By Isaac Massaquoi
I am happy to go on record again, calling for authorities to be more decisive and even-handed in dealing with public order problems and not create the impression as if anybody can do anything and get away with it. Or the police can shoot and kill people then embark on elaborate cover-up to deflect public attention from their weaknesses.
The violent events in the eastern parts of Freetown over the past few days may have started at Ansarul Islamic Secondary School on Guard Street, but they have wider implications for the security of people living in urban setting in particular. I have also heard a lot of radio interviews with people claiming to be eye-witnesses to those events putting forward their own narratives.
The police have denied the pupil from Ansarul died of gunshot wounds. I am used to the police denying everything until they are challenged by hard evidence as in the case of a pupil of Annie Walsh School about five years ago. Even in this case, medical records now available on social media clearly show that the pupil died of gunshot wounds. The police can now go back to another news conference and announce that some militia operating in that area fired the fatal shot.
So how did pupils of Ansarul find themselves in open confrontation with traders that resulted in the death of one of them, the alleged wounding of police officers, the destruction of property and the disruption of normal activity in one of the busiest neighbourhoods in Freetown?
There is no question that what we call school today is different from the schools some of us attended in this same city, both in terms of the quality of education and the general learning environment and discipline among teachers and pupils. Ansarul is a quiet and steadily improving school since the days of their former principal Tamba Kamanor. For over twenty years the school has operated in that difficult community without any trouble.
But in that same time traders have been creeping on the gates of the school with all the consequences of their activities to the extent that the last time I passed by on my way to see a friend, I wondered how a school could operate effectively in such a place.
My information is that the school authorities have been complaining for some time about the attitude of the traders around their school and the impact of that on the quality of whatever training they give to their pupils. We wouldn't be where we are today if concrete steps had been taken to keep traders, who use abusive language, fight daily and play extremely loud music at any time of the day without regard to the environment, at a respectable distance from the school. The Public Order Act is very clear on such matters but how come nobody has acted?
Many private citizens whose neighbourhoods have been over-run by such traders are also complaining and they are under a kind of siege because the lawless traders would sometimes take reprisals at people who complain too loudly and compel the authorities to take action. It's time now to decide whether Ansarul must remain in that place as a school or it will be re-located to clear the way for the traders to complete their take-over of the place. It is unacceptable for abusive languages, fights and rude music to co-exist with any form of formal education anywhere in Sierra Leone.
I understand that the West African Examination Council has refused to accept Ansarul as a center for its exams because of the unsuitability of its location. If WAEC, with all its problems of getting examination centers, can take that decision why does anybody think it must remain a school in that place.
Ansarul, like other schools in that part of the city, has always catered for children of low income people including those traders who can't afford the kind of fees private schools to the west of the city are charging. So why attack an institution like that?
Having said that, I must return to something I have said many times in this column; the Sierra Leone Police have lost God-sent opportunities to nail down this rising tide of lawlessness among school pupils in particular and unemployed young people in our urban settings in general. When LAJ, the notorious musician, and Big Fish, who leads a rival gang, were arrested for their involvement in that high-speed chase and killing along Lumley Beach, the case died an unusual death and both small time musicians were subsequently proclaimed peace ambassadors. How more incredible can that be?
At the slightest provocation these days, school pupils in uniforms go on the rampage attacking people and property without any fear that state and school authorities could hold them responsible.
I witnessed appalling scenes of violence between pupils of Ahmaddiya secondary school and a large group of Okada Riders not too long ago in Kenema. It took the deployment of a large number of police officers shooting live bullets to restore peace to the outskirts of Kenema town on the road leading to Bo in the south. The word in town was that a teacher had incited the pupils to attack an Okada Rider who had done a hit and run affair on a pupil of the school. The ensuing violence that erupted resulted in the death of Okada Rider and the disruption of life at least in that area of town.
I also witnessed violence involving the four schools in the Model school axis over something as trivial as a gate man not allowing pupils from one school attending a function in another school in the same area. The violence that followed was disgraceful. Ordinary commuters, especially students of Fourah Bay College, had to run for cover as police fired teargas to disperse stone-throwing pupils.
Only a few days before the debacle of Ansarul, I found myself at the mercy of rampaging pupils in clearly identifiable Albert Academy uniforms on Circular Road. They operated in small groups of about five and they were out to cause havoc. They tried many times to open my vehicle but somebody had warned me to lock the car up until I was out of harm's way. Close by a boy, who in my estimation, was about 14 years old, removed an elderly woman's head tie as she sat in a public transport vehicle and threw it on top of another vehicle. These were completely unbelievable mindless random acts of violence in broad day light.
The frightening reality is that the police don't seem to have a proper handle on these sporadic disruptions of law and order and have resorted to trying to stop pupils congregating for their normal recreational activities like inter-secondary school sport competitions. But if the same police can allow mask devils to parade the streets on every national holiday with all the violence and robbery now associated with such events, what message are the really sending? By their logic, there would be nothing like the English Premier League today had successive British government succumbed to football hooligans who nearly wrecked the beautiful game.
The bottom line is that the ministry of education and the board of Ansarul school must do something very quickly. Ansarul can remain in that place but the traders must be kept away from the gates of the school. The school means a lot to many people in that part of Freetown. So, the behaviour of those traders who caused the police to shoot and kill the pupil must never be used as an excuse to hit Ansarul. The killer of the pupil must be arrested and charged.
In the same vein, some of those unruly students of the school who couldn't wait for their authorities and their parents to handle the problem must be dealt with.
In launching the failed Operation WID, President Koroma spoke a lot about lawlessness and promised to deal decisively with it. The nation is still waiting.
© Politico 14/11/13