News Story

FREETOWN: DR. SAMA BANYA: Wednesday and Thursday, April 2 and 3 respectively carried interesting news on radio and in the press. First was the BBC stringer whose voice I had not heard for some time telling the World about the commissioning by President Koroma of the Tractor Agric. Project at Rolako, outside Makeni. Now anyone who knows anything about rice production in this Country will recall that the Chinese first worked the boliland at Rolako.There were reports that the pH (the amount of acidity or alkalinity of the soil) was not suitable for large scale rice production unless a lot of fertiliser was used. Then Rolako became a centre for Seed Multiplication under GTZ. I am not sure why the project was discontinued.

The next occupants of the site were the Military who began rice cultivation under President Joseph Momoh's over publicised green revoultion. In spite of the military's much highlighted presence, they never ever grew enough rice even to feed the Teko garrison for up to a month. Late Jamil Mohamed's plan to cultivate 30,000 acres of rice never took off.

With all the above, there was Lansana Fofana telling his listener's on the BBC's Network programme that Rolako had been in his words, "The bread basket of the Country." Hadn,t this Tonkolili man ever heard of Lokomassama, or Mambolo, or the riverine areas Torma Bum, Gbondapi etc.? What was the purpose of that deliberate misinformation other than that the President was involved.

Next on UN radio's tea-break programme was that loquacious Minister of (mis)Information (courtesy of the African Champion newspaper) making excuse after excuse for why he and his colleagues have not been able to tackle the country's mounting woes of the rise in the prices of basic commodities. It was climate change in Asia, President George Bush's sick dollar, the oil producing countries and so forth but nevr their own ineptitude. He put his foot in his mouth when he acknowledged that the price of rice had risen from le70,000 per bag ( under the Kailahun Court Baray) to almost le100,000 under the APC, but went on to say that the current situation was one they had inherited -inherited from whom? I wonder. His other vibes have been adequately addressed by Kef Dukulay in the Awareness Times of April 4.

That body headed by its stubborn chairman Christiana Thorpe continues its intransigence over the boundary delimitation controversy. NEC insists that its decision was based on the census figures. But the MPs keep reminding NEC of other very salient factors that it has chosen to ignore, factors to which I have referred umpteen times in these columns. What about the terrain, the land mass and other PHYSICAL factors? And yet we are here discussing Local Government.

NEC's Conteh is the biggest liar in that organisation exept for those who cooked the Presidential results. He insisted on radio UN that NEC didn't have to consult any one on the delimitation exercise but then went on to assert that they had been holding consultations since 2006. Consultations with whom, when several newspapers carry a press release from the National ELection Watch(NEW) that NEC not only failed to consult them, but completely ignored all the points that they had raised?

Some papers have carried reports of election violence perpetrated on PMDC supporters by APC's election task force (thugs that is) during the recently wholly unnoticed bye-elections. Is this not the krio adage of "Jon Pamine trowey na Jon res?" Images of coming events in July and in 2012 begin to emerge. But Sierra Leoneans won't deny that I had warned them.