breaking out of the first round at least as a worthy achievement after TWENTY FIVE years.
Williams is widely quoted on social media as making this offer and because we’ve waited for more than FOUR days for him to refute what was attributed to him, we now have no reason to doubt that he did make that promise. Anyway, we just want to tell Williams that whether he offers money or not, we absolutely believe that our players can win the trophy. To give practical effect to that we are now sending emissaries all over the country to ask PRAYER WARRIORS of all faiths to pray for our team. God will guide them through. That’s all they need now.
We also want to tell Williams that we have TWENTY EIGHT players out there. That should help him calculate the amount of money he will be spending by the end of February. Sir, we have not included the technical staff in this promised bonanza. We may have to include them because they are responsible for training, team building and psychological preparation.
Politicians like to be in the limelight so it looks like Williams will soon have a permanent place in front of the headlamps of national publicity in this land that we love.
HAS KABINEH KALLON SEEN THIS WASTE OF OUR MONEY
Next time you enter the Youyi Building which houses several government ministries by the Zonta Bye-Pass gate please cast your eyes to the right and see that what immediately comes into view is something that looks like a scrapyard for government vehicles. What is Moba Kabineh really telling us about what we can all see in that corner of shame inside one of the most important government compounds in this land that we love?
Very expensive vehicles either bought with our taxes or donated to us by friendly governments with different types of defects have been abandoned in the corner of Youyi Building and God alone knows what’s happening to them every night. We appreciate what has been done over the years to bring some respectability to Youyi Building but surely there are very good grounds for suspicion that wicked people hanging around that place might be removing vital parts from those vehicles for sale along Goderich Street. That’s the area of Freetown where some people who have no Tax Identification Numbers or even a bank account are running big time spare part businesses.
In the name of the good people of Sierra Leone we call on Moba Kabineh to immediately move those vehicles to the Road Transport Corporation for maintenance or if they are not fit for purpose let’s just sell them off to private people.
When taxpayers like us enter the Youyi Building and see our vehicles apparently abandoned there we feel really bad. Those who donated some of those vehicles to us know this reality and we probably should never read the report they are sending back home about the gift they so graciously gave to this land that we love.
Copyright © 2022 Politico Online (12/01/22)
