News Story

FREETOWN: NEW PEOPLE CORRESPONDENT: The irony could not be more obvious as two weeks after delivering a tediously long sermon on attitudinal change at the Institute of Public Administration and Management (IPAM) and after a large and expensive attitudinal change banquet at State House, Hon. Alpha Kanu has apparently been caught telling lies about his government's ban on opposition radio broadcasts on Unity Radio 94.9 FM. Radio france Internationale staff are NOT AWARE OF ANY TRANSMISSION PROBLEMS AT RADIO FRANCE INTERNATIONAL and the relay FM station in Sierra Leone RFI 89.9FM has continued broadcasting uninterrupted. This proves categorically that Hon. Alpha Kanu is telling lies in order to justify his APC government's illegal ban on Unity Radio 94.9FM.

The short response that RFI programs and transmissions have been uninterrupted and ongoing answers all the questions posed by Sierra Leoneans. RFI 89.9 (which is on air as we write) was never affected by Unity Radio FM 94.9. In their discomfiture, the APC government is desperately finding a justification for keeping the radio station banned. On Friday, the president's press secretary put out a bogus press release stating that Unity Radio had not been properly registered. When Unity Radio displayed current registration documents, the government changed its tune to illegal masts. When NATCOM and SLBS engineering staff pointed out that there was no problem with the azimuth of the transmitter's location, the APC government said that Unity Radio's transmission had been interfering with broadcasts and that there had been formal reports. When asked for a copy of one of such reports, the APC government could not produce any of such formal complaints of transmission problems from any of the local stations. Then Alpha Kanu mentioned Radio France International having transmission problems. Now, it has again been proven that Radio France International has had no transmission problems. The key question now is, what will be the APC government's next lie?

In a report on an interview with Hon. Alpha Kanu of the All Peoples Congress (APC) government, "Why SLPP Radio is Off the Air," the pro-APC Cocorioko online reports that the Presidential and Public Affairs minister asserted specifically that SLPP Unity Radio had been banned by the government because it had been interfering with transmissions from radio France International 89.9 FM in Sierra Leone. Hon. Kanu stated specifically, according to the Cocorioko report, that "the SLPP  went and hooked their mast to that of Radio France International (RFI)" and that "RFI's mast was already hooked  to that of the SLBS', and thus when the SLPP  hitched their mast to RFI's, the SLBS and other radio stations started having transmission problems."

The New People editorial team decided to make direct contact with the editor of Radio France International programmes by asking questions specific to the "transmission" problems mentioned by Hon. Alpha Kanu in the reported interview with Cocorioko. In an e-mail, The New People editor, shared the questions that the editorial team had mailed to Radio France International with the editor of Cocorioko online, Reverend Kabs-Kanu and requested him to independently verify the finding that Hon. Alpha Kanu had lied to him during the interview and apologise to his readership for presenting false information from a public official.

The New People asked the following specific questions:

We are writing to seek clarification on some issues that are the subject of intense media speculation in Sierra Leone - the banning of broadcasts by the Unity Radio, FM94.9:

1. Did RFI (Sierra Leone 89.9 FM) experience transmission problems (including interferance) between April 29 and May 9?

2. If there were transmission problems, to what did RFI engineers attribute the problem (s)?

3. Once the RFI engineers had identified the problem and the source of the problem, did RFI engineers (Sierra Leone) make a good faith effort requesting the party (parties) responsible for the transmission problems to rectify the problem?

4. If not, was the problem so serious that RFI Sierra Leone found it necessary to escalate the complaint to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

5. What outcomes did RFI hope for? Did RFI request the ministry and government of Sierra Leone to ban any radio broadcasts?