By Isaac Massaquoi The annual Inter-Secondary School athletics meeting for this year has been cancelled. The official in charge at the Ministry of Education was on radio last week saying that the schools are not ready and that the Conference of Principals is not quite warm to the idea. I think the real reason the competition didn’t take place is that the Sierra Leone Police under Francis Munu wrote... 

By Isaac Massaquoi President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria is surely now completely embarrassed by the goings-on in our political parties since the day they each received their share of the US$ 1 million he gave them. It’s been breathless – starting with the main opposition SLPP, the UDM, the NDA and the RUFP, accusations of corruption and forgery of bank documents and financial records have been... 

By Isaac Massaquoi Sierra Leone is in for the wettest rainy season in many years, this year. This statement is not based on any sound meteorological study. Well you may want to ask me how I came to that conclusion. It is informed by the curtain-raiser to this year’s rainy season as I have experienced in Bo and Freetown over the last three weeks. In both cities, it poured down like it was late... 

By Isaac Massaquoi Who’s with me? Lars Olof Mattson was never in charge of the national football team, Leone Stars despite his official designation as coach. I have just been reading his letter of resignation and I can only describe it as interesting. To me it confirms some of the worst fears of Sierra Leoneans like me who love the game and truly believe that there are dark forces around Sierra Leone... 

By Isaac Massaquoi I was returning home from work one evening driving in monsoon-type rain in the middle of July. I was with an East African researcher whom I was taking home for dinner with my family. It was on the eve of his departure for home after two weeks in Sierra Leone. He was here to do the Sierra Leone side of a research project on the “Institutions and people that drive change in Africa”.... 

By Isaac Massaquoi If Operation WID hasn’t collapsed already, then it’s in deep trouble and may need a significant dose of effort, sincerity and political commitment, more structured and profound than what was required to restore New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The failure of Operation WID will represent the defeat of our collective desire to organise our city like any modern city... 

By Isaac Massaquoi Just as the world was coming to terms with the shocking incident of celebrity sportsman Oscar Pistorious shooting dead his girlfriend in their bathroom and all the courtroom drama that followed his application for bail pending trial at a Pretoria magistrate court, came another bizarre news from the same country – a 20-year-old man was handcuffed to the back of a police van... 

By Isaac Massaquoi As with every other important issue in Sierra Leone, public reaction and media treatment of the Auditor General’s report has followed what I call the established pattern. Once the report was released opposition politicians, including those who lost heavily in the last elections turned their political graves into battle trenches from which they launched attacks against the government. Civil... 

By Isaac Massaquoi I wonder how many of us ask questions about the sort of meat we eat daily – that takes in our meat burgers, even at some of the best restaurants in Freetown, the roadside roast meat we casually pick up on evening stroll from one of the many selling points around Freetown these day, or the “goat soup” people eat at Moyamba Junction and Matotoka every hour. On one of many journalism... 

LEONE STARS By Isaac Massaquoi The African Nations Cup tournament, the continent’s showpiece football event is drawing to a close in South Africa. One thing is now certain – the trophy will come to West Africa. The East Africans were among the first wave of departures. Ethiopia failed to get out of the group stages. Then the North Africans were thrown out followed by the host South Africa. The... 

By Isaac Massaquoi Towards the end of last year I accompanied my cousin to the main government road transport bus terminal in Freetown. She was returning to Monrovia after three weeks and I had told her on the eve of her departure that she would be on the Express Service, meaning that she could get to Kenema in good time to be able to connect with vehicles plying the Kenema-Gendema road. It’s a journey...