TURAD SENESSI AND THE MAKING OF NEW LANDOWNERS
What happened at Bureh Beach yesterday is something that will go down in the history of this country as an example of how to be impartial in sharing the resources of the country for the benefit of ALL SIERRA LEONEANS. Under the leadership of Turad Senessi in the Ministry of Lands, Kortor Juldeh handed over documents for parcels of land won by ordinary Sierra Leoneans in a raffle draw done transparently in the compound of Youyi Building. We have NEVER witnessed such a thing before in this country.
It is no secret that people and fighting and killing each other over land all the time, the courts are overflowing with land cases taking years to conclude and even after that, court orders are sometimes impossible to execute because at that point people deploy what we can call private militia to stop the wheels of justice from rolling on. So land is a potential source for big trouble particularly in Freetown. That’s why we congratulate Turad Senessi for this idea of using a raffle to select FIVE HUNDRED ordinary Sierra Leoneans for the parcels of land they received yesterday.
The process itself wasn’t as smooth as it ended yesterday:
1. There was serious resistance from inside ruling party circles to the idea of doing a raffle. Many guys wanted a straight forward sharing of the land as compensation for helping the Green Movement come to power in 2018. Our information is that Turad resisted and Principal backed him. That’s why this happened yesterday. There is no place for partisanship in this.
2. Many of those who turned up for the raffle are among the many Sierra Leoneans who believe that nothing can be so transparent in this country and that the process was already manipulated to benefit party people. It was only when winners were announced that they confessed to having made a mistake doubting the sincerity of Turad Senessi.
3. We have not heard or read any criticism of the process so far. We wish the new land owners all the best while calling on the ministry to MAKE SURE THE LAND OWNERS STICK BY THE CONDITIONS OF OWNERSHIP of a piece of state land. We know we are saying this.
4. When is the next raffle please? We will keep trying our luck.
CRYING ABOUT CONDITIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST BUT STILL GOING THERE
These days a lot of pictures and audio messages appear on our phones, almost all of them completely unsolicited. People just have this habit of forwarding things without asking questions. Even when people complain by private conversation, they soon forget and push more.
In the last two weeks we have seen pictures of Sierra Leone allegedly kept in semi-detention centers in the UAE for God knows what. All the audios those detained are sending over have never clearly explained why they were rounded up. Their intention has always been to whip up sentiments on this side to bring some pressure to bear on authorities to do what we really don’t know considering the laws in those other countries.
We clearly want to know why those Sierra Leoneans are detained and our embassy in the UAE has some responsibility for this. Are they detained for overstaying their visas or for criminal activities? We know a lot of Sierra Leoneans who travel frequently to that part of the world for business and pleasure and have never had to deal with the police. So what’s happening to those now complaining on social media?
Among those people are our brothers and sisters who have spent a fortune to travel to those places in the belief that the streets are paved with GOLD. They could have used that money to set themselves up in business in this country but traveling abroad is their thing. Those are the same people who, even without being asked, are quick to run this country down. We hear their audios daily.
Our young people are now leaving in droves for Turkey and Cyprus to try their luck in entering Western Europe via Greece with all the dangers involved in that. We wish them well but they are making these journeys with their eyes wide open to all the uncertainties. So please don’t pack our phones with your messages. Send them to the government through our embassy.
WHERE IS MAYOR KEMOKAI’S FLOOD MITIGATION PROJECT?
We are waiting to hear from our Transform Freetown and Flood Mitigation Mayor on what happened to this wonderful city that she has transformed since coming to power FOUR years ago. With all due respect we are not talking about the Freetown she posts on social media daily. We are talking about the REAL FREETOWN where we live.
Her social media Freetown is for those who live abroad and are so tied to her spin that they believe everything she posts. We experience Freetown daily and our experience bears zero resemblance to her social media Freetown.
This August has proved that no transformation or flood mitigation has been done either by our queen of social media or by the government, the latter, as far as the areas they are supposed to handle are concerned.
We can only say sorry to those who suffered for three nights just to get through Murray Town Junction. King Messi created that problem and we are still suffering after all these years.
MENDS STREET – DUNDAS STREET – we don’t know what to say about this area stretching right down to Saint John. Our Mayor drives through this place to and from work because she had that last minute change of address from rural Freetown just to be qualified to contest for this job.
A group of people in Freetown have put together pictures taken throughout Freetown during the last days of August. They groups intends to publish their album soon to prove that we are dealing with an incompetent Mayor who believes smiles on social media can account for huge public funds from the CRF and those daily market dues and the donor money that goes into her non-existent flood mitigation thing.
The people who compiled the album have nothing to do with party politics and may well have voted for our smiling Mayor. We have seen some of the pictures and we believe they capture the true picture of Freetown.
SLFA SUSPENDS MUSA TOMBO AT LAST BUT FOR HOW LONG?
We have always said in this column that we need to let Musa Tombo know that we have a lot of problems to deal with in this country and as such we shouldn’t spend disproportionate time trying to deal with his irrational and unpredictable and woefully puerile behavior all the time. The suspension to which he is subjected now means that he will not be able to play football even in his beloved mini-leagues. He is effectively grounded as a footballer.
We understand he has returned home from Libya where he threatened to kill himself with a BREAD KNIFE if he wasn’t allowed to return to Sierra Leone but the Libyan club which allegedly signed him says he is here for a brief holiday and should return soon to serve his contract time with them.
It’s only now that we're getting to know that there was a protest against him in that CHAN match in Liberia because he was considered a professional playing outside his country. Up to that point Tombo had a contract with Bo Rangers. That contract was terminated upon his return to Freetown.
We have read romantic comments from a few people lecturing the rest of us on how to care for people like Tombo and this and that. First of all it’s pure hypocrisy to make such comments on social media to impress people and then say something completely opposite on a one to one basis. The second point is that there are hundreds of thousands of Sierra Leoneans who need such help and are not getting it. How much time and resources are we going to spend on Tombo alone? To say Tombo needs help suggests that the guy himself should be playing his part. He is not doing that at all.
All we can do now is urge the SLFA to investigate the issues around Tombo quickly because he makes a living playing football. We don’t want any long drawn out investigation that stops him from registering for the coming Premier League because we don’t believe that Tombo is returning to Libya.
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