WHAT WAS OPERATION WID TRULY ABOUT?
After listening to the president of the Sierra Leone Marketing Association on 98.1 on Tuesday morning talking about the meeting with De Pa, Mayor Bababode and other parties interested in ending street trading, we felt badly let down by De Pa.
We want to be very cautious with some of the comments we want to make regarding what Tarawallie said De Pa told Bababode because there's the slight possibility that he completely misunderstood what De Pa said at the meeting. Or is there, when there has been no clarification by De Pa’s press release writers who would have jumped to the sky had a word critical been said about him.
Anyway…we spent the good part of yesterday transcribing De Pa's speech to launch Operation WID to try and figure out what has really changed for De Pa to now order Bababode to halt Operation WID on the gates of the politically-pampered colony of Sani Abacha street. De Pa had told the nation at the State House garden that there would be “no orders from above”. He called everyone in this country “lawless” but himself.
How come the same STOP order failed to get through to HURRICANE MUSA TARAWALLIE before he made landfall in Kenema, destroying life and property? Was this order purely for Sani Abacha street?
We urge De Pa to urgently clarify his position on the comments attributed to him by the president of the Sierra Leone marketing association.
Operation WID has raised hundreds of millions of leones from particularly private car owners who are being hunted relentlessly everyday in the Central Business District. What's the difference between them and those traders along Abacha Street? So WID should continue for car owners and traders in Kenema but not for traders at Sani Abacha Street? Very, very Interesting.
We have a few more comments to make but we are waiting for De Pa to clarify his position first. Can De Pa also remember us what Operation WID was truly about again?
MAKENI MARATHON, YES A.U. 50TH ANNIVERSARY, NO!
We've seen the first pictures of De Pa jogging around Makeni town as part of last weekend's fund-raising marathon organised by an NGO to help less fortunate children. We don't yet know how much money was raised and how the money will be spent. But we congratulate the organisers and De Pa for taking all those obese ministers and civil servants along to Makeni for the marathon.
But we are concerned about something: Why did De Pa ignore the 50th anniversary celebrations of a powerful continental body like the OAU, now called the African Union, just to be at the Makeni marathon? Newspapers sympathetic to the ruling party have hailed that as a positive action on behalf of the children of Sierra Leone. Great stuff. But why was chief Sidikie, the second in command not asked to go so that the country is represented at the highest level?
Some of the most powerful people in the world were there. US Secretary of State, John Kerry and the UN boss Ban Ki Moon were there including many African Heads of State. Sierra Leone was represented by Foreign Minister Samura Kamara. Why not Chief Sidikie? If what we are hearing is true, then this is getting unnecessarily serious and is affecting the country’s image abroad.
With all due respect to our foreign minister, he is a rookie on the foreign policy stage. The guy has been in the job for less than six months and he is certainly not a Tom Ikimi or Victor Gbeho type of person on the world stage, how much impact could he have made in Ethiopia? The guy has spent all his life working in financial institutions. Now he's been thrust into the world of heavy politics and diplomacy. He was probably lost in all that happened in Ethiopia.
Marginalising Chief Sidikie is one thing, robbing the country of solid representation at such gatherings is another. And the latter is our true concern. Trust Politico.
LAND WAHALA GRIPS SIERRA LEONE POLITICAL CLASS
It started long ago with short-lived Alleluyah Lands Minister, accusing APC politicians including Eddie Turay of stealing state lands (a parliamentary inquiry dismissed the accusation eventually even if unconvincingly), then the Dalai Lama of PMDC found himself in a cell at the CID for complaining too loudly and in a dramatic fashion unprecedented in Sierra Leone. Next, old Pa Alhaji Kabbah went to his property at Tokeh and ran into a storm. He was quickly chased off by gangsters operating on behalf of some warlord.
Well ordinary people have been complaining for a very long time without redress. Now land wahala has come too close for comfort and it's all over the news.
Let's not be surprised if we woke up one morning to witness pitched battles taking place all along the Freetown Peninsular involving the use of machetes and even AK 47 assault rifles.
In Freetown today we have gangs of young people who can be hired and deployed at short notice to fight over land and sometimes kill people.
With all that problem hanging over his head, the minister decides to run to Kenema with his own thugs to demolish market stalls and chase away petty traders. Why did he not start at Abacha Street? If Hurricane Musa Tarawallie doesn't know, we can now tell him that the stalls he demolished are an extension of Abacha Street. Overzealousness can make people silly sometimes.
FORT STREET GARBAGE DUMP THREATENS DEFENCE MINISTRY
When we called attention to the mountain of rubbish at the back of the Ministry of Defence in one edition of this paper last week, we were completely fed up with both residents of Fort street and Pallo Conteh and his staff in that ministry pretending that the shame didn't exist at all. In their usual style, they simply ignored us or even dismissed our cry as alarmist rubbish.
Well, well, well the real rubbish is packed right behind the ministry that is in charge of the nation's security. Dogs are feasting, mosquitoes breeding with ease. And Pallo will stand up somewhere and talk about free health care. Why wait till the people fall sick in the first place?
We will not stop writing about this until the ministry and MASADA and the Freetown Waste Management Company do something about it. We can bet our last penny that ours is the only Ministry of Defence in this world that is besieged by such mountain of rubbish.
Instead of going to take part in the Makeni marathon because De Pa was there, Pallo Conteh should have spent the day with his soldiers cleaning the rubbish at the back of the defence ministry. This rubbish business is getting too rubbish now.
MAYOR BABABODE AND THE STRAY DOGS OF FREETOWN
Bababode we think you are a very busy man. If that's not true, please allow us to think so for now, at least. But take just one hour off you schedule to drive along the streets of your city and see the number of stray dogs we have to put up with daily. Pets must be owned by people who can take care of them. These stray dogs are a threat to the health of your people sir.
Many years ago this city had officers who made sure pets were well treated. In fact dogs had to carry straps around their necks indicating that they had been properly licensed by council. Council made sure Vets treated them periodically. Instead of improving on that, we have basically fallen to the situation where only a few dogs have owners. The hundreds of others are on their own and we have to fight rabies, and dog waste on our streets.
This Mayor is failing the nation in many ways, from flip-flopping over Operation WID to keeping a failed football club that the citizens of Freetown don't really want. He must never fail in putting down all stray dogs.
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0cm;
mso-para-margin-right:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0cm;
line-height:115%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}
