By Ibrahim Alusine Kamara (Kamalo)
Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio, leading the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), has failed in every sector, turning the country 360° on the development scale!
This means that the Paopa government rotates around the country’s central axis of progress but has ended up facing the same direction as when they started – in fact, worse than.
Prior to the 2018 general elections that ushered in the SLPP Paopa Government, Maada Bio and his cohorts were in every nook and cranny of the country, giving the people loads of promises, alighting their hopes for a better Sierra Leone once elected.
It is said, one has no right to denigrate others and things that s/he has no personal experience with, but the Paopa caboodle, even as their experience in political administration is very scanty, did it enthusiastically in an alarming proportion to defame and make worthless the successes of the Koroma-led All Peoples Congress (APC) government.
While they besmirched every bit of development and success achieved by then President Ernest Bai Koroma, now history will surely remember President Bio for conceding to his leadership failure. He has said it all, loud and clear, that because of democratic principles, he cannot change Sierra Leone. This confession comes second in a row with the first made in the aftermath of the ghastly anti-government demonstrations in August 2022.
Many Sierra Leoneans had had a belief that Bio would become the most successful president ever in Sierra Leone had he fixed head above water to act like a nation’s governor other than just satisfying his partisan, tribal and regional cronies. His mania to compensate loyalists and cronies with political appointments despite being incompetent and corrupt, is one of the albatrosses around his government’s neck.
True to his confessions, however, Bio’s leadership abysmal failures are such that they are clearly visible. The Paopa government has proved incapable of addressing pressing national issues such as the economy, health, education, agriculture, etc, including breaches of the constitution and rule of law.
Bio is seen to have firmly captured all internally placed democratic institutions, and his manipulation of the elections that keeps him in power at all cost has eroded public trust. This has particularly scared away international donors and development partners, whose support for poverty-ridden Sierra Leone had always been very crucial. Thus, Sierra Leone witnesses today deteriorating infrastructure, high cost of living, unemployment, all amid dire economic circumstances.
Bio’s train promised to fix the bread and butter issue (the economy) within six months of taking over state governance. Policies were introduced, and good, nice speeches made, all about stabilizing the economy. But his government’s inability to implement sustainable reforms ended his Finance Minister telling the nation about their moral weakness and eventual failure to fix the economy.
This was a very shameful moment, but they attempted to cover it up with the rhetoric that even if three governments came after them, they will never be able to fix the economy. Consequently, the value of the Leone kept plummetting, triggering high fuel costs, food prices and hurting inflationary trends in the country.
They promised Sierra Leoneans a toll-free four-lane road, but what they have delivered are high tollgate tariffs that increased transportation costs.
They promised the nation of reliable electricity, but they are now shamelessly delivering to the people what is called “Osusu” light or “light by ration.”
For the Lawyers Society, a conglomerate of legal luminaries in Sierra Leone, “Access to reliable and stable electricity is both a contractual and attributive human right,” citing the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which emphasizes that “access to energy is crucial for the realization of several human rights, including the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to health, and the right to education. In essence, electricity is not a luxury but a right to be promoted and protected by the state and to be enjoyed by the people.”
‘The government of Sierra Leone owes the people the obligation to provide stable electricity supply. In this women’s month, we also remind the government of Sierra Leone of its duty under CEDAW to ensure that women in particular enjoy adequate living conditions, including access to electricity and water.
‘The Society urges the people of Sierra Leone especially civil society groups to make lawful and aggressive (peaceful) demands on the government of Sierra Leone and to consider taking all measures permitted by law to get the government of Sierra Leone to honour its duty to provide all necessities for adequate standard of living including reliable and constant electricity supply. The society stands committed to assist, collaborate and work with citizens’ actions geared towards this end.”
On the whole, the Paopa government is unfit for purpose. Their raison d’etre is selfish consideration above national interest. Can one imagine how they have woefully failed in their Free Quality Education programme? Managements of schools are deep-seated in extortionate habits through subtle or psychological means, and nobody does anything about it – even the officials that are in charge of the FQE project seem to be complicit as they sit by idly while schools are being turned into making-money places without even an iota of quality education offered to the pupils.
While the chain of Paopa failures under President Bio’s tutelage cut across all sectors, the agriculture sector also remains nothing to write home about. Though several millions of dollars, if not billions, have been pumped into the sector for the country to actualise food security, the citizens are still grappling with meeting the high cost of imported rice, which is gradually becoming unaffordable for many.
The Sierra Leone situation is just too pathetic for the suffering Sierra Leoneans. On top of the aforementioned promises among a plethora of others without results, the government has called for the implementation of the “killer” Financial Acts in existence to enable the National Revenue Authority (NRA) to generate increasing revenue. As it stands, taxes and duties are up the skies, placing the burden of inflation on the poor consumers. Sadly, this is happening amid fixed meagre monthly salaries that have incapacitated the purchasing powers of breadwinners