Editorial: Karpowership Scandal — How SLPP Sold Sierra Leone’s Future for Kickbacks
By Ibrahim Alusine Kamara (Kamalo)
In the shadows of policy papers and behind the polished smiles of high-level meetings, a scandal has been quietly burning — one that may go down as the most shameless betrayal of the Sierra Leonean people in recent memory.
We are talking about the Karpowership deal — a contract so lopsided, so grotesquely overpriced, and so riddled with unanswered questions, it has now attracted the scorn of the International Monetary Fund. At the Spring Meetings in Washington D.C., IMF officials did not mince words. They are livid. And rightly so.
While Guinea secures electricity from the same Turkish supplier at a significantly lower cost, Sierra Leone continues to be gouged — not due to incompetence, but by design. The IMF sees the pattern clearly: this isn’t about power generation. It’s about power preservation. It’s about political elites pocketing kickbacks while everyday citizens remain in the dark, quite literally.
This is not just a bad deal — it is a deliberate sabotage of national progress for personal gain. Government officials chose to stick with a contract that bleeds our economy dry, knowing fully well there were cheaper, cleaner alternatives on the table. Why? Because too many hands are in the till. Too many powerful names are implicated. And too few care about the consequences.
As inflation soars, the cost of living crushes the poor, and public institutions teeter on the brink of collapse, our leaders smile and lie. They cooked inflation figures to paint a rosy picture — trimming a brutal 54% down to a fantasy figure of 10% without a single real reform to justify it. But the world is watching, and the IMF is no longer amused.
This is state capture in its purest form — where the machinery of government serves not the people, but the pockets of those in power.
The SLPP government has mortgaged Sierra Leone’s future to cover today’s greed. The Karpowership deal is not just a bad contract — it’s a symbol. A warning. A national shame.
The people deserve to know who signed it, who’s profiting from it, and who is protecting it. And those responsible must be held accountable — not tomorrow, but now.
Because every extra cent paid to Karpowership is one less spent on schools, clinics, jobs, and hope. And the longer this scam continues, the deeper our nation sinks into darkness — in every sense of the word.