OPINION > One Thing & Another Beautiful Work For Mr. Inspector General Posted by on Jan 25, 2008, 14:49

Truly, it was not an academic exercise, but a fight put up by an amateur newspaper hustler on behalf of the country’s police chief after his palm had been greased.  Tommy Koromba, the acting editor of the Spectator Newspaper, a medium whose focus has always been to provide shelter for corrupt government officials is now in the journalism market ready to be bought by high tech state manipulators to do their image laundering.

This individual is very notorious in his trade around town. Since its inception to date, the Spectator Newspaper has been swimming in murky waters and with the type of acting editor in its fold, Tommy Koromba the objectives of the paper can be accomplished with relative ease and professionalism, styles, ethics and other rudiments abandoned. This unarguably has put the newspaper circulation in a very ridiculous margin unable to compete with others in this tight newspaper market.

Defending Brima Acha Kamara is not only a disservice to the nation, but also to the suffering officers of men and women in the republic of the Sierra Leone Police. Currently, about six one officers whose ambition is to project the image of the Police force in the future have been deprived of doing so  by Tommy’s friend because of greed, hatred and jealousy. But the Spectator acting editor would not countenance this significant human issue, because the deprived officers have no money to pay him for a space in his newspaper. Their concerns deserve no public attention to Tommy; unfortunately this is not the focus of the Standard times, with clear national task to serve humanity of all class and not the highest bidder. Sadly, these are the categories of journalists that a country like Sierra  Leone can boast of, despite the Herculean task of ushering reforms that would be beneficial to all and sundry in the profession, irrespective of class.

This reminds me of the comment made by the Proprietor of the Spectator Newspaper at the SLENA building yesterday that there are no good journalists in Sierra Leone. At one point this writer subscribed to his assertion when a reflection is done on Tommy Koromba, ironically it was his medium that is giving the profession the wrong perception and what he needs to do as a proprietor is to engage the services of trained and qualified journalists whose business is to promote the profession and not to bastardize it or use it to launder the image of people with questionable character in society and those who use their positions to suppress  their juniors.

Take the case of the Twenty Five Million Leones dished out by the Lebanese Community to the police prior to the Presidential run off election, the three hundred bags of rice and the three boozer of fuel. Did Acha Kamara distribute the rice and money to the officers who were assigned to man polling stations? Tommy needs to enquire from his sponsor before taking his pen to clean him up. Did Tommy find out from his sponsor about the mining caterpillars he kept at the compound of the late Chief Dura in Binkolo that belonged to a group of Sierra Leoneans? Some of these concerns, the Spectator acting editor should raise with his boss and be bold enough to tell him that he should not have convinced Mr. Slone to issue out a Power of Attorney to one of his relatives, to take control of the machines at Binkolo when  he was in business with the Sierra Leoneans who equally have undisputable rights to the machines at the time. One ethical consideration in public relation job is truth, which every practitioner should not fail to tell their employer. Anyway, since short time material benefit has successfully overshadowed the reasoning capacity of the Tommy, he has exposed both himself and his Proprietor as anvil of identical plumage that can converge on any platform.

Under the administration of Brima Acha Kamara the Police force is taking a backward movement. This is the naked truth that no right thinking individual can challenge and now he is leaning on tribal wall to keep his job, just the same way the Director of Prison, Mr. F.S.Conteh is behaving. The profession of journalism is not one meant for “mark timers” or for people with itching palms to make money at the detriment of the state and its citizens, but for those whose priority is to develop the state and its institutions and that can only be done when the activities of the likes of Brima Acha Kamara and others are properly unwrapped in the public domain.

A senior police officer who receives less than Four Million Leones per month as his take home pay, but has more than four houses in the city of Freetown and others at Mabonika in the Bombali District is that not scary and astonishing? Tommy should ask his boss where he is getting the money to build houses at Murray town, Lumley, Soldier Street, Hill Station, UN Drive along Wilkinson Road, Bombali and you name it. This does not include vehicles and the timber business he was engaged in prior to the moratorium placed on logging and timber export, just imagine as the country’s Inspector General of Police.

It is unfortunate for a journalist like Tommy Koromba to attempt to clean Acha Kamara whose administration is a disgrace to the Sierra Leone Police Force. But as the adage goes “Show me your friend and I will tell you who you are” We now know who Tommy’s pal is. It was not the imagination or intention of Keith Biddle that the Police Force he pieced together would be in this fragmented state. He thought that his handpicked successor would have followed his path to make the force an enviable institution in the sub-region. But, alas, here it is, climbing down the hill with terrific speed and if the brakes of the state are not applied immediately the institution would loose everything that is of value to the state.

 Recruitment under the Acha Kamara administration is done without thorough background checking exercise to weed out undesirable elements infiltrating the force. The result of this kind of exercise is an open book for all to read including Tommy of the Spectator. This is the type of individual he describes as an asset or gift to the nation. It is only ill- fated nations that can be proud of this type of gift, but not Sierra Leone that is endowed with rich and talented human resources. The unfortunate aspect about it all is that some of them don’t have the connections and giving the opportunity to perform.