OUR CRY BABY FEMALE FOOTBALL TEAM FAILS AGAIN
Our female football team has lost again in the neighboring Republic of Liberia against The Gambia (2 – 0). Our home leg in the African Women’s Nations Cup match was played there because of CAF’s stadium ban imposed on Sierra Leone because our facilities at the stadium in Freetown are poor. That includes the pitch of play.
We understand some of the complaints from our players regarding their allowances and other conditions of their service to the nation but with results like the last two, people are surely going to ask serious questions around the wisdom of giving what little we have to them without getting results against countries that have the same challenges we are grappling with on this side. Our players can’t complain about everything and not bring victories home to this land that we love.
The other day we heard one of them complaining about the lack of electricity in their hotel in Bo during the day. We find that really funny. Why didn’t their managers tell them that Bo has a serious challenge with electricity in the first place? Those who expect to be treated like football queens should produce results on the field. What was the point of filming all the wash facilities in their rooms and making a social media sensation of it? We have encouraged this nonsense for too long. We will call for the team to be disbanded if they fail to produce results for us and start all over again. They spend all their time on social media instead of training and winning games.
We call on the SLFA to start a nationwide female league right now and run it alongside the men’s game. There are very good players in small corners of Sierra Leone that we can create opportunities for. This padi padi team that we selected in Freetown has failed.
From now on we are not interested in the complaints about this and that. Let them score goals and win games.
CIVIL WAR AT MoHS, CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
A really sad thing about the disgraceful episode of General Demby fighting his CMO and his two deputies is that all official documents relating to the incident are now on social media. We are sure they were purposely put there to cause maximum embarrassment to each other. Now they have ended up embarrassing the good people of Sierra Leone including the man who put them in office.
We live in a free society and information sharing is part of the freedom we enjoy in Sierra Leone but for official documents that ideally should remain in the files at Youyi building to be plastered all over social media is a crazy thing to do. Actually, it didn’t start with MOHS because every appointment from State House, even internal documents have all been released on social media just to create unnecessary sensation around the issues. In this particular MOHS case, the letter General Demby sent to his Permanent Secretary instructing him to send the CMO away and the actual letter sent to the CMO are now all on social media. We are strenuously trying to exclude the lengthy write up from the CMO but even that ought to have remained in their files.
We don’t know how much more embarrassment should be caused to the good people of Sierra Leone before somebody somewhere did something about this habit of putting all official documents on social media, revealing the gory details of a very unfortunate affair in a ministry we expect so much from. General Demby from the greatest country in the world is now neck-deep in crude local politics.
Along with the CMO are the two deputy ministers who see the General as this guy from the great USA who knows nothing about the internal dynamics of running the MOHS. This is just the beginning.
LET’S FIGHT THE CRIMINALS AMONG OKADA BOYS
Two weeks ago we reported an incident on Kallon drive, near Aberdeen beach hoping Sovula boys would do something about that but as we write this, no Sovula boy has asked any questions. Two weeks ago one 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, 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 bag or be struck with the machete. This woman was rescued when a few neighbors rushed to the scene. She fought hard to keep her bag but her hands 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 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 the guy who spends time on his laptop computer reading through databases not connected to fighting criminal activity in Sierra Leone.
SIERRA LEONEANS SHOULD GO BACK TO THE LAND AND GROW WHAT WE EAT
No matter how much we grumble about the cost of a bag of rice, it will keep going up. The people of this country have to make a decision to grow what they eat or continue to depend on other countries where people spend their time working to feed themselves and to make money from agriculture. They don’t spend all their time talking about politics on the streets, in offices, football stadiums or even cemeteries. Why should we complain about the cost of rice produced in Cambodia and shipped halfway around the world to Sierra Leone? The farmers out there work really hard so they should enjoy the benefit of their labor.
In the last few days we have seen social media photos of individual farmers or groups of farmers, including military personnel showing off their harvest in Sierra Leone. That’s the way to go. Cambodia is not a rich country. The farmers in India, China and Pakistan are just like our own farmers. Why should they feed us?
Our politicians would gladly buy bags and bags of imported rice to distribute to supporters who spend several hours a day at so-called ATAYA BASES instead of asking them to go to the bush and grow food. As long as people continue to sell their votes so cheaply, politicians will continue to supply bags of rice. So we can continue to grumble about the cost of an imported bag of rice for as long as we can, the farmers in Cambodia, Pakistan, China and India will continue to work and make money. Let’s also continue talking about POLITICS.
Copyright © Politico Online 20/10/21
