Another agonising APC week grinds past

There are two well deserved bouquets this week for APC ministers. The first goes to my erstwhile controversial opponent Mohamed D. Koroma the Deputy Minister of Health. To all intents and purposes all are agreed that he is a result oriented minister who does what is right without an eye on the gallery. I only hope that it would never be said of him, that “he was the best minister of health that we didn’t have.” For how else could his boss have overlooked him when the post became vacant? But who will represent the country at the next WHO general assembly in Geneva or at the regional meeting in Brazzaville? Sadly Mohamed may not be a favoured cow.

Last week there were alarming references to the almost callous behavior of the Provincial Secretary-East in the declaration of rights in Njaluahun chiefdom, Kailahun district. The chap had taken it upon himself to make the chiefdom an amalgamated one and that would have caused chaos in the second largest chiefdom in the district. Fortunately the Resident minister William Smith has stepped in and averted the potential disaster. Kudos to you both from this 85 year old (African Champion) or 104 year old (Peep newspaper).

There was an amusing piece of news in the papers with President Koroma’s Minister of Information claiming to have gone to the defense of the SLPP government in a televised discussion IN LONDON on the corruption surrounding the aborted programme for the construction of DFID funded houses for Paramount chiefs. Not surprisingly the minister who is not renowned for his modesty did not state what the allegations were or in which way he as a journalist went to the rescue of the SLPP government. When I read the story, my reaction was, how interesting. Here is a man when as President of SLAJ did not see fit to refute Philip Neville’s wild propaganda about the Libyan rice because it suited his APC campaign. Yes, here is a man who never once said anything favourable about the SLPP government in the discredited UN radio’s Saturday morning discussions, “Front page!” now claiming to have gone into battle for an alleged corruption charge against the SLPP. Please IB spare us the agony. Don’t underestimate our intelligence.

It is said that journalists do not create the news, they merely report it. How I wish that was even partly true of some of our newspapers who, in the absence of news would not bat an eye to fabricate one. One sees corrections regularly in some of the offending papers. Here the African Champion newspaper and another would take some beating. Last Monday, the Champion reported that Dr. Sama Banya, aka Puawui, had been invited by the Anti Corruption Commission to answer questions about stolen government cars and other such slanders. Two days later it came up with another blog that Sama Banya was lobbying State House in order for him to be included in the government delegation to the consultative talks in London. The paper crowned its week’s mischief by labeling Sama Banya as an enemy of the state and how the eagle was privy to SLPP operative discrediting the APC. I simply wish to remind readers that in 2002/2003 the paper engaged in the same malicious and false propaganda.

In 2008, the same paper reported that Sama Banya was lobbying President Koroma for a job. I shall refuse to give the scandals respectability by even commenting on them. Shakespeare wrote, “Oh justice, thou has fled to brutish beasts and men have lost their reason.” With profound acknowledgement to the Shakespeare Trust, I shall amend the famous quotation with, “Oh justice, thou has fled to brutish beasts and men have lost their integrity (sacrificed it for sycophancy).I will only add that the African Champion newspaper comes under the category to which Al Frankin referred as “LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM.” So the newspaper is longing for the days of Siaka Stevens when the likes of me would have faced the full force of APC brutality.

While groups like those are falling over backwards to flatter the APC, they are advised to read Austin Thomas in Awoko or PEL Koroma in Concord times newspapers respectively.

My further comments on the behaviour of two SLPP high ranking members, Hon. Emmanuel Tommy and Rtd. Lt. Colonel Tom Nyumah will follow tomorrow; also the rumours surrounding the India government donated rice. 

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