SLRSA HOW MANY INNOCENT PEOPLE SHOULD DIE?
The football community in Sierra Leone is in mourning following that ghastly crash on the main highway out of Freetown on Tuesday night – 26th March, 2024. Players and officials of Ports Authority Football Club were on their way to Kenema to play football against the local side. The information we have is that when they reached a place called Konta Line at night time, their bus ran into a stationary good vehicle.
Accidents occur all the time but we now think something has to be done because SLRSA has absolutely failed to deal with this problem of vehicles breaking down on the road in complete darkness with no proper identification and SLRSA not doing anything to remove them until they are repaired on the spot by the owners. Many people who travel at night have lost their lives in such circumstances. We cannot accept the normal excuses from SLRSA.
We are not taking this position because of the people involved but we are fed up with SLRSA in particular and indeed the Sierra Leone Police for doing very little or nothing about crashes of this nature that are taking innocent lives from time to time. We want people to be held accountable.
SOLDIERS IN EXAMINATION HALLS AT EBK UNIVERSITY
EBK University based in the northern part of Sierra Leone appears to have asked for Military Aid to Civil Power also known as MAC-P. This is normally invoked on a national scale during crisis situations and it’s rarely done. Never have we seen soldiers in an examination room supervising exams. EBK University has no problem to be recorded as the first institution of higher learning to ask for such help. Amazing!
The University has not yet provided a detailed reason why they decided to move in that direction and it’s not because we haven’t checked. Speculative journalism allows us to attempt an explanation as to what’s really going on. Here goes:
1. EBK University doesn’t have enough academic and administrative staff to service the examination timetable that has been compressed into a few weeks because of the recent strike action by University Lecturers.
2. A huge credibility crisis has emerged in the whole examination process with the authorities convinced that their workers are easily compromised by students desperate to get A. grades.
3. If question papers cannot be leaked anymore then the cheating moves into the classroom with supervisors playing a role. ChatGPT takes over immediately.
4. All the students know that soldiers, highly educated though they may be, have no patience and can easily introduce their soldier methods to deal with naughty situations. For example cheating students could be removed from the halls to do 10 to 15 minutes physical drills before being allowed to return and those students who MUST cheat to pass and are bold enough to challenge the soldier-supervisors risk being shot.
5. Anyway, we believe the soldiers to be deployed for this exercise will be unarmed and intelligent. Let’s remember to bring their lunch on time and pay them IMMEDIATELY after the last paper.
IS THE TOLONGBO BOYCOTT BACK ON?
Tolongbo people have taken their seats in parliament and are busy running local councils in Freetown and the northwest but we just get this feeling that they are still in a boycott mode. We say this because at the commissioning of a watershed project at Newton - first cashew processing factory - neither the Tolongbo MP for the area nor the one from the local council boss presented themselves. And the council chairman and the MP were invited to speak at the occasion which aims to raise women cashew farmers out of poverty.
OK, we received word just before we went to press that the council boss was in neighboring Liberia serving as a CAF Match Commissioner. We know people do what our people from the West call multi-tasking but should a council chairman really be still doing this kind of work? Here are a few other issues:
1. Is Tolongbo really telling us that when their chairman travels out of Freetown the whole council goes into sleep mode? Don’t they have a deputy chairman?
2. How about the MP? Was he in parliament clapping and supporting others as they speak? We don’t get to hear much from many of them anyway.
3. Are they sending a subtle message by their absence that they have no interest in an investment that is likely to create thousands of jobs and ultimately bring praise to Green Boys?
4. Could it be that they actually weren’t invited in good time? Or is it that they didn’t receive enough guarantees about how the day was going to end in that place. Next time company bosses should visit those Tolongbo politicians personally before inviting them to speak at such gatherings. Are we clear now?
5. Please don’t tell us we are reading too much into their absence. We were on the ground and we heard what some people said – not good enough.
Copyright © 2024 Politico (28/03/24)
