WHAT A WAY TO REACH THE FIFA COUNCIL.
We now believe that it has always been Queen Johansen’s ambition since controversially taking over the SLFA, to enter FIFA. Johansen was brought to SLFA politics by people who were determined to do everything under the sun to keep Rodney Michael, the clear favorite then to succeed the tired and clueless Nahim Khadi away from Kingtom. Johansen, who had publicly endorsed Michael, suddenly changed her tune and put her name forward for the job.
Since entering SLFA headquarters she has done everything to remain in that office until the day she became a member of the FIFA council. She planted and sustained fake match-fixing allegations against keys football stakeholders who were opposed to the rogue method by which she became president. It would take six years for her own ethics committee to clear those she wrongly accused. She also killed the local game in the process of consolidating her hold on the SLFA. There was also a FIFA ban on Sierra Leone along the way.
So now The Queen has arrived. Here’s how she dealt with the following on her way to Zurich.
SIERRA LEONE
We are not surprised at all the Queen Johansen’s election to the FIFA Council has not set Sierra Leone ablaze with excitement in the same way as Zainab Bangura’s appointment to high office in the UN or Justice Miatta Samba’s accession to the International Criminal Court. The factors revolve around the kind of organization she will be working for and her very attitude to this land that we love.
FIFA is just like the big bully in the playground. They set their own rules so that they can bully particularly weak nations like Sierra Leone in Africa and those in the Caribbean. They put themselves above the laws of their member countries. They are rich. They encourage and even sponsor dictatorships in their member organization and easily blackmail their members by suspending them from the global game with the clear intention to cause insurrection in those countries with so many young people playing and pinning their hopes on football.
There is the veto at the UN but the big guys sparingly use it. And at the UN the votes of small nations really matter but FIFA is everything in football and for our continent to have sold itself so cheaply to Infantino in the last few weeks is the biggest disgrace we have suffered perhaps since the slave trade. Infantino has stitched an elaborate, ramshackle leadership coalition together with the understanding that they do his bidding until the cows come home. Queen Johansen signed up to that by supporting the South African who is now CAF president without telling her so-called Executive Committee or the country as a whole. So yes, our country’s name is on her seat in that FIFA council but we were NEVER part of it. Let’s not fool ourselves.
THE SLFA EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
As far as we are concerned this so-called Executive Committee does not exist. The SLFA is Queen Johansen and Queen Johansen is the SLFA. Those executive committee members that have at some point or the other tried to exercise any independent reasoning have found themselves out in the cold – denied even their monthly allowances. Hon. Francis Konuwa knows what we are talking about.
A divide and rule policy has always been in place in that executive committee while the members were all expected to be regularly singing thy praise O Queen Johansen. We hope a strong, independent and purposeful executive committee would emerge from the coming elective congress. In fact her bloated secretariat is more powerful than the executive committee.
SLFA MEMBERS
These guys can’t even recognize their own organization anymore. Queen has changed it so much that the real members of the SLFA have withdrawn to the periphery of things hoping and praying that they will be GRANTED the opportunity to vote soon enough so they can remove Johansen and her team from office. They are a completely divided lot with many seeking their own narrow interests. They are cutting deals here and there and Queen Johansen knows how greedy they are. She is giving them what they deserve.
The anti-Johansen coalition has held up nicely over the last SEVEN years but we are very afraid that some people in that coalition are definitely on the verge of collapse.
THE MEDIA
The queen has been very clear about what she thinks of the media in this country. She doesn’t NEED the local media to be great. She is definitely not a fan of face-to –face meetings with local media. Her secretariat sends out statements from time to time but they depend on a group of social media enthusiasts and people sending stuff to interactive radio programs praising THE MADAM. This group has reserved places at SLFA congresses. In Kenema while some were having a good time in the hall, some SLFA members were thrown out.
The only personal media appearances she makes are HIGHLY SANITIZED with presenters playing soft ball.
FBC LECTURER APPARENTLY STRANGLED TO DEATH
The Fourah Bay College community is in mourning. News broke on Monday morning that Arthur Edgar Smith, a lecturer in the Language Studies department was found apparently strangled to death in his flat in the Lower Faculty area of the college. Smith is known as a quiet guy who goes about his normal business and lived alone. We can’t confirm but we understand that neighbors raised an alarm after they realized that he wasn’t up to his routine activities for about two days even with doors opened.
Colleagues and students are now asking how such a thing could have happened on a college campus without anybody noticing something. Are there no security guards on campus? Was this a robbery gone wrong or the mission was to kill Arthur Smith and why? As usual the Sierra Leone Police have told us they are investigating. We hear that from them all the time and in many such situations such cases have gone cold. In other words the cases die. We serve notice that we will not allow this particular case to die.
We are getting bits and pieces of information about what may have been the trigger for the killing but in this business we have to be very careful what we publish for now. We will follow the police investigation until the day a judgment is delivered in the High Court. Good luck Dr. Ambrose Sovula.
WHERE IS THE GUY WHO STOLE AUSTIN DEMBY’S MONEY?
Just now we were talking about cold cases; we hope this is not one of them. We want Dr. Ambrose Sovula to please tell the good people of Sierra Leone the whereabouts of that guy from the troubled Sierra Leone Maritime Administration who put Austin Demby through that baptism of fire just a week or so after he was appointed as our Minister of Health. There was a lot of publicity around the incident particularly because of the dramatic way in which he was captured in the act. We want clear answers please.
We are pressing this issue because despite the fact that mobile phone operators are insisting on registering all SIM cards, criminals are still at work trying to dupe people by telling them lies about winning lotteries or making prank calls. People have been complaining all over the place so now that we have managed to arrest one of them we must make a good example of this man.
We want to see that man in court NOW.
Copyright © 2021 Politico Online (17/03/21)
