Jail break? Tell me another …
I had called attention to it before it happened. Readers may recall that in an article I had written more than a week before, I referred to the strange behavior of the officials at the Pademba road prison who had created a security situation which turned out to be a cover for what they were planning to do. My grouse had to do with the inconvenience and nuisance that the action was causing to innocent passersby. I had made reference to there being no high profile prisoners in residence, like coup makers or cocaine convicts and expressed how I could not understand all the fuss being made about pedestrians walking along the over 40 feet high perimeter wall that surrounded that side of the building. The officials in there were simply taking attention away from their nefarious plan of letting hardcore criminals out. And that precisely is what they did. Unless they were out on a 30 minute exercise, inmates of Pademba road prison are generally locked inside their cell blocks. It takes a lot of formalities to even let them go up to the prison office for any reason; the process involves unlocking and locking two security gates. I know because I had been there twice. The escaped convicts did not have to scale any walls or threaten the life of any prison officer. The gates including the main entrance were simply opened and the men allowed to walk out to what turned out to be their temporary freedom, as nearly all but two have been recaptured. So what was all the force and talk about a breakout, when the whole thing had been deliberately planned? The Director of Prisons was immediately relieved of his post. Would the people making all the fuss about Moses Showers immediate dismissal tell us how it is done elsewhere? Or did these people want the authorities to wait for the man to tender his resignation? Is the outcry over the person of Moses Showers rather than on the principle involved? (Photo: Dr. Sama Banya)
A lot of civil servants are among the biggest hypocrites that I know and I have moved along the corridors of power for a while now. Last week my family asked the official in charge of hiring buses for a Tata type bus to mourners to Kailahun. His reaction was as if I had asked for the moon. “O no, our buses will only go as far as Pendembu because of the bad condition of ‘Tigo spot’ on the Pendembu to Kailahun road.” I reminded him that I had used the road only a few days earlier and that it was dry enough even for the long Libya donated buses. He did not want to hear that because their inspectors had confirmed that the area was impassable. When I asked him how the 70 odd vehicles including the low Libya donated buses had maneuvered their way as far as Koindu during his Excellency’s recent caravan tour of Kailahun district all he could do was mumble to himself. I told him that he had been scared to his marrow because the request for hire had come from Dr. Banya. But that’s how creatures like those play up to the authority of the day and in the process lose any right to respectability. Perhaps his immediate boss should remind the coward that a commercial deal is a commercial deal and when a request is made in the context of bereavement it is inhuman to hide behind the cowardly excuse of a bad road. As if the road condition was not even worse during his Excellency’s tour.HUH!
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