FROM OBAMA LAND WITH WHAT: WILL DE PA SPEAK UP NOW?
On behalf of our esteemed readers we want to welcome De Pa back home from Obama Land. We also want to congratulate him for making that very important shortlist of human beings wanting to meet the most powerful man on planet earth.
We have some concerns though. First of all, we think the meeting was very crowded and so De Pa may not have been able to make all the good points on our behalf. Second, we are not sure how much time De Pa had with the big man. When we see other leaders going to the White House and having one-on-one meetings with Obama, we feel a little jealous that ours actually had only a few moments with him and in the company of three others, before the meeting came down to the level of White House and State Department officials.
We are now waiting, eagerly waiting, for De Pa to call us to a news conference to tell us about the White House meeting so that we can in turn pass the message to our readers. We have heard bits and pieces of information from the White House end but as De Pa knows, we are Sierra Leoneans and we must hear it from De Pa himself.
But come to think of it, a president meeting another president should be a normal event. No need for propaganda.
Anyway we urge De Pa to keep his Spin Doctors out of this and avoid those empty symbolisms like the one at the UN meeting where a polite Obama offered De Pa a seat, a small event that our glorified Spin Doctors latched on to, to insult our collective intelligence as they tried to explain what that innocuous act actually meant. Our readers understand full well what happens at such meetings.
And by the way how many people were on the delegation? Did they sign any business deals with US companies?
Answers please.
IMATT BECOMES ISAT: CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE EXPLAIN?
So the military assistance and training team that played such vital role in re-building the Sierra Leone military after their disgraceful conduct in the Sierra Leone civil war has now changed its character? We are journalists who don’t quite know what the details of such tactical moves are. We don’t even believe that our own security people working on this project clearly understand what is happening, nor do we believe we will ever get a clear picture of what this new posture actually means in the real world.
Please don’t accuse us of building conspiracy theories. We are only journalists and we are trained to think beyond the ordinary to make sense of this complex world.
We have seen a press release announcing the change commencing on April Fool’s Day. Is there anything we should learn from that?
Anyway, IMATT may now be ISAT but we pray that they remain in their Leicester Square Barracks at Hill Station because the moment our soldiers move into that place, it will become another Wilberforce barracks. And we know what that means –overflowing toilets, or no toilets at all; broken water pipes; rampant thieving and general we-don’t-care attitude because there will be no funds given to them to maintain it.
Please stay there until Pallo Conteh who goes around in military uniforms with absolute impunity, is shamed into making life worth living for all our soldiers across this country, including those in Kono whose living quarters are like any goat pen.
When we published those pictures recently, soldiers from other deployment areas outside Freetown invited us to see how they live. We shall come around like a thief in the night and see. We don’t want Pallo to send his guards after us like he did to that senior ministry of information official during a football match between Bafana Bafana and Leone Stars in Freetown.
Pallo Conteh’s ministry is always in the middle of corruption allegations. We await Josie Kamara’s ACC to ask the tough and right questions.
By the way should we now call that part of Freetown ISAT? It is now called IMATT because of Leicester Square and its occupants. Anyway… old names die hard.
AN APRIL FOOL’S JOKE GONE WHACKY
We still can’t understand what our great friends at 98.1 were thinking when they tried that expensive and tasteless little joke on radio on April fool’s day. Was somebody in the chair that morning wishing that joke was true?
We have heard April fool’s day jokes before but can you imagine if the BBC in London had announced at the top of their flagship morning programme that the leader of the opposition Labour Party had resigned. Can you also imagine what the reaction would have been if the BBC had then proceeded to mutilate and broadcast an interview done with Milliband on challenges facing his party just to sustain the insipid joke?
To prove to 98.1 that the “joke” was far from being clever, the first two messages in reaction were absolutely clear about what the station intended.
Come on guys, what you did would have amounted to you saying on that same program that De Pa who was in America as guest of Obama had asked for asylum saying living conditions were very bad in Sierra Leone. See how silly that would have been? We are not even sure APC partisans wouldn’t have attacked your station before the end of the program.
We are certain you guys know this: Osoufia will never resign from the Green Camp. The man will lose his relevance. Don’t you see how hard he is fighting to continue playing some political role long after the expiry of his tenure as flag bearer? He is clutching at a straw in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
LIKE A CANDLE IN THE WIND, OLOF MATTSON IS NO MORE
A man named Lars Olof Mattson woke up from a sound sleep to learn that he’d been appointed “Coach” of the Sierra Leone national football team, Leone Stars after some flawed reasoning. The man has now resigned the job after telling the people of Sierra Leone they made a serious mistake appointing him. We will not miss him one bit.
Pope John Paul must be licking his wounds now after reading what Mattson said in his resignation letter. The Pope was prepared to move mountains to bring the Swede here. Mattson was the highest paid man in Sierra Leone. In all, he earned ten thousand US dollars a week. He came to Freetown two days before a match, spent two days after the match and travelled back to his country on the fifth day. Isn’t that the best job in the world?
Mattson didn’t know his players. Anyone who turned up to say he was in some team in some Middle Eastern or Southern European country automatically became a member of the team. There was this classic case of a player whose international career ended in disgrace walking up to Mattson and telling him he should get a place in the national team because he plays club football in Lebanon of all places. Mattson granted the boy’s request only for the whole nation to rise up against him because the guy was not even a regular player in one of the worst teams in the most irregular football league in the world – the Sierra Leone Premier league.
Had Mattson stayed on till the next home match, we would have proved his incompetence further by getting our sports reporter into his team simply to tell him Kemoh Sesay plays for Port Vale in England.
Our football is in real peril.
