Attention  Mr. President

The Leader of the Peoples Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC), Charles Francis Margai is a man widely believed to be a no nonsense politician. In 2005, when he felt maltreated by the then ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), he came out fighting openly, and lambasted that party's hierarchy and later left and formed the PMDC.

A while ago, during the PMDC's National Delegates' Conference, in Kenema, Margai as usual made an open show of the ruling All Peoples Congress APC by revealing that the ruling party gave the PMDC a whooping $145,000 to canvas votes and support for the run off elections in 2007 on the APC behalf.

On Tuesday, the legal luminary called a press conference at his Chambers, on Rawdon Street, to castigate the Honourable Speaker of the House on matters bordering on the findings of the Parliamentary Select Committee which probed the alleged illegal acquisition of state land by some senior members of Parliament including the Majority Leader of the House, Eddie Turay.

Margai's outburst saw some critical analysis, opinions and suggestions by the PMDC Leader that are worthy of deep consideration. For instance, we are still finding it very hard to understand why Parliament which stands to be the suspect and therefore accused in this matter should go ahead to institute a commission to investigate itself.

We consider the recent Parliamentary Select Committee investigation of the illegal land acquisition as an ideal case of a thief attempting to catch a thief.

There is no need to emphasise at this point that Eddie Turay is the Majority Leader of the Parliament and that he stands to enjoy a massive support from his compatriots including those who were part of the Select Committee that was formed to investigate the illegal land acquisition.

And taking a closer look at the findings of the Select Committee on the matter, we find it hard to understand why a single individual (Eddie Turay) should come to bear such a large acreage of land in the first place.

That  numerous Sierra Leoneans including people with sound financial strength  are yet to get a single plot of land in a country they call their own, while Turay alone has acquired about 84 acres of land, illustrate how sick our country is.

Despite that let us hasten to note here that both Turay and the learned Minister of Lands Dr. Denis Sandy who made the said allegation presented the same set of land document which thus provoke the question: Are the two protagonists not talking about the same thing?

Finally, we believe that Margai was also right when he said the best the Speaker of Parliament should have done was to have requested through His Excellency President Ernest Bai Koroma for an independent investigation into the matter rather than a Select Committee of Parliamentarians.

We are thus calling on the government through the Office of the President to institute an independent commission of inquiry devoid of Parliamentarians and political stakeholders to probe this rampant illegal land acquisition.