What is the Real Beef Between Sylvia Omotunde Blyden and Miatta Kargbo

Health Minister Miatta Kargbo
(Cabinet Member)

What is really going on between Sylvia Olayinka Blyden, the Special Executive Assistant to Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma and the country's Health and Sanitation Minister Miatta Kargbo?

Special Executive Assistant
Sylvia Blyden (Cabinet Rank)

Listening to Sylvia's Blyden's perpetual litany of complaints on Facebook and her Awareness Times gossip tabloid about the ineptitude of the Health Minister, one could almost be forgiven for thinking that it was Miatta Kargbo herself who personally went to the forests of Congo and begged the Ebola virus to come to Sierra Leone after first stopping in Guinea and Liberia.

Many Sierra Leoneans are aware that the country's Ministry of Health and Sanitation had enough time to set up a measured and effective response to the eventuality of the dreaded Ebola virus landing on the country's shores. The initial uncoordinated and chaotic response to the outbreak was probably the reason for its high proliferation and death rate in Sierra Leone in such a short period of time. But for the President's Special Executive Assistant to single out only Miatta Kargbo for exclusive blame is disingenuous at best and out right deceitful at the worst.

Minister Kargbo with President

In 2012 a cholera outbreak in the Sierra Leone capital Freetown revealed gaping holes in the preparedness of the Health and Sanitation Ministry to deal with any major epidemic outbreak in the country and any serious government would have identified the lapses in processes and systems that allowed a water borne bacteria infection to kill over 70 people in the country's capital alone. But as soon as the cholera scare was over, health ministry officials went straight back to what they knew how to do best; writing fake invoices and inventing false suppliers to divert crucial funds meant to strengthen health care in Sierra Leone into their own pockets.

The blog is essentially learning two things from Sylvia Blyden's current outbursts against the Health and Sanitation Minister Miatta Kargbo; the first being that Miatta is unqualified for her job and failed to take advice from Sylvia Blyden who never fails to inform the world that, in her own words, she is "a multi-talented individual with IT skills and a medical background amongst others," the second being that Sylvia is raising all this hullabaloo because she thinks Miatta is not giving her enough respect.

The President and the SEA

Having riled up the constituents of Kailahun district with her daily reports of how the Ebola test kits ordered by the Health Minister were expired, how the Health Minister had no plan in place to deal with Ebola and how the Health Minister was immature, the question on the mind of every critical thinker is why the Special Assistant to the President would spend so much time publicly detailing the inadequacies of a minister who was appointed by no other person that the President himself? As Special Assistant to the President, why would you refuse to go to work for two weeks, when you have the capacity everyday to go to State House itself and tell your boss the President that the Health Minister is not doing a good job, is that not what Special Executive Assistants are suppose to do?

Is it really the Minister's job to look at the expiration dates on Ebola test kits, or is it a symbol of the failure of the entire health care system in a country that proposes to have free health care, yet all the ministers go to neighboring countries for treatment even when they have a headache.

The question is why would Sylvia be using her newspaper and social media to focus on just a single person who is apparently too busy dealing with the deadly outbreak to currently join her in a Facebook shouting match. What is really preventing Sylvia Blyden from asking the President to let her help with the Ebola response, would that not be better than sitting all day with a laptop on your knees trolling Facebook and whipping up public sentiments against a lady who is part of a system that was already broken?

Miatta Bluffing Sylvia

Having studied the opportunistic and malicious nature of Sylvia Blyden over the years, her new found love for the people of Kailahun district, more especially Kissi Teng, seems suspect and a bit too superfluous and conniving to sound convincing, at least to me. I have seen these type of tears before and in Segbwema we call them "crocodile tears."

Sylvia The Original Bluffer

The latest attack on the young Health Minister is based on her performance in Parliament on Tuesday June 17th where she had appeared to discuss her Ministry's response to the Ebola outbreak in the country. Instead of focusing on some of the actions the ministry had taken and on substantive issues that were discussed for the education of the public, Sylvia Blyden's Awareness Time has sensationalized the entire hearing and now the only thing the world is hearing from the President's Special Executive Assistant is how the Health Minister has defamed the Character of two dead health care workers who the minister had claimed died because they were in a love relationship. 

Awareness Times has reduced the entire serious Parliamentary hearing into a soap opera. Sylvia Blyden even made a video clip of that segment of the hearing on Facebook to convince her gullible followers that she cares about two dead health care workers who she had probably never met. According to Sylvia the utterance by Miatta Kargbo that the two health care workers had an amorous relationship was unthinkable and emphasized that by saying  Hon Moiwa Momoh of Daru had even chastised the minister for these unspeakable comments. Was it not the same Sylvia Blyden who recently wrote that the People of Kailahun district deserved no sympathy for all that happened to them during the civil war in Sierra Leone as they were the ones who had welcomed the rebels? Between her statement and what the minister said, which is more unspeakable?

What I find truly appalling is Sylvia Blyden using the Ebola victims in Sierra Leone one of whom, the wife of the Paramount Chief was a class mate of mine in Wesley Secondary school where she was known by her maiden name of Aminata Baimba. If Sylvia had known her and seen how wonderful a person Amie was, she would not be using her name as a pawn in her perpetual thirst for recognition.

Sylvia has told us all that the Health Minister Miatta Kargbo and her "communications director" Yayah Tunis have rejected what she describes as her constructive criticisms, even though as she claims, she is a trained medical doctor with two medical degrees, who has spent most of her adult life hanging around rebel leaders, politicians and writing gossip meant to destroy the reputation of respectable people.

Sylvia's main beef with the Health Minister is that the minister has been making disparaging statements about her, someone who is not a cabinet minister, but has been told by the President that her position of SEA was of cabinet rank. (I hope EBK did not 419 the poor lady)

Sylvia's obsession with her cabinet rank has made her disrespect all the deputy ministers in Sierra Leone and now that most of the President's inner circle are avoiding her, her paranoia is becoming an unwholesome public spectacle. 

Just a few weeks ago she said that a "witch horn" was discovered at her house and last week a "witch bomb" exploded in her office. Listening to Sylvia, it seems as if the entire witch battalion of Masiaka have been deployed just to get her. This is the individual who is the Special Executive Assistant to our country's President and you wonder why Sierra Leone is becoming a laughingstock under this regime.

Former Sweetheart Dr. Abdulai
Fofanah

Well we are now just hearing some quiet rumors filtering into the blog that seems to provide the beginnings of an answer to Sylvia's obsession with Miatta. It is being rumored around Freetown that one of the people who do not get along with Miatta Kargbo  is one of the country's Deputy Health and Sanitation Ministers Dr. Abubakarr Fofanah who just happens to have been one of Sylvia Blyden's former flames when they were in college. 

Dr. Fofanah, it is rumored, still has a very close relationship with his former sweetheart Sylvia, but finds it difficult to work with his colleague the Health Minister Miatta, who is accused in her office of always "behaving like an American" (well she is an American citizen). So it now loudly whispered that Sylvia's mission is for the Health Minister to be fired so that her former flame could be promoted to "cabinet rank"

Mwen Ke Devire, the Freetown Segbwema blog correspondent has promised to use his well placed sources inside the health ministry to investigate this angle in greater detail.

Mwen Ke De Vire
Freetown Segbwema Blog Correspondent

For now the Special Executive Assistant is reportedly still on work strike and this time it is reported that President  Ernest Koroma has vowed never to beg her  to come to work again. The President is now developing some serious independence,God be praised.