Vitabu Books

The meeting place of the old Legislative Council was an annex to the old Secretariat Building along George Street in Freetown. The Legislative Council was the “Parliament.” (Reflections on Sierra Leone by a Former Senior Police Officer) On August 16, 1960, the Sierra Leone-Solel Boneh Company signed a $750,000 credit agreement. With Israel providing credits in the form of building materials, construction began immediately.   (Middle East Record Volume 1, 1960) On April 27, 1961, the Sierra Leone House of Representatives declared independence in its newly built edifice in Freetown. Among the guests of honor was a group of Israeli architects and engineers, who had been working on the design and construction of the building for the past seven months, a job English firms declined due to what they claimed was an unrealistic deadline. Concurrently under pressure to finalize the parliament project in Jerusalem, which was subject to a heated and prolonged public debate, the...

Dr. Margai and Dr. John Karefa-Smart  In the summer of 2000, Vitabu interviewed Banja Tejan-Sie in London over several weeks. Born on August 7, 1917, Tejan-Sie  died August 8, 2000,  aged 83. He was the last governor-general of Sierra Leone .   Since the last general elections were held in 1957, the government decided to hold the next general elections in 1962.   Out of the 32 ordinary members of the 1957 House eligible for the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) symbol, thirty obtained it.  There were strong local SLPP committees whose composition the Member of Parliament could not control. In these constituencies, Dr. Milton Margai (then Prime Minister) fully exerted his influence authority, and patronage. In a number of other constituencies, there were no local committees in existence. Here the chiefs played an important role. The allocation of party symbols in the provinces was not a vitally important matter for candidates...