SO MAYOR KEMOKAI’S FCC HAS PAID UP AT LAST
After all the grandstanding, Mayor Kemokai’s FCC went quietly to the bank and paid some good cash into the accounts of the ACC. The FCC, headed by Mayor Kemokai, sent in their lawyers to find a way of stopping Afro Boy from dragging the smiling social media queen and her FCC to the high court. As far as the good people of Sierra Leone are concerned, our money has been returned in full and we are happy.
The ACC under Afro Boy is always quick to make statements announcing successes in the courtroom and monies brought back into the national purse from the bank accounts of people who may have taken it while the rest of us were asleep. In this particular case, it took several hours after a senior official in that commission confirmed to us that FCC people have indeed paid back cash that the ACC and the audit service thought was not supposed to have been spent on personal things like overseas travel, hotels and meals before a press release was issued. Social media was already flogging the issue dead. Then the press release came the next day saying:
The Commission confirmed in its investigations that the monies paid to the Head of the Mayor’s Delivery Unit were not consistent with the Local Government Act of 2004 and other regulations relating to the utilization and management of public funds and resources. It therefore recommended a civil recovery process. With the payment of the aforesaid sum of money, the civil recovery process has been completed and the file has now been closed.
In some countries, including the one our Mayor comes from, by this time there would be a lot of questions about our Mayor’s continued stay in office for the following reasons:
1. She may not have been convicted of any criminal offence but how could she sleep walk into a situation and wake up facing an ACC inquiry?
2. Her judgment would also come in for questioning because she set up her so-called DELIVERY UNIT which the supervisory ministry believes is a parallel body that is not only taking jobs away from the original council staff but is unnecessarily too expensive to maintain.
3. Mayor Kemokai has been involved in a civil war inside the FCC – she fought a bitter battle with her deputy and then turned to her Chief Administrator. All of those battles were fought in the media. Our Mayor is always playing the victim.
4. We ask her to clarify the position of her DELIVERY TEAM. Is the team still in place? If yes, who is paying for it now? Maybe our Mayor should RESIGN because her judgment has been called into question.
FEW WEEKS INTO THE SMOKING BAN IN SALONE: HOW ARE THINGS?
We are extremely happy about the ban on tobacco advertising and smoking in public throughout Sierra Leone.
This is a very good piece of legislation that this parliament passed and we wonder why the bill lasted so long at Tower Hill. We don’t have precise figures but we believe the lives of many non-smokers and smokers have been saved.
The next step now is to make that action by parliament truly effective once signed into law. There’s no point enacting some legislation for the purpose of satisfying an international requirement while the societal ill the law was supposed to correct continues as if it was business as usual. Perhaps we are among the last countries taking action against the killer sticks. Principal should speedily sign this law and put the structures in place to demonstrate that he means business.
We also hope that at least some of our people who like to light up all the time would be persuaded now by all the restrictions to give it up. Some people will need help defeating the habit. We don’t believe this country is well prepared in that direction so it’s time to ask for international help.
So there are a few more little bad habits we should attack and defeat quickly otherwise we will find ourselves going further down a steep hill. We may not need parliament for some of them because we believe there are laws in place already but some people in some big office should get serious about their job. Here goes:
1. Let’s act against those who like urinating in public. They are all MEN. We know we have problems with public toilets in the city of Freetown but that’s no excuse for MEN to be spraying urine all over the place. We should hit them hard in their pocket with instant fines in the same way the road safety corps fine drivers who break the rules.
2. Those that go to the second level and relieve themselves in dark corners should be put in an even more difficult position. Landlords should be brought before the courts for renting out their properties without providing good toilets for their tenants.
3. Throwing rubbish on the streets is another major menace to deal with. This is the city where people collect mounds of rubbish in their homes and then dump it on the streets in the dead of night. We can’t really understand when any sane person would behave that way. There are also those who easily thrown litter from car windows as if that was a normal way of life. This MUST STOP.
4. We don’t know how this will be done but seriously we should help some young women dress properly on the beach at weekends when they go jogging. Frankly some dress in a ridiculous way leaving us to wonder whether there mission is really about jogging or creating some side attraction.
LET THE TRANSFER MADNESS IN EUROPEAN LEAGUES END NOW. AMEN
On September 1 the madness will end for three months at least. Supporters of European football teams are constantly watching and commenting on the movement of players across mainly the big teams and mid table ones with big aspirations. We are simply fed up with all the noise and what looks like a new kind of SLAVE TRADE. Crazy sums of money are being paid for players who then failed to match expectations and go on to receive heap loads of abuses online and boos from the stand, totally frustrating them and their families.
Look at what’s happening to Ronaldo these days. This guy is certainly one of the greatest in the business now being tossed around by even some of the smallest teams in European football just because he wants to play in the Champions League but his team is one step below that division for now. His personal ambition is damaging his relationship with the team that brought him to world attention. The Old Trafford people want him to stay but it looks unlikely and his agent is going round the leagues of Europe trying to spring a last minute magic but there’s no luck yet for his 37 year-old star. We can’t really believe this is happening to the great CR7
The media are perhaps the worst guys in this player transfer madness. They are unashamedly reporting every rumor planted by agents and their spin doctors in particular and the players themselves. They report one player getting sold and re-sold, but ending up in the same place with stories coming out later that there were definitely zero bids from any club. Please end the madness now.
COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE AUGUST 10 IS HERE
As promised, the government has constituted a committee to investigate the events of August 10, 2022, a day when within a few hours parts of Freetown, Kamakwie Makeni and a section of the airport town of Lungi were turned into killing fields. Many civilians were killed but crucially, SIX police officers were brutally killed by people the security forces are still looking out for. Many Sierra Leoneans should be forgiven for thinking that it was Foday Sankoh’s days all over again.
This committee, headed by a respected lawyer, now has the task to go to the bottom of all the issues and present a report to the government. As always we have some questions to ask because the statement gave us names of individuals and institutions that would be on the panel. We need a bit more. For example:
1. We need clear detail about the mandate of this committee and how long they have to get this job done. People wouldn’t want this matter to be kicked into the long grass by the promise of an investigative commission.
2. Where in this city will that committee be based? Will they have open sessions for ordinary people to witness their sessions?
3. A lot of people are concerned that the committee may not have the resources they need to work. Even established bodies are complaining about their quarterly allocations so how are we sure that the work of this committee will not be hampered by the non-availability of cash. Are they waiting for international money?
4. The committee needs to quickly demonstrate that it’s not like the others – for example the one that was allegedly set up in the wake of the sacking of AG Brewah over the storm that got LA Chocolate out of death row to a meet and greet session in Tiama and now self-imposed exile.
5. Understandably, there’s a lot of cynicism around this issue of a commission. Some people are already in detention. Are they going to be passed over to the committee or a separate criminal prosecution will run alongside the commission?
6. The last time we saw this kind of thing was when Principal, then in opposition, was attacked and wounded as he campaigned in his stronghold of Bo. That day at least one house was torched in the city. A committee chaired by a journalist went into Bo to investigate, they produced a report that was used to prosecute a sitting MP and a few other people. It was a totally one-sided prosecution. The facts are there. We are now reading what our diplomatic friends said at that time because we want to compare that with what they are saying now. Trust Politico!
Copyright © Politico Online (29/08/22)
