GRADUATION AT USL WITHOUT DE PA: WATIN APIN?
Many students will miss De Pa at this year’s University of Sierra Leone congregation. We hear he has already told the University authorities that he will not be climbing Mount Olympus this weekend. As usual no reason has been given to the general public about this decision.
It’s always a great thing to shake the hand of De Pa at occasions like that despite those long speeches which sometimes leave people sitting in the hot burning sun dehydrated and bored. Also whenever De Pa decides to attend the congregation ceremony, the road leading from Berry Street to the college campus gets a quick makeover from Munda Rogers’ men, it’s a yearly thing and most residents of the mountain villages plying that route daily absolutely look forward to such events.
As we now know, De Pa will not be up on Mount Olympus. There’s been no work on the road and things are so quiet.
When the University authorities awarded De Pa an honorary doctorate degree at the start of his reign, a contract was implicitly signed – De Pa will continue to look over the university and shake hands with fresh graduates every year. The contract will be breached this year. Will the University authorities consider withdrawing the award until De Pa resumes his duties?
Could it be that De Pa is fed up with lecturers constantly demanding money and students misbehaving all over the place? Or he just doesn’t think politicians like him should be getting involved in a matter like this at that level? Well if so, reconsider your honorary PhD, sir.
Anyway, his representative will deliver a rousing sermon that will reverberate over the hills and valleys of this land that we love.
MINKAILU BAH SAYS STANDARDS ARE DOWN
At last! We can now breathe a sigh of relief that the very brusque Minister of Education, Minkailu Bah has finally and publicly admitted what we’ve been saying all along. We knew the day would come when Minkailu would face the local media he hates so much and confront the issues facing our educational system. Thank you for doing that earlier than we had expected.
In subsequent editions we shall publish what we think is responsible for this spectacular failure by one of De Pa’s Blue-eyed boys. Of course, Minkailu has the backing of a chief who spends all his time pretending to be a democratic Member of Parliament. We can’t understand why we still have chiefs sitting in the House, having the same voting rights as ordinary MPs elected by Universal Adult Suffrage. Is Sierra Leone really in the 21st century?
Minkailu blames teachers, University lecturers and parents for the drop in standards. He is probably right but he left out the most important group – POLITICIANS like himself who make the laws and run the country.
It took Minkailu over five years to have an open session for the media signalling an abrupt end to his own policy of cherry-picking among the media. He probably came to the conclusion so late in the day that political salvation lies well beyond a few newspapers and radio stations. Welcome to the human race, Lion of Tonkolili.
Keep your eyes firmly on the Twitter Page in the coming weeks and read our reasons for asking you to RESIGN NOW or be sacked.
Many years ago, Joseph Saidu Momoh went to the City Hall in Freetown and told the people of Sierra Leone he had failed to do the things he promised to on becoming president.
He used the analogy of a father trying to screw up an electric bulb standing on a rickety table with the rest of the family refusing to hold the table in place for him to fix the bulb and bring light to the home. The bulb was his development programmes including ill-conceived and flawed projects like GREEN REVOLUTION and CONSTRUCTIVE NATIONALISM (the equivalent of attitudinal and behavioural change). On that day the people switched off their radios and gave up.
Minkailu Bah’s JS Momoh Moment is here.
CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW DEBATE GATHERS STEAM BUT…
It started with one man armed only with his conviction that things must change in Sierra Leone’s economic and political governance. Omodele Jones is a man on a mission. He believes that after 50 years, we must change our approach to governance and economic management of the state. He is proposing the Swiss Model as a suitable system to consider. In fact, Jones told Radio Democracy that we must hold the next general and presidential elections under the new system. He cited the Kenyan example. The Kenyans developed a new constitution after the mass slaughter that followed Mwai Kibaki’s re-election in 2007.
We congratulate Dr. Jones for getting us started on this issue. A few other people have also now come forward to make a contribution to the debate. Now is the time to take the issue out of the studios of 98.1 for the rest of the country to start talking. The government should not be allowed to organise and control this tide for root and branch constitutional reforms.
Let’s be careful not to rush too much or attempt to transplant systems here just because they appear to have worked in other countries.
Twitter will play its own role in this debate. De Pa has constructed some roads and buildings and changed some lives, especially those who met him in his donor mood. But he will change the lives of everybody in Sierra Leone by giving this constitutional review process a very fair chance to go through in the interest of the people. He will go down in history as the president who, after a shaky start, ended winner-takes- all, over-centralisation of power, marginalisation and exclusion based on ethnicity and political preferences. Long Live De Pa.
PREMIER LEAGUE STARTS ON 12TH APRIL – WE HAVE OUR DOUBTS
We have just been handed another date for the commencement of the Sierra Leone Premier League. Friday April 12 is the day we are expected at the national stadium; obviously not in large numbers as usual but the few loyal ones will definitely be around to watch Salone Football.
Meanwhile there’s a lot happening around the local game that we must put on paper. Victor Lewis has been forced out of the office of the Premier League Board Chairman by an intoxicating mixture of so-called football stakeholders in an 8-point resolution presented to the timid Normalisation Committee.
We hold no brief for Victor Lewis but we are sure he worked very hard under difficult circumstances to take us through the last tournament. Why, for goodness sakes has he been sacked? Like everything else in this country the FA’s activities are being endlessly politicised and the casualties are those who mean well for the game.
We warn that there are men lurking in the shadows with the motive of making money at the expense of the game. The Normalisation Committee must hurry up and conduct the elections and leave office so that we have people to democratically hold accountable. This Committee of theirs is accountable to FIFA not to the people of Sierra Leone.
This is raw politics at work and those of us who love the game are used to other people’s ends.
