ADMINISTRATIVE INFIGHTING AT SLMA DRAWS IN PRINCIPAL
The Sierra Leone Maritime Administration is a very troubled institution. In the last two years we have witnessed sackings, anti-corruption raids, court cases and a systems review. We have also witnessed the suspension and eventual sacking of another Executive Director. There is a new guy warming up to take over – the third in two years. And now Principal has ordered an administrative inquiry into the SLMA and suspended half a dozen senior staff in the process.
When well-paid people decide to wreck the administration of an institution as important as that, through unbridled infighting for God knows what, this is what we end up with.
We have not seen the terms of reference of those carrying out the inquiry nor do we know them by name. We also don’t know whether this will be an open investigation in the sense that the media will cover it (that’s what we prefer), and how long it will last.
In the meantime we want to put the following issues out there in the hope that some answers will be provided by the time Principal comes round to dealing with the outcome of the investigation.
1. Where was the board in all this? The board is normally the body that will handle administrative anomalies without the supervising ministry getting involved. In this case the board was either missing in action or was on one side of this internecine warfare. Of the ministry decided to bulldoze them. We want to know!
2. We don’t believe that the board will come out of this smelling of roses because they had surrogates on social media arguing about their powers and this and that. We understand that the statutory members of the board (those representing institutions prescribed by the Act) attended very few meetings so their expertise was not available when it came to decision-making. Why was that?
3. We wonder why sack the Executive Director and appoint a new one, while going ahead to set up a panel to investigate the institution. That sounds like putting the cart before the horse. Shouldn’t the president have waited for the report of the special panel before sacking and replacing? Or if there was need to sack before investigating, why is the Board not also dissolved?
4. The ACC has indicted somebody in the SLMA for issues going back five years. Again it is our understanding that the documents that informed the indictment were delivered to the ACC as part of the infighting aimed at either settling scores or eliminating other people. The infighting has spiraled out of control. DE GAME DON BIG!
5. We hope that SLMA will come out of this a better organization serving the people of Sierra Leone but we have to be strong to challenge the old ways of doing things including appointing people into positions because we knew their parents.
6. The lesson for other organizations is that infighting is easy to start but difficult to control. We still don’t know where all of this will end. People must learn to live together and respect authority.
THE “MAD MAN” AT CONGO CROSS AND PRINCIPAL’S CONVOY
This is difficult to believe but it did happen on Wednesday evening as Principal’s convoy made the normal journey through Congo Cross heading home from work. How a so-called “mad man” came to disrupt the movement of the last vehicle in the convoy is something we should investigate. These days we shouldn’t take anything at face value. Given the speed with which the presidential convey moves, Principal’s vehicle was probably at Lumley Police station when the incident happened near Vine Memorial School.
The penultimate vehicle in the convoy which is normally occupied by heavily armed soldiers actually made a U-turn on realizing that something had gone wrong with the last vehicle and returned to the scene. You can now guess the state of readiness of those officers.
So what we heard from the scene was that someone said to be a “mad man” had moved in the line of that last vehicle, causing the driver to hit the brakes to come to a halt only a few meters from the “mad man”. We understand that a presidential guard actually alighted from his vehicle, checked the man out and left. We are not sure of what he made of the man’s mental capacity. The whole incident lasted about FIVE MINUTES. This was a very serious incident and we must treat it as such. To this end we have a few questions:
1. Where were all the police officers who normally clear the way for the presidential convoy to speed through? Where were they? We need answers from IG Sovula.
2. If those heavily armed guards who hurried to the scene had taken the “mad man” out, the whole country would have complained about the brutal conduct of the presidential guards. The fact is presidential convoys everywhere in the world are never disrupted when on the roll. So what was?
3. What if the so-called mad man was normal but pretended to have a mental health issue as a decoy to cause harm? Please don’t accuse us of making too much out of this. We believe this was a serious incident.
4. We hear that the police officers in that section of the road returned to their normal activity with Kekeh and Okada riders as soon as Principal’s own vehicle had passed them. Don’t ask us what that normal activity is.
5. Anyway, IG Sovula should pay serious attention to his traffic officers. He was once head of that division so he knows what to do.
SORRY MR. MINISTER, DID YOU REALLY ASK FOR ONE OF THOSE COVID 19 REPONSE VEHICLES?
Hello Mr. Minister, is it a deputy Minister or what? Anyway, a deputy minister is as good as a minister. Please tell us that your request to the EOC for one of the new vehicles procured to fight the coronavirus was a joke. Or NA TESTILO? Tell us that you thought the day you made that request was April Fools’ Day. We cannot understand why you should make such a request when you have a vehicle already assigned to you.
We should let you know that when that request was made a lot of people inside the EOC and those of us in this little corner who’ve been observing your work from afar and commending your professionalism were really taken aback because that virus which infects our politicians appears to have reached your doorstep. Why this craze for a new vehicle? Whether you are part of the COVID 19 response pillar Z or not does not concern us. We want you to concentrate on your job for which we pay your salary and other benefits. In fact when did you realize you should change your official vehicle? Why ask for a vehicle bought for a specific purpose like COVID 19?
We hope you don’t give us cause to return to this issue. We warn the EOC high command that the good people of Sierra Leone will not accept any justification for transferring any of those vehicles to this minister or deputy minister whether for official coronavirus work or not. If we are forced to return to this issue we will have no option but open up some of the things we are holding back now as we fire this warning shot. As for others who are clamouring for the COVID-19 to be assigned to them even though they have other official vehicles, we ask: WHERE IS YOUR CONSCIENCE? You are the same people who make some members of the public think misleadingly about the pandemic and say it is MONEY MAKING. We believe COVID-19 is real and dangerous. But please end this vehicle MAGO MAGO.
KENEMA ARTIFICIAL TURF HEADING FOR THE RAPTURE
Let nobody tell us the coronavirus attack on the world is responsible for the Kenema artificial football turf project not finally taking off after years of delay stretching back to the days of King Messi. We believe that the following factors have conspired against the good people of Kenema to wreck their artificial turf project:
1. King Messi’s collective punishment of the people of Kenema because they refused to join his political train.
2. An incompetent SLFA headed by a queen who believes scoring political points from even routine administrative matters is the best way to go. Clueless!
3. The leaders of football in Kenema who are themselves a divided house. They are busy seeking small favors from the queen for themselves while the rest of their people suffer. Kono and Makeni have their artificial turf in place.
4. Lastly that shameless, lying FIFA guy who came to the Kenema Congress and lied about the commencement and completion of the project just to help the queen survive crucial votes in that congress. Going by his dates the coronavirus pandemic would never have affected the project. He should be ashamed of himself.
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