Sierra Leone Telegraph: 26 May 2021:
President Bio, yesterday visited the construction site of the almost completed five-storey building, comprising 104 rooms – with modern facilities that will accommodate single military officers at Wilberforce Barracks.
According to the contractors, the building should be ready for handing over to the government of Sierra Leone by August this year.
The construction project is a result of an agreement signed between the Governments of Sierra Leone and China, which included a $7.2 million military aid grant.
In December 2019 President Bio turned the sod for the construction work to commence, saying that the future of the country’s military is in the hands of the junior officers, but warned that they must embrace the military’s ethos, values, and traditions which could best be accomplished in the Officer’s Mess.
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes! I fear the Greeks when they are bearing gifts. This accommodation for Junior Military Officers is low priority. I put three matters well above this one – 1. Improving national hygiene. 2. Re-establish King Tom 7 Falcon Bridge and Blackhall Electricity Power Stations. 3. Cleanse Mortuary at Connaught hospital and ensure the installed refrigeration and air-conditioning system is properly maintained.
I can smell the ignored Freetown corpses here in London – this is the duty of the Hard Facilities Department/s NOT the business of Pathologists. It is extremely important for The President, Health Ministers and The Cabinet to be properly educated about who does what within our Civil Service. APC Opposition is not holding the government to account – another deficiency. Whither Sierra Leone?
As they say, ‘give credit to where it’s due’. Congratulations to the PAOPA regime and our gallant soldiers for the military aid awarded to our nation by the Chinese government. While there might be some undisclosed payback scheme to the Chinese, we nevertheless welcome such infrastructural project. We hope and pray our military will stay loyal to our nation, with patriotism at the center of any senior military decisions, defending her interest both from external and dubious political leadership.
If you are looking for someone to applaud such a meaningless project then you can count me out; Yup, count me out. My Goodness! Why is SLPP so disconnected from reality? Instead of building affordable housing for the most vulnerable people in our country today they keep on indulging themselves in a blatant display of showboating and arrogance. Seriously, someone, anyone answer me how incompetent and delusional are these people? Instead of extending a kind helping hand to people with disabilities who cannot fend for themselves by building them much needed affordable housing units,they are busy playing to the SLPP gallery with their pathetic two-faced President directing this awful theatrical drama, with a boring, unimpressive superficial theme and played out political context.
Answer – Who wouldn’t agree that it is only an ignoramus wearing left shoes on right feet that would put the needs of those who are healthy, active and strong above those who are being crushed and pulverized by debilitating disease, disability and abject poverty. Answer – what exactly has the idle, freeloading military done to move Sierra Leone forward? What? Which wars have they fought and won against enemies that I know not of? Geez!
This country never ceases to amaze me; never ever stops spiraling out of control for lack of leadership, never could find the enthusiasm and Gutso to do the right thing just for once. Listen, if the SLPP and their delusional supporters and President believe he can buy off the military and use them to help him win election in 2023 then he is sadly mistaken. Folks, WE DON’T care if the military carries this inept old soldier on their backs like a mother carrying a crying toddler on election day – He is still going to lose – hands down. YOU CAN COUNT ON IT!(lol)
Is it a grant from a wealthy friendly nation that has gone into financing this military housing project? Or is it instead a loan of sorts (disguised somehow as a gift with no strings attached) designed to facilitate access by the lender to some of our prized natural and mineral resources? These questions bring me inevitably to the Chinese-owned Kingho Mining Company’s recent acquisition of and now full-blown operations in our iron ore mines in Tonkolili. They also bring to mind some Chinese entrepreneurs’ involvement in the environmentally disastrous exploitation of our woodlands in Koinagdu and Falaba, highlighted so eloquently just yesterday in an article by a very concerned student of Njala University published in this newspaper.
Furthermore, the questions draw attention to the ongoing outcry surrounding our government’s offer to the Chinese of a piece of pristine land on our coast for the construction what is claimed to be a future fishing harbour rather than a fishmeal factory as critics have claimed. These critics have highlighted the destructive environmental impact the construction of such a factory is sure to have, citing the deleterious environmental outcomes of a similar Chinese economic activity in neighbouring Gambia as a case in point.
One cannot therefore help wondering just how deeply the Chinese are involved in our economy and to what end. A thick layer of opacity seems to surround their operations, prompting me to ask and legitimately so, whether our leaders, past and present, have not unwittingly or otherwise mortgaged our future. The people of Sierra Leone need to know the basis on which our economic relationship with China has so far been built. They need to make sure that the bilateral economic arrangement in question does not and will not hold our country hostage to the whims and caprices of a foreign state (an economic super power to boot), no matter how benign and beneficial that relationship might be or indeed has often been.
We welcome this military assistance from the Chinese government, in helping build accommodation quarters for our men and women in the military service. We wish the Bio government can extend such negotiating skills to our development partners, or NGOs to help families up and down the country that are living in cramped accommodation that are unfit for human habitation. Alas, the military is one institution that no government can afford to ignore. And if they do, they are ignoring them at their own peril. Members of the military are pampered because they know where the ammunition is stored. I don’t know about now, but when one of my cousins was serving in the armed forces under the Command of Brigadier M. S Tarawali during the reign of President Momoh, part of the make up of his salary package was the guaranteed monthly bag of rice he used to receive.
Even if there was rice shortage across the country, the military was always well looked after by the sitting government of the day. So is education of children of military personnel, the best health care. As we all know the best place to seek medical attention in Sierra Leone is at 34 military hospital Wilberforce. I used to joke with my cousin, maybe if every of the 7 million Sierra Leoneans was armed, not for war I hasten to add, but just as a statement, our elected leaders in government will surely deliver on their promises to the population. If it can work for the military, why not build affordable homes for the poor families in Susan Bay, our hardworking health workers, police officers, fire fighters, teachers, the list goes on. The government can afford to ignore these groups and the general population, because we present no imminent threat to Bio, or any other government before him, and after him.
The president is not doing the military any favors, this should be part of his job. This is how we create gods. Bio is paid to work well to distribute our funds and sagaciously utilize our resources to the benefit of the people. The projects are not from his pocket, or say mere good will. So why should that be another sycophantic attire drinking barre.
All these development activities are going on but yet some people still continue to say nothing good about this government. Paopa Salone go betteh.
Stop publishing such nonsense, it is your responsibility to build housing for not only serving officers but citizens of that impoverished nation for God’s sake.