Bumbuna, is it an APC hoax?

We are confused and not quite sure what the electricity supply to the city is right now. It has been real punishment for consumers in various parts of the Freetown with the frequent and sudden power cuts in the midst of jubilation by unconvinced hired APC supporters; the situation deteriorated over the weekend. There can be absolutely no justification for this situation. After all, no one coerced the government into rushing to commission the Bumbuna hydroelectric dam which had taken 34 years to complete. The APC it appears has been more interested in scoring a propaganda point than in bringing constant and clean electricity to Freetown. Who would have thought that so soon after all the publicity and the singing, drumming and dancing that what is coming out of Bumbuna is no better than the output of the Japanese Mitsubishi generator and the global machines were putting out before? I am particularly disappointed that Professor Ogunade Davidson had allowed himself to be involved in this deception of the consuming public. He and the general manager of NPA Dr. Zubairu Kaloko owe us an explanation. The question is simple, is Bumbuna operating at full capacity? If so why is it not supplying all the parts of the city at the same time and why the frequent blackouts? If the answer is in the negative then why all the unnecessary noise about the project now satisfying the needs of the city? I laughed the other day when my poor illiterate relative asked whether it was true that the key for the machines (meaning the turbines) were at the Vice President’s residence. When I laughed at the naivety of her question she said that it was because from what she’d been told, the Bumbuna machines were huge but she couldn’t hear the sound when she visited King Tom. I had to explain that there were no such machines at King Tom and that even at Bumbuna it was impossible to hear the sound of the turbines from where the commissioning ceremony took place because they were way down at the bottom of the river. We may laugh but from what we are currently going through, there is no point in NPA being mumu about the situation. The people are by now accustomed to their inconsistencies, even the dancers.

I had promised to comment on the invitation by the President to two prominent members of the opposition SLPP and to such people misguidedly regarding the invitation as being personal to them. It must be made quite clear that the APC is not under any obligation to include opposition members in a delegation that is presenting a case that they the government have prepared. What is also clear is that the government’s concern is to show to the world that what they would be presenting is a broadly based and accepted document that has been shared with the main opposition SLPP, although nothing could be further from the truth; it is a total falsehood. Unfortunately the two officials concerned are high office holders who have swallowed the deception and propaganda hook, line and sinker and are behaving for purely selfish reasons. How could they, with such high profiles be invited in their private capacities; as I insist they will only be there for the government’s propaganda effort. What both Tom Nyuma and the Honourable Emmanuel Tommy should remember is that as popular as they may have been in their constituencies, they were elected under the SLPP ticket, a fact they must never forget. Tom Nyuma replaced Augustine Kortu who was very popular and hard working; although he may have been beaten by Nyuma we were more anxious not to split our votes in the district and Kortu was by consensus persuaded to step down. What Tom and Tommy have done will hunt them in the future, especially in their current leadership roles. They should be reminded that in all these things, there is always a NEMESIS.

In my days at the Prince of Wales School, with contemporaries like Syl. Taylor Lewis, Gelaga King, Olu Dixon-Fyle, Teddy Awoonor-Renner, Shiaka Kawa, Lenrie Peters, to name but a few, whenever anything, any statement or any material was strong and effective like strong medicine, we said that it was “CONC.” The national chairman of the SLPP John Oponjo Benjamin has addressed a letter to his Excellency President Ernest Bai Koroma, the contents of which have now been made public are pungent. Some newspapers have published it; others may or may not do so. The letter deals with various issues of governance and development and is timely and to the point. Yesterday the opposition Unity newspaper in an editorial described syconphancy as a canker worm in our society and how appropriate. On the same day the for-di-people newspaper came out with a ridiculous heading that read, “The SLPP is dying slowly.” How utterly ridiculous when it is remembered how vibrant the party is now, beating the APC by a very wide margin to third place in a by-election. The silly editorial also coincided with Chairman Benjamin’s letter to the President. If those are the actions of a dying party, so let it be with Paul and his ragtag writers. Meanwhile we shall be waiting for the APC’s encyclopedia Minister of Information to come out with the government’s response, if any.

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