Following the numerous misguided comments making the rounds purporting a seizure of players allowances and withdrawal of suitcases by the Sierra Leone Football Association.
The press statement noted that the SLFA Executive Committee had instructed that the said money be shared among players upon return of each player’s team suitcase, to which all players had signed up some have complied.
The statement continued that all allowances and bonuses provided by the Government of Sierra Leone through the national sport Authority for the total energies AFCON 2021 group stage participation has been fully paid to all 28 players in the Leone Stars squad.
According to the released a total sum of $28,000 was recently paid to the team by the Sierra Fishing Company through the Deputy Minister of Finance 2 Mr. Bockarie Kalokoh as an appreciation for Leone Stars performance in their first group E match against Algeria, which ended in a 0-0 draw.
“After the country’s elimination in the just concluded tournament, each player was allowed to take home nine set of team jerseys as a souvenir. SLFA would like to conclude by encouraging all journalists, bloggers and concerned individuals to kindly seek clarification on all information about the federation, through the media department, before publication”. The press release noted.
Le200m Bail for Notorious Fraudster
By Feima Sesay
Alleged Notorious Fraudster, Sahr Brian Sokenah was on Wednesday 9 February 2022 granted 200 million bail for allegedly defrauding one Magdalene Sesay of KIA Sportage Jeep valued 70 million Leones. The accused made another appearance before Magistrate Sahr Kekura of Pademba road court N 1 on one count charge of Fraudulent Conversion Contrary to section 20 (1) (iv) (a) of the Larceny Act 1916
According to the particulars of offence, it was alleged that the accused on a date unknown between Wednesday 1st January and 31st December 2020 at low cost Kissy in the western Area in Freetown Fraudulently converted to his own use or benefit certain property that is to say one KIA sportage Jeep with registration number AQG 358 value seven thousand united State dollars equivalent to seventy Million Leones (70,000,000) entrusted to him by Kala Komas for the purpose of sale property of Magdalene Sesay
When the charge was read to the accused person, No plea was taken
Counsel representing the accused person E.W. Conteh and A. Boyze Kamara applied for bail for and on behalf of the accused person that he is a Sierra Leonean ordinarily resident within this jurisdiction that he has reliable sureties who are willing and ready to enter into recognisance on his behalf, adding that he is not a flight risk nor will he interfere with prosecution witness or witnesses. His application for bail was made pursuant to section 79 (2) of the Criminal procedure Act No.32 of 1965
However Magistrate Kekura giving his ruling said upon hearing the application for bail on behalf of the accused, granted bail to the accused person in the sum of two hundred million Leones or one surety in like sum surety must be elderly and responsible citizen, he added that the surety must be gainfully employed from a recognised institution and should produce his employment letter couple with his identity card of the said institution and that the bail to be verified by the Bench and to be approved by the Deputy Acting Registrar
Sergeant 9939 Lahai M was prosecuting. Whiles the matter was adjourned to the 16th February 2022.
PERSONAL GLIMPSES
WHITHER TRUE DEMOCRATIC PLURALISM?
By: Winstanley. R. Bankole. Johnson
First reports that our APC Party publicity Secretary Mr. Sidi Yaya Tunis had been invited to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) was real dampeners to my spirits. Initially I thought it was the work of pranksters, but actual disappointment set in after confirmations on the matter from reports filed in by the BBC stringer Umaru Fofana. From those BBC reports I was unable to discern anything incendiary or inciteful. So my initial doubts were justified given that Sidi Yaya Tunis, recognized by the PPRC and globally as the Publicity Secretary of the main opposition APC Party would appear to have been taken in for questioning by the Police for doing his lawful duty to wit: Publicizing the APC Party through the airwaves, and all of which was happening under a political dispensation that is priding itself with the setting up of a National Peace and Cohesion Commission as evidence of its commitment to democratic pluralism.
Archives
My spontaneous reaction to Sidi Tunis’ ultimate detention was to visit our archives to trace video clips featuring three prominent SLPP personalities during the latter days of the APC regime as follows:
1. An interview by an international Press house to obtain Mr. Bio’s views should former President Ernest Bai Koroma attempt to postpone the 2018 elections
2. A public address by Francis Ben Kaifalla as a member of a rights group called “The Renaissance” in which he was calling for a nationwide protest (without the requisite Police Clearance) on a day he dubbed “Black Monday” – everybody was to wear “Black” on that day.
3. An interview by Radio Democracy of Lahai Lawrence Leema as Publicity Secretary of the SLPP during which, waving a copy of the National Constitution, he publicly invited the Military to wake up to what he considered their constitutional obligations and to “intervene”.
All of the above videos and the incidents they depict occurred in the latter days of the APC government in power, during periods of heightened political tensions. Though they all had a proclivity of sowing bad blood or worsening political rivalries, yet none of their actions was ever considered incendiary or inciteful enough to have warranted Police invitation to any of them for further investigations on grounds of disturbing peace and social order. Nor did the APC government seek for the extradition for Mohamed Yongao (now compensated as our Envoy to Russia) for insinuating threats to destabilize the entire country whilst addressing his party supporters at a UK gathering prior to the elections.
As a matter of fact on the day Lawrence Leema was being conveyed from the CID precincts, an SLPP Youth-man sprawled himself in front of the Police truck deliberately obstructing its further movement, but even at that he wasn’t arrested and taken into custody for “obstructing Police Officers in the execution of their lawful duties”.
Between the elections of 2018 to date, despite their many unsavoury utterances, the Police have never called in any member of National SLPP Grassroots Committee for questioning for openly threatening to “annihilate and exterminate all past and current APC Party memberships, office bearers and their entire relations and to further ensure the total destruction of all their lives and properties from the face of the earth even before the security forces step in bring the situation under control”.
Can anything or statement be more incendiary and hateful??
From interviews conducted with the BBC Stringer Umaru Fofana and our APC Scribe Ambassador Dr. Osman Foday Yansanneh, the only sin Mr. Sidi Yaya Tunis would appear to have committed and that seemed tantamount to sowing national discord was to have publicly revealed our Party’s alternative strategy to progress to another level of engagement with its memberships (“Level 3”), so as to properly canvass them to ensure that they do everything that is lawful to unseat this government at the next elections. The word “Lawful” was repeated many times over during that interview to discard any doubt that insurrectionist intentions are contemplated.
Tolerant
And I don’t suppose that strategy should be peculiar to the APC Party only. In fact prior to the 2018 elections SLPP functionaries – more particularly it’s Publicity Secretary Lawrence Leema – were on the airwaves repeatedly urging their SLPP memberships to “make it their civic responsibility to vote the APC government out of office”. So if the SLPP are on record to have openly campaigned on a ticket in 2018 to “redeem Sierra Leone from the APC using lawful means” unmolested, what then is making it an offense now for the APC to begin our own campaigns on the same theme of “redeeming Sierra Leone from the SLPP” come 2023 – unmolested? Or is this a further indication that the APC can be more tolerant?
It will be a matter of serious concern to the ECOWAS Community of Nations particularly and the United Nations at large if in a multi-party democracy like ours Publicity Secretaries of opposition parties worth their salt cannot sufficiently articulate their Party’s ideologies (for example to rid this country of SLPP) and their strategies (such as the APC progressing to Level 3 using all lawful means of mass voters registrations and mobilization for voting on elections day), as the next elections loom, or if they are precluded from doing same . Then of what use are opposition political parties and the Political Parties Registration Commission (PPRC)?
Already opposition parties are complaining of persistent political harassments and Police intimidations in various forms, which are the very reasons for the formation of the Coalition of Progressive Political Parties (COPPP). And if simple canvassing on the airwaves by the Publicity Secretary of the main opposition party can now constitute incendiary, hate and incitement then of what uses are our Party Memberships and Voters Identity Cards? Might as well we just declare Sierra Leone a One Party State again!!
Peace Guarantors
And this is why I think the UNDP and other local Peace Guarantors may need to step up their acts by proactively intervening to (as our Secretary General Yansanneh puts it) “tranquilize” this growing volatility ahead of the 2023 elections by agreeing a Road Map and Code of Conduct before things degenerate further, as they are bound to if unchecked as we progress towards the next elections. Their starting block should be the unconditional release of Mr.Sidi Yaya Tunis with appropriate apology.
No matter how hard we work governments are bound to change, but all law-abiding citizens would prefer such changes to be done lawfully, just as Mr. Sidi Yaya Tunis and the APC are contemplating, because this is the only country we have
THE OSWALD HANCILES COLUMN
Bad Politicians Give Birth to Coups
My attention has been drawn to a statement by Ben Kaifala, Commissioner of the Anti-Corruption
Commission of Sierra Leone, and President of the Network of Anti-Corruption Institutions in West Africa (NACIWA)… saying “we have not had a single country where a coup has changed much”; and adding, “there is no good coup”. I disagree with even the premise that Ben Kaifala has couched his words.
The issue is not whether there are “good coups” or “bad coups”, but how bad governance, corruption, mismanagement of a country’s resources, the general failure of pseudo-democratic governments to create the enabling conditions for the majority to get basics of food and water and jobs…. inexorably lead to coups. In simpler words: fake politicians within fake democratic systems give birth to coups!!
The role then of anti-corruption leaders like Ben Kaifala is to lobby parliament for tougher laws against corruption. The current law in Sierra Leone that states that a person convicted of corruption should be fined Le50,000,000 is a joke. A government official would steal Le10,000,000,000 (billion), and if convicted easily pays the Le50,000,000 fine. Yes, a judge has the discretion to sentence the convicted person to 5 years in prison. But, with a hypothetical Le10 billion in his hand, the corrupt government official can easily reach ‘an arrangement’ with a presiding judge and give the judge Le200,000,000 as ‘dash’ to avoid time in jail. The corrupt person would still be left with a huge profit. Thus, the corrupt have an incentive to be corrupt because of this lax law. Also, the convicted person can even contest an election after 5 to 10 years.
As more and more government officials steal more and more money, the masses would have less and less services provided for them; and their poverty would worsen. They would cry out loud as a few government officials and politicians would be growing richer and richer as they are getting poorer and poorer. The soldiers would hear the cry of the people. And stage coups.
That there are “no good coups” is not correct. In West Africa, there were two great coups that dramatically transformed their countries – that of Captain Thomas Sankara of Burkino Faso, and Flight Lieutenant J.J. Rawlings of Ghana.
I am going to shock my readers by stopping right here: my shortest article. (‘Una go lef for complain now: “Oswald lek for rite boku”…’). Let’s debate the issues, please.
I pause,
Oswald Hanciles, The Guru
THE OSWALD HANCILES COLUMN
Kande Yumkella: Ready for Green Freedom War?
“ What Africa needs is the Green Fanaticism of Oswald Hanciles, The Guru, dear Hon. Kande Yumkella (KKY), parliamentary leader of the National Grand Coalition party of Sierra Leone; if I don’t wade in, even for Africa to get a significant part of the $100 billion annually pledged by the Western nations for Green Finance in the developing world…won’t be forthcoming… And Africa needs my almost forty years green pedigree as a Green Warrior in three West African countries; Africa needs my relentlessness; and imagination – a Greta Thunberg/Nelson Mandela/Martin Luther King Jnr./Martin Luther/Winston Churchill… approach. HRH Prince Charles (eldest child of Queen Elizabeth, and heir to the British throne) at COP-26 called out for ‘war footing’ on Climate Change. He is right.
“Britain’s Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, said the ‘Doomsday Clock’ started ticking when the steam engine was invented in Glasgow, the United Kingdom, in the late 18th century. Boris Johnson got it wrong!
“The THOUGHT of the Doomsday Clock was when European conquerors invaded the Americas and stimulated the genocide of over 50 million of the indigenous peoples in the ‘New World’ in the 16th century. That Doomsday Clock continued ticking faster during the over three hundred years of the Atlantic Slave Trade, the worst enslavement of man of other people. That Doomsday Clock continued ticking as the Western nations and the United States accumulated enormous wealth and subjugated the rest of the world in the era of imperialism, raping and plundering man and nature; the Doomsday Clock ticked much faster after the rigging of the global economic systems after the Second World War, which worsened poverty in Africa, even after the pseudo-Independence era of the 1960s in Africa.
“The Doomsday Clock has been (is being) powered by the egotism and egoistical thinking of the people of the West; the greed and insensitivity of people who see nothing wrong in wasting the world’s resources, overeating into obesity….while destroying nature, and implicitly committing mass murder. It’s this THOUGHT that the concept and movement I founding in Calabar, Cross River State, south east Nigeria in 1992 – the SLAVE SHIP-FREEDOM SHIP – aims to exorcise in the minds of the West; awaken their collective consciences; and to spur into positive green action Africans whose ancestors, and leadership today, have been (are) collaborators in the kidnap and selling into slavery other Africans in the era of the Atlantic Slave Trade; who collaborated with European colonialists for about three hundred years, and have refused to unite in Africa to fight for global justice, while manifesting recklessness and predation in their leadership in Africa.
“You are eloquent and erudite, Hon. Kande Yumkella, but you speak in the tone and diction of the white oppressors – that which has not been listened to from Conference of Parties (COP-1) in 1992 to COP-26 in 2021.
“Listen!!:
“$2 trillion annually for man-made Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation measures in Africa from the richest nations of the world. (And Reparations for the Protracted Holocaust of the Atlantic Slave Trade and Trans-Saharan Slave Trade)” – Oswald Hanciles.
“The children and youth of Africa who would face the brunt of starvation and dehydration and excruciatingly slow deaths at what Jerome Hallam of Extinction Rebellion has called ‘the Annihilation Project’ of Climate Change…would NOT FORGIVE you if you don’t think out of the box and reach out to Green Radicals like Oswald Hanciles…. November 13, 2021” – That was my comment posted on social media after I had listened to the interview on BBC of Kande Yumkella during the COP-26 conference in Glasgow, United Kingdom, October 3…
ROPA: MAADA BIO’S MEDIA HANDLERS CONTINUE DRESSING HIM IN BORROWED ROBES
By KABS KANU
Maada Bio now looks comical. His appearance is distorted and disfigured because his robes hang loose about him like a giant’s robes on a dwarfish thief, with apologies to William Shakespeare.
Yesterday, his handlers said he had been declared the Champion of Blue Economy, though fishing is regressing in the country with acute shortage of fish and sea foods and there is no structure in place to boost marine technology and tourism.
Today, they are saying that he has been endorsed as Chairman of the African Peer Review System because of progress Sierra Leone has achieved in promoting democracy, the rule of law and constitutionality, though we all know otherwise that President Bio is one of the worst abusers of human rights , democracy, the constitution and the rule of law.
We have never known the Chairmanship to be given on the merit of a country’s achievement of democratic and constitutional ideals. From what we know, the Chairmanship of the African Peer Review System is rotational and it is just for a one year non-renewable term.
But the President’s handlers are so obsessed with dressing him in borrowed robes that they keep heaping attributes on him that are completely foreign to his nature.
But given that nothing good comes out of African politics because the leaders of the AU are mostly corrupt, lack democratic credentials and do not respect human rights , their countries’ constitution and the rule of law, the APR system is plagued with distrust and has made little progress .
A review of the system found the following problems, according to Yarik Turianskyi of the University of Pretoria.
Yarik Turianskyi is Manager of the Governance and African Peer Review Mechanism Programme at the South African Institute of International Affairs and guest lecturer in African Governance and Eastern European Politics, University of Pretoria
1. “The first decade saw 17 mostly solid, comprehensive and honest review reports being published. However, even then most enthusiastic member countries failed to implement their recommendations.”
2. “At the same time, attendance of the peer review mechanism’s annual forums, which were held on the sidelines of African Union summits, dwindled. Most heads of state delegated authority to ministers, who don’t have the same political clout.”
3. “What was supposed to be a frank discussion between African leaders about governance problems devolved into a mostly technical exercise, sprinkled with words of praise – but never criticism – from the few attending presidents….,,, Things went from bad to worse when not a single state was reviewed between 2013 and 2016.”.
4. “But there are still questions about whether African leaders have the will to make the peer review mechanism a strong initiative that can change the continental governance landscape. Its recently launched African Governance Report is a case in point. Although it provides trends and data on governance on the continent, it doesn’t mention any countries by name. This shows an unwillingness to “name and shame” those that lag behind in implementing progressive policies and ratifying treaties.”’
So, even if the AU proffered those words of praise for President Bio, they are not credible themselves. Would you take seriously men who hide their own criminal governance and refuse to name and shame offenders and now hand out Chairmanship to a colleague who is equally a criminal and say they did it because his country had made progress in democracy, good governance?
Let us be honest. Neither the AU nor the APR system is credible. Neither of the two had the moral compass to shower praises ( Fake as they are ) on any of their colleagues, when they lack the moral will to name, shame and chastise them for bad governance . It is like thieves commending another thief for honesty.
This is what we know of the APR system :
THE AFRICAN PEER REVIEW SYSTEM Panel is composed of eminent persons from all five of Africa’s regions and appointed by the Forum, and responsible for ensuring the APRM’s independence, professionalism and credibility. Panel members are selected and appointed by the Forum for a term of up to four years, with the exception of the Chairperson and the Vice-Chairperson who are appointed for one-year, non-renewable terms.
MEMBERSHIP OF THE APRM
Membership of the APRM is voluntary and open to all African Union (AU) countries. Accession begins with an expression of interest in membership followed by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the country and the APR Forum.
ESCALATING POLITICAL AND ETHNIC BITTERNESS BETWEEN SLPP AND APC WILL NOT BIRTH A GOOD CHILD IN SIERRA LEONE
By Kabs Kanu-
The never -ending bitterness and conflict between the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party ( SLPP ) and the opposition All People’s Congress ( APC), presaged by acrimonious personality differences between the present Head of State, Maada Wonie Bio and former President Ernest Bai Koroma and their key allies, followers and betrayers, will not birth a good child in Sierra Leone ( As we say in our local parlance ) .
Tensions and tempers have escalated beyond control and both parties resemble mean, gnarling dogs on opposite sides of the fence, straining at the leash to get at each other and growling at each other. If those leashes are removed and the dogs set free from their shackles, only God knows the disaster that would ensue and how much they will tear each other apart. This is the state of affairs in Sierra Leone today between the SLPP and the APC that the impotent, hypocritical, secretly complicit international community, moral guarantors of peace and stakeholders are failing to address. They must have surely noticed the encroaching cataclysm in Sierra Leone ( The Lord Forbid ) but as always, as they did in Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone , DR Congo, Somalia, Eritrea, Kosovo, Bosnia etc in the 1990s, they are waiting for blood to start flowing and humanitarian disasters to be created before intervening. They always fail to heed the early warning signs.
Journalists and political activists who give warnings of these kinds are often misunderstood and misread and accused of wishing evil for their country , but this is not the case. I do not want to see any conflagration in Sierra Leone.
I love my country beyond words and do not want to see any disaster visited upon it. However, somebody, bearing on the experience he has had in life, must warn when things begin to get out of hand. We just cannot sit down and wish that everything would go away. We must ring the alarm bells when all seems to be getting lost.
The political bitterness in Sierra Leone today between the SLPP and the APC is no different from the dangerously chaotic situation that prevailed in Nigeria in the early 60s, between temperamental politicians like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Chief Samuel Akintola of the West and Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and The Sarduana of Sokoto Sir Ahmadu Bello of the North , Chief Fani Kayode, Anthony Enahoro etc that later led to the disastrous military coup of 1966 and the bloody Nigeria- Biafra war that killed millions of innocent people.
Sierra Leone had always been a disunited country. If you read the history of our country, there had never been a period when its people have been free of crisis.
But some things make the present political schisms and tensions in the country more worrying this time:
1. Unlike the last war, the political crisis brewing in Sierra Leone today has a dangerously and venomous tribal and ethnic bent. If there is another war in Sierra Leone ( The Lord forbid ) , it will be disastrously tribal and regional this time , because the country has been dangerously divided along tribal and regional lines since the present government of President Maada Bio came to power in 2018.
2. Political and ethnic tolerance has gone through the window. When I worked at the UN as Sierra Leone’s Minister Plenipotentiary and serving on the UN Peace building Commission Special Sierra Leone Configuration, political and ethnic tolerance were key among the desired deliverables that the Commission worked relentlessly on. By 2012, the then UN Secretary General, Ban Ki – Moon, praised Sierra Leone all over the world as the UN model for postwar reconciliation, political tolerance and peace. However, since President BIO came to power in 2018, all the postwar gains have been undone and replaced by dangerous intolerance and ethnic and political animosities. Tribalism and ethnicism have always been a factor in African politics but we have been suppressing it until now. Today, our supporters of our political parties run tribal, ethnic and regional bully pulpits, especially on social media.
3. The spirit of impunity, another evil that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission adjudged to have caused the last war, and that the UN Peace building Commission fought like a gladiator to defeat and thought it had extinguished, has reared its ugly head again. In Sierra Leone today, people’s fundamental human rights and civil liberties are abused and innocent citizens are maimed and killed by government without any compunction. What is most surprising is that whenever the errant, hypocritical international community confer an accolade on President BIO for respecting democracy and human rights, he follows it up immediately by committing egregious human rights abuses and violations of the Constitution and the rule of law that stun men and women of conscience, making everybody wonder whether this international community and our President actually have a secret understanding and are working in concert.
4. Unchecked, ceaseless, unnecessary and dangerous hedging, harassment, molestation and victimization of innocent citizens and political opponents have become the order of the day in Sierra Leone since the SLPP Government came to power in 2018. The government just would not let its opponents be. Unnecessary and unlawful arrests, detention and imprisonment of political opponents ( Look at Mohamed Kamarainba perishing in jail for a bailable offence and the many people in jail for allegedly insulting President Bio ) have become the vogue. And the international stakeholders and moral guarantors of peace, like Britain and the U.S are doing nothing about it. They have men and women on the ground in Sierra Leone but they fail to sanction the President or his government . Rather, assurances are made everyday about fostering economic and diplomatic cooperation with the government. This is a shame.
5. Police harassment , brutality and massacre of innocent citizens are going unchecked in Sierra Leone . After the war, thanks to the late President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah of the SLPP and former President Ernest Bai Koroma of the APC, the Sierra Leone Police was reformed so immaculately that it earned the tag of a FORCE FOR GOOD . But since President BIO came to power in 2018, the impressive force for good has metamorphosed dangerously into A SATANIC FORCE FOR EVIL, especially under the tenure of the present Inspector of Police, Ambrose Sovula . One only has to consider the beastly and bloody police massacres at Mile 91, Tombo, Lunsar, Tonko Limba, Makeni and the Pademba Road Prisons to see the deadly, brutal, murderous police force this nation has suddenly found itself up in arms with. The murderous acts of the Sierra Leone Police are capable of driving our nation back to war.
6. No sense of patriotism or loyalty to the country as everybody has taken sides along tribal, ethnic, regional and partisan lines. Reasoning patriotic voices no longer exist in Sierra Leone. What we now have are pugilists, inciting and urging on the politicians to fight , like manic, bloodthirsty spectators at a dogfight. And the social media, good as it is, has not helped our nation at all however, as it has provided platforms for every Dick, Tom and Harry to spin lies, provocation, trolling of victims and opponents and spewing intolerant political and ethnocentric hatred that are further dividing our nation and pushing it to war . Even the tribalized civil society and the media have taken sides with the government and are now part of the problem. Sierra Leone no longer has patriotic media or civil society that are watchdogs of the nation and providing checks and restraints on politicians and their acolytes. Everybody is now either SLPP or APC. No middle line. No neutralists.
ACC Clowns Are Clownishly Clowning Their Clownishness
By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
The current Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC)’s script was scripted on the very day its Commissioner, Francis Ben Kaifala, was commissioned by President Julius Maada Bio to see how the main opposition, the All People’s Congress (APC), could be annihilated. And, true to that unwritten job description, the ACC Czar appears to be doing the biddings of the Head of State and his wife with other party faithful hanging either on the First Lady’s frock or the President’s tail coat for protection!
Whenever corrupt practices are unearthed involving any member of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), or even at the Office of the President and that of the First Lady, Ben Kaifala and his clowns of ACC investigators always behave “like toads in a state of petrification”, to quote from Wole Soyinka’s 1986 Nobel Lecture titled “This Past Must Address Its Present”. Or at best; they behave like ghosts who are terrified by their own terrified shadows!
So, I’m still not surprised that Ben Kaifala and his clowns of ACC investigators are yet to start full investigations into allegations that fake receipts, in relation to President Bio’s countless overseas travels, were submitted by the Office of the President when Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL) went there to verify the veracity of those receipts. According to Winstanley R. Bankole Johnson, the former Mayor of Freetown, “For the very first time since Independence in 1961, the 2020 Audit Report made direct and specific references to financial inconsistencies, irregularities and inaccuracies at as sublime an office as the highest seat of government – State House – and they relate to outright frauds and forgeries….”
But “inconsistencies, irregularities and inaccuracies” in recklessly spending public monies are not worthy of an investigation, or investigations, by the ACC as long as they have to do with the Office of the President whose chief occupant says he hates corruption. By willfully failing to investigate the Head of State’s office, but harassing prominent APC members undeservedly; Ben Kaifala and his clowns of ACC investigators have “provoked a feeling of indecency…like the deformed arm of a leper which is thrust at the healthy to provoke a charitable sentiment”, to quote Soyinka’s1986 Nobel Lecture again. The Fake-Receiptgate, at President Bio’s Office, is suggestive of, or a metaphor for, what the SLPP government has turned Sierra Leone into: a country of seemingly state-sponsored corruption being accepted with alacrity by the very institution established to swordfight it!
I have written it many times, and I will write it today for the umpteenth time, that Ali Baba cannot sit atop the Cave shouting about the thievery of the Forty Thieves whilst he is also helping himself with the loots inside the Cave. Probably, President Bio might be feigning ignorance of the maxim of “He who comes into equity must come with clean hands”. The Commander-in-Chief cannot be telling his neighbours to weed out the grasses in their backyards whilst the frontage of his own house appears to be full of elephant grasses and garbage.
For four years now, Ben Kaifala and his clowns of ACC investigators have failed several honesty tests. From the one-point-five-million-Dollargate to the Chinese Ricegate to the New York Missiongate unto the current Fake-Receiptgate; yet Professor David Francis, Alpha Timbo, Ali Kabba, and the Chief of State Protocol (SCOP) at State House are still untouched. The common thread that runs through these eminent law-abiding citizens is that they are all SLPPers who are pushing the “New Direction” to the liking of President Bio. This fact was not lost on Maria Elena Brewer, the United States Ambassador to Sierra Leone from 2017 to 2021, who before her departure asked the Bio-led administration to start removing the specks in its eyes instead of the Opposition’s.
In Diplomatic-speak, the former US Ambassador was telling President Bio that whilst he was fumigating his neighbours’ houses; his own house was reeking with the very stench he was trying to get rid of in the homes of his neighbours. It was like she was appealing to the Christian virtues in the President to “…first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5, King James’ Version.)
Also, Maria Brewer was indirectly speaking to Ben Kaifala. She might be sending a coded Christian message to him that “the man who finds fault with another for sin, while he is more guilty, is a hypocrite” (quoting the Book of Matthew again). The anti-corruption chieftain and the President are not expected to duel corruption with preconceived accused persons in mind. But looking at all the major “indictments” from the ACC, since President Bio took over the rudder of state in 2018 to date, it is clear that Ben Kaifala and his clowns of ACC investigators have been humorously exaggerating APC corruption whilst turning blind eyes and giving deaf ears to SLPP grand corruption.
That same trend of thought is being thought out by lawyer Basita Michael who notes, in a recent tweet, that “…It would be ideal for the ACC and the [SLPP] government to change course and take on the fight against corruption impartially and avoid appearing to use their authorities as a weapon to repress [their APC] opponents….” The last two Audit Reports (2019 and 2020) have shown that the SLPP government seems to be infested with certified thieves. Majority of Sierra Leoneans are now frighteningly witnessing the frightful rags-to-riches statuses of most presidential appointees. There are countless instances of “unexplained wealth” (in the parlance of the ACC) amongst those walking on, and working at, the corridors of power. But my good friend and younger brother, Ben Kaifala, always sees flawless thieveries in SLPP’s thieveries!
Francis Ben Kaifala and his investigators have transformed the ACC into a circus to such an extent that most of their indictments are becoming amusements for certified inmates at “Krase Yard”. And most right-thinking Sierra Leoneans no longer take the ACC Czar and his investigators seriously. They are often being seen as clowns who clownishly clown their clownishness even when comic relief is seen as a sign of bad taste!
It is on that note that I will end today’s One Dropian dropping with an African proverb that says, “no matter how far you urinate, the last drop always falls at your feet.” Indeed. Ben Kaifala and his clowns of ACC investigators should get it at the front of their minds (they might forget it if they get it at the back) that there will always be consequences for their actions and inactions!
Where is Emerson Amidu Bockarie
By Mustapha Dumbuya
In Sierra Leone, plenty people can recall how Emerson Bockarie Political song had gaining momentum and added value in the Country’s Development.
Emerson Bockarie started his musical career over decades and most of his songs were focus mainly on corruption and mismanagement of the Country’s resources by government officials especially the ruling Government.
Despite in Africa, musicians who always sing against political leaders/Govt. faces several challenges such a harassment intimidation by some Government officials who may want to personalize.
But over the years, this artist passively ignored all the harassment intimidation and criticism forged ahead with his career without any divided mind.
But what question the general populist of hearted sierra Leoneans may what want to ask is: whether Emmerson Bockarie has missing in action?
It is almost a year since the people of Sierra Leone are waiting for what sons he may come out with.
Over the years there where different reports has been published including the Audit report that pointed out massive corruption of the Sierra Leone Peoples part government came in power in 2018.
Mr Bockarie had produces several album of songs that oppose every Government that comes in power to rule Sierra Leone.
This has led to thousands of Sierra Leoneans to always rely on what idea he may compose to feed the people and always sensitize them on what is happening in the country. Mostly the lay man can’t understand except through Mr Bockarie’s song.
Mr Bockarie started his musical career at the time he was a student at Njala University and one of his first song is (U GO SI Am) meaning “You will see it” and his second album was Borbor Bele and was the best selling album in Sierra Leone’s music recording history. An unsuccessful attempt was made to ban the title track, ’Borbor Bele’ from the airwaves in Sierra Leone because it depicts “a corrupt politician, civil servant or non-governmental organization employee who
Many younger Sierra Leoneans believed that Emerson write and sing intelligent songs that has to with corruption both formal and non-formal in Sierra Leone is what obviously sets him apart from all other Sierra Leonean musicians as the people’s favorite.
Emmerson’s new Tu Fut Arata has now replaced Borbor Bele as another best-selling album ever in Sierra Leone by a Sierra Leonean.
