By Umaru Fofana
The scene looks serene. The condominiums are well built in straight lines. The pavements are a great sight to behold. The Atlantic Ocean not far away. Cold, cool, quiet. The place looks and feels like heaven. But beneath that veneer belies the acrid reality of what happened there this week. I am talking about the NASSIT Estate at Goderich just outside Freetown.
Thieves burgled the residence of Justice Biobele Georgewill, one of three judges in Sierra Leone leading the commissions of inquiry set up to investigation the administration of former president Ernest Bai Koroma. A two-storey building with all three rooms upstairs and the living room and other utility areas downstairs, was violated. The thief – or thieves – slid one of the windows on the top floor and made way inside. The judge’s laptop and external hard drive were carted away.
That was in the early hours of Monday morning. And then on Tuesday, around the same time and just a few buildings down the road, a similar break-in happened. This time, at the home of the presidential adviser on infrastructure, Dr John Tambi. Two laptop computers were made away with, as were his files.
The Estate has dozens of buildings. Fifteen of the blocks are owned by NASSIT, Sierra Leone’s social security and pension scheme. Ten have been rented out, while the remaining five have been bought by individuals. The other buildings which are apartment blocks, are either owned by NASSIT (48 apartments) or by the Ghanaian company, REGIMANUEL GREY. Not clear how many they have.
The two incidents this week have raised a lot of issues around a lot of things: how much security is at the estate, which is run by a private company. When I visited the estate for the first time on Tuesday, my friends and I told the porter that we were journalists. He did not ask for any form of identification and waved us in. Nor was there any security check on us or our car. We just drove inside.
Estates like such I have visited in Ghana and Kenya have guards at the gate who would do a thorough check and call the person being visited for clearance before letting a visitor in. So in short security is porous at the NASSIT Estate. You would understand why armed security had to be assigned to the three judges living in the area to guard their housing units.
While the blocks look really pretty, there was probably no comprehensive security consideration. The window bars were only installed on the ground floor with the false notion that thieves could not make it to the top floor. Even a non-burglar like me can easily climb via the very bars on the ground floor to make it stop. So those bars should be installed on every window. I also noticed that there are no razor wires on the fences.
The beauty of such a place only counts when people are safe inside and feel so. So the need for CCTV cameras cannot be overemphasised. I find that as unbelievable as it is strange that such an omission could have been made. That is one thing that must be worked on immediately.
Now, despite the necessity of armed guards at the units of the judges, security was breached. Three guards were assigned to Justice Georgewill. Only one was on duty and he was probably sleeping when the house was burgled. This is a place where at the start of the Commissions of Inquiry, regular police patrols were conducted. As is typical of our police force, they took the criminals for granted and took their feet off the gas.
You only need to go to Youyi Building and see how the scanner which the police hurriedly installed following terrorist bombings in some other West African capitals, has been abandoned with hardly any checks being carried out at all. Or that massive shop in front of the Congo Cross Police Station and all the shops surrounding the station which could be nests for attacks on the police station, or criminals would use to eavesdrop on police patrol planning to aid their nefarious activities.
In the wake of this week’s burglaries the state has extended the military aid to civil power (MAC-P) to cover the three units housing the three judges. That clearly is an indictment against the police. It is sad that in our part of the world nobody takes responsibility for anything. Nor is anyone held accountable for their action or inaction in such situations.
You would have expected heads to roll by now at the leadership of the Sierra Leone Police or even the ministry of internal affairs. But no! I have lost count of how many times MAC-P has had to be invoked under Richard Moigbeh dating back to the President Koroma days. For anytime soldiers are called upon to deal with such security issues that the police must be able to handle, it is an indictment on the police leadership. So it astounds me how come no one is shown the door.
I have not even spoken about the overall deteriorating security situation in the general Freetown area or even provincial towns. From Moyamba to Bo and Bombali, armed robbers are on the prowl. Citizens are at the mercy of criminals who once they have struck, can almost certainly never be found. If I was president of Sierra Leone at this time, I would give the police boss a one-week ultimatum to bring the burglars of face the sack.
I have not noticed any attempt by the police to deal with such lawlessness. I am sure if they were political disturbances against the government the police would have gladly and readily dealt with the situation. It only suggests that our safety and security as ordinary citizens is not considered.
How about zoning Freetown and those other major towns where armed robbery incidents have become the order of the day. Each zone with a leader who is held accountable if there is any armed robbery incident there without an effective counter measure by the police.
That said, it is not just about the police. The same inaction again after the escape from military custody of Captain Patrick Koroma who was standing trial before a military tribunal How would that have been possible without the connivance of someone at the lockup. So whosoever is in charge of that area should have been held to account. But it was papered over and we pretend as if everything in honky dory.
Time to hold the police leadership accountable.
(c) 2019 Politico Online
