By James Tamba Lebbie When the former Campaign Coordinator of the ruling All People’s Congress (APC) , Leonard Balogun Koroma went on air last week to say that the people of Sierra Leone should give President Ernest Bai Koroma the opportunity to run for a third term as president of Sierra Leone because he was “a transformational leader” that appears on the political stage once in every generation,... 

By James Tamba Lebbie In his address in December on the occasion of the State Opening of the First Session of the Fourth Parliament of the Second Republic of Sierra Leone (whatever that means), in December 2012, this is what President Ernest Bai Koroma said in December about providing water for the people of Sierra Leone: “My Government will continue to tap the full potential of our surface and... 

By James Tamba Lebbie Public toilets or “restrooms” (as the Americans would call it) are almost non-existent in Sierra Leone; and the unsanitary conditions of toilets in most public and private offices are too ghastly to imagine. With very few exceptions, almost all toilets in public institutions are dysfunctional. Their pungent stench of urine and human excreta is enough to eliminate the feeling... 

By James Tamba Lebbie The announcement of Pope Benedict XVI on 11 February that he will resign on 28 February as head of the Roman Catholic Church has no doubt “thrust the Papacy into uncharted waters”. A papal resignation is unheard of in the contemporary history of the Papacy. History has it that the last papal resignation was some six hundred years ago. And that was Pope Gregory XII who was... 

By James Tamba Lebbie There are several indications that our so-called public broadcaster, the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) is a sinking ship. My assertion is informed by two audit reports on that institution which were commissioned by the Government of Sierra Leone, and both completed at the end of 2011 but, apparently, deliberately concealed from the public because their findings... 

By James Tamba Lebbie One year into the Pope’s appointment of Monsignor Henry Aruna as Bishop of the Diocese of Makeni, the recalcitrance and intransigence of both the clergy and lay faithful in the Diocese of the Makeni – a tiny religious municipality of the World’s oldest institution – is showing no sign of abating, at least on the surface. When the “rebellion” erupted about a... 

By James Tamba Lebbie I have read several online articles on politics in Africa that have made claims that in many developing societies, especially Africa, politicians most often than not pay only lip service to their country’s education sector; hence the mass exodus of students to Europe and America to pursue graduate education. The theses in those articles are that those leaders would deliberately... 

By James Tamba Lebbie In my few years of involvement as a lecturer in the processes of selecting suitably qualified applicants for the Mass Communications programme at Fourah Bay College, I have tried time and again to reflect on the credibility or otherwise of public examination since it remains the key requirement for entrance into almost all tertiary institutions in Sierra Leone. However, while... 

By James Tamba Lebbie When Politico and some independent civil society institutions sounded the alarm bell earlier that the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) is a public broadcaster only on paper, we were branded “detractors” by the Corporation’s management. Several months later, the European Union’s “Preliminary Statement” of its election observation mission in the country issued... 

By James Tamba Lebbie My visit to Ecobank’s Siaka Stevens Street branch last Tuesday left me with food for thought, even if the discussion that caught my attention was nothing new to me. In fact, it was the late renowned journalist, Richie Olu Awoonor-Gordon that first introduced the thesis – that Sierra Leone is suffering from “illiterate thinking”.   A customer standing at the counter... 

By James Tamba Lebbie An interesting discussion is underway on street corners, bars, restaurants, offices and even in homes. And the arguments – both in the affirmative and in the negative - largely depend on which side the discussants sit on the political spectrum. I’m referring to the uncertainties shrouding the much-talked about presidential debate between the two leading political parties...