COUNCIL OF PROGRESSIVES PUNCTURES ACC
Afrobarometer is not the go-to institution in gauging fiscal management issues. They survey governance issues generally. If u need detail probe into corruption check out Transparency International. Afrobarometer mostly do not have local offices, and their data sources are largely based on findings of local partners.
Their local partner in Sierra Leone is IGR (of the mid-term census fame). This is an organization notorious for rigging conversations and misrepresenting facts. They endorsed a census that no development partner can rely on, not even ECSL ( for all their sloppiness) could go by the IGR-endorsed census. IGR also endorsed the COI and 4 years later condemned it for procedural blunders. So what do you expect when such an organization leads a survey? Subvented facts of course.
Comparing the management of Covid-19 and the handling of ebola is unfair and misleading. It’s like comparing mangoes and oranges because they both grow on trees. Ebola caught our health system pants down, our first ever attempt in handling a pandemic of such marauding magnitude. There was no universally accepted health reporting format like in Covid-19. State institutions were overwhelmed and our accountability regime got a jab. Yet the leader committed to pursuing people who siphoned pandemic funds. ACC and parliament took turns in investigating unlike in the Covid era when staff had to protest for salaries and benefits. Rather Covid-19 should be used as a benchmark to determine the success of the fight and the resilience of the structures left in the wake of Ebola.
Plus Sierra Leone had no business in getting Covid-19 in the first place. We were safe from the virus for a time after its coming to Africa, until the authorities decided it was no longer economically viable to miss out on the funding that goes with the virus.
Therefore any meaningful investigation into the handling of the pandemic should first begin with who dropped the guard, which was never done.
Analyzing Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (CPI) using only the ranking (108/180) and leaving the score (35/100) is another blatant attempt to veil the facts. Scores are more important elements of performance ratings than ranks. A country’s rank is relative to the position of other countries. A country can improve in rank not because it score improved. It just means that countries ahead of it dropped in score. So our score by the TI CPI is still low 35/100, and going by any examination board 35% is a fail mark. In 2022 we were at 34%, meaning our score improved by only one point. Yet he had the gall to compare 2017 to 2023 to conceal the fact that no major progress was made in the past couple of years. Why show the rank and not the score?
So their fight has always been about mirroring themselves against their ugly form, even if their eye is lopsided.