News

By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay

The Sierra Leone Football Association has announced a collaboration with the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, in the fight against COVID-19 in Sierra Leone. The collaboration was announced in a joint press statement on Friday.

The collaboration with UNICEF is the latest action of the FA in national efforts against COVID-19. It has already loaned its headquarters to the national COVID-19 response team.

The FA is also contemplating using the latest tranche of FIFA funding in the COVID-19 fight.

By Kemo Cham

Sierra Leone’s president, Julius Maada Bio has vowed to take drastic action against anyone involved in acts of violence as he called for an end to a spate of unrest that has rocked the nation in the last two weeks.

In a televised address to the nation last night, Bio accused unnamed people associated with the main opposition All People’s Congress (APC) of being behind the state of insecurity, noting that the party’s failure to condemn the acts made it appear complicit in them.

By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay

Sierra Leone has taken a step closer to restarting oil exploration after it announced that is had awarded offshore petroleum acreage license to two companies - Cluff Energy Africa and Innoson Oil and Gas.

A statement from the Office of the President on the 29^th of April, announced that 24 blocks had been distributed between the two companies.

Cluff, a United Kingdom based energy company got 15 of the 24 blocks.  All the oil blocks are on the northern side of Sierra Leone’s coast which is close to Guinea.

By Kemo Cham

Sierra Leoneans must cast aside their differences and unite against the common enemy – Covid-19, the United Nations warned last week, as political tension mounts amidst spiraling cases of the ongoing viral pandemic.

The UN’s appeal comes in the wake of a string of events commencing with one of the deadliest prison riots in the country’s history that led to the death of 12 people and destruction of parts of the century old prison facility – Pademba Road Correctional Center.

By Anthony Newman Levey in Bo

A Community Health Officer has become the first health worker to die of Covid-19 in Sierra Leone.

Vandy Sombie, who was the index case of the viral disease in the southern Bo District, died on Monday 4^th May, authorities confirmed.

By Newman Anthony Levey in Bo

Assistant Inspector General (AIG) of Police William Fayia Sellu has been appointed as the new police chief in the Southern region of Sierra Leone.

AIG Sellu was redeployed as part of ongoing restructuring within the Sierra Leone Police (SLP) under new Inspector General Ambrose Sovula.

Sellu had served in Bo in 2016 and 2017 as a Local Unit Commander. He now replaces AIG Kapri Saidu Kamara, who spent just over a year as the Police boss in the region.

By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay

President of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalist (SLAJ), Ahmed Sahid Nasralla, has said the association’s disciplinary committee will help journalists to self-regulate themselves as they seek to repel the obnoxious Criminal Libel law.

Nasralla was speaking during the introduction of members of the newly constituted Disciplinary Committee on Friday, May1, at the SLAJ headquarters in Freetown.