LAW SCHOOL WAHALA: THE LEGAL SLANGING MATCH AND OUR CONCERN
Once again tension is rising over the situation at the only law school we have in this country. This is the school where students are always more likely to fail than to pass their exams and the authorities are never bothered by that. In fact they use it as a badge of honour to suggest that they have a very good school. In the last few years in particular we have heard a lot about the goings-on in that place. Our brothers and sisters are suffering in that school while the rest of society appears to accept whatever the authorities dish out to the public. We are now at a point where the tide has definitely turned against those trying to maintain the status-quo of official secrecy to prevent the rest of us knowing about the marginalization and victimization that students face in that school.
Frankly, we are not interested in whether the administrator is sent on leave or whether the Attorney General is right about taking that action without telling the Council on Legal Education. In fact we encourage those who feel angry about the action to go to court and fight it out. That’s their territory. All we want now is the INDEPENDENT INQUIRY into the Sierra Leone Law School. It is long overdue. The Attorney General mentioned that in her letter and we call on her to proceed right now. The terms of reference should be easy to draft. In fact we have some suggestions to make.
1. Why are students failing in such massive numbers year in year out? Surely we should have been at this breaking point five years ago.
2. Let’s check the quality of teaching and the methods of course delivery in that school. We may just open up a can of worms.
3. Let’s also check admission into that school. We know there is something very smelly around that.
4. We may also want to check the financial management of the school itself. They charge crazy amounts of money relative to Sierra Leone standards. We want to see the books.
5. We have to seriously think about breaking this unhealthy monopoly over legal education in this country. Is it possible to have another law school in the next two years please?
BULLET TURNING GREEN CAMP INTO THE TOWER OF BABEL
Green Party headquarters is becoming another Tower of Babel. Everybody has something to say about everything. They are shouting from the tower and nobody is listening to the other. The result is total confusion with our minds going back to the day the previous party boss stormed out of his own national conference in Kenema over a trivial disagreement and was being interviewed on a radio station in Freetown even before he reached Bandama Checkpoint. And he had the guts to deny he wasn’t acting out a script prepared by the most maverick politician we have seen in this country.
The letter that was bulleted on social media about the legal position concerning the international branches of the Green Camp ought never to have been written. To say it was done and bulleted on social media in reply to an earlier one perfectly paints the Tower of Babel picture we mentioned at the beginning. This is not looking good and in trying to score political and administrative point within the same house reduces your strength while giving people like us things to write about.
If, as Bullet argues that his leadership was so consultative, would his pen pusher have gone public to express a disagreement of that nature? These are routine administrative matters they would have easily handled. What we think actually happened is that Bullet simply bulleted instructions from his big man chair without consultation and there was a reaction and now a counter reaction. We are waiting for a counter attack from bullet. We have column inches to fill. Thanks guys.
CHIEF SIDIKIE ON THE BRINK OF DESTROYING C4APC
What will historians say about Chief Sidikie in the political history of Sierra Leone beginning in 2007? We ask because the political future of the party that gave him political relevance after his disgraceful removal from King Messi’s Red Camp is collapsing like a pack of cards on Chief Sidikie’s watch. The fate of those seven MPs in our parliament and the hopes of tens of thousands of people up and down Konoland who voted for them are hanging on a thread – disappointment is in the air. Uncertainty has gripped the C4APC rank and file and while unlike PDP Sorbeh and UNPP collapsed with the deaths of Thaimu Bangura and Karefa Smart, C4APC is collapsing while Chief Sidikie is busy having dinner in Makeni, acting as the leader of the party that kicked him out of the second highest office in the land only a few years ago. It’s almost as if this is not happening in the real world.
High profile defections look set to continue as party officials abandon the sinking C4APC ship and unless the people of Konoland take measures to rescue their struggle against King Messi, they will all end up in either the Green or Red movement.
In fact, the C4APC can now take any of the following pragmatic steps to convince the rest of us they mean business.
1. Expel Chief Sidikie for anti-party activities and re-organize the party to stand any chance of winning something. Why not? This will be his second anti-party expulsion. He enjoys that.
2. Declare unequivocally that like North Korea, you will all follow the leader everywhere he goes at any time.
3. Declare the original C4C a dead project and move on.
SLFA CONGRESS WITH MANY TWISTS AND TURNS
It would appear as if we are heading towards some kind of SLFA congress. We don’t know if it is an elective or just some ordinary talk shop. However, as always the SLFA is looking and sounding very jittery and have now resorted to blackmail and administrative intimidation to try and disenfranchise some of their critical members by trying to enforce Nahim Khadi era regulations that nobody considered serious enough for discussion.
This SLFA ought to be ashamed of itself to attempt to bar some clubs from taking part in congress for the alleged non-payment of membership dues when, considering the position of the clubs, they could simply draw out a payment plan and get the money due the SLFA from other sources like gate takings and sponsorships. We have our own pre-conditions for the holding of any congress.
1. This group at Kingtom has lost legitimacy. They have over stayed their mandate and should leave office immediately.
2. Congress should be organized by an interim body of people not interested in any leadership position at the SLFA.
3. All annual reports including audited financial statements for all those years that the queen refused to come to congress should be sent to members at least ONE MONTH before the proposed congress.
4. The rest of the activities leading to the real elective congress should be on the agenda for members to agree on the dates and put the structures in place to achieve those objectives.
5. The government of Sierra Leone should announce that there will be no further disbursement of tax payers’ money to the SLFA until a credible leadership election was held.
5. To make things easy, let the Queen and her Rottweiler resign NOW.
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