By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
President Julius Maada Bio seems not have learnt the basic of the basics of statecraft. Now I’m beginning to appreciate one of the fundamental reasons why electorates in Western Europe and The Americas put premium on job experience before hiring their Prime Ministers or Presidents. In 2018, hundreds of thousands of Sierra Leoneans did not vote for the highly qualified and experienced Dr Samura Kamara but voted instead for political mediocrity.
And the result today is a President and a Government that do not even have any clue on how to solve the basic “bread and butter issues” of ordinary Sierra Leoneans. In many situations that warrant common sense and political maturity, President Bio and his lieutenants always behave like bulls in a china shop. But come to think of it, you cannot expect a farmer to harvest mangoes after sowing orange seeds. The point is: President Bio appears to be mediocrity personified!
And it is that same mediocrity that is running amok in the entire ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) government. For over three years now, President Bio has been traversing the Continents of the world like a troubadour who is “exploring all her wide flung parts with zest [and] her secret thickets with an amorous hand” (to quote the South African poet Dennis Brutus). Like Christopher Columbus the Italian explorer of yore who sailed on a Portuguese ship in 1477, our President has been exploring foreign lands in chartered flights for so-called investment opportunities; but foreign investments are as elusive to him as the coronation of a black Pontiff! Yet, the Sierra Leonean Commander-in-Chief has been fruitlessly strengthening bilateral relations abroad like “driftwood on an Algerian shore” (to quote Brutus again) as if the country doesn’t have a Foreign Minister or that her Embassies and High Commissions do not have Trade Attachés.
| And every time President Bio is confronted with the futility of his investment-seeking escapades abroad; he would evoke the figments of his imagination by trying to build an Eiffel Tower at Kroo Bay or the Burj Khalifa at Susan’s Bay! And at best, his media clowns would try to justify those futilities by bla-bla-bla-ing as if they intend to strangle themselves with toilet rolls. The point is: No matter how one dresses a baboon in queenly frock and diamonds-studded crown; it is still a baboon. And the President is constantly reminding me of the fabled baboon in Ayi Kwei Armah’s novel, “The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born”, who while climbing higher to defecate on the people’s faces does not realise that the people have already turned their faces in disguised laughter!
The President, his Minister of Finance, and his economic advisers do not seem to have practical ideas on how to solve Sierra Leone’s economic woes. Hyper-inflation is running helter-skelter to such an extent that the Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, Professor Kelfala Kallon, is now behaving like a mason tasked to do an astronaut’s job. Under their watchful watch, the Leone has become one of the worthless currencies in Africa. And when you add the facts that 4.7 million Sierra Leoneans are facing hunger and starvation, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), and that the poverty rate has increased from 12% in 2018 to 30% in 2021; then you will agree with me that President Bio is no longer fit for the purpose for which he was elected! Even the price of bread has started its climb on the Bintumani Mountain as the National Bakers’ Association has reportedly announced a Le500 increase in the price of a loaf of bread. And the price of a bag of rice has long hit the roof of the new Freetown City Council building. So, in disrobed language: solving the bread and rice issue is still as elusive to the Bio administration as a diver looking for a mermaid’s comb. And since President Bio came to power, the only thing he has shown Sierra Leoneans that he can do very well is to fly out of the country with the frequency with which he breaths air! What sort of Head of State would leave his country in the midst of a pandemic just to attend a virtual conference in London, Britain, which he could have participated in even from his bedroom at State Lodge in Freetown? What kind of Commander-in-Chief would take French leave to go on a jolly-good ride abroad while his emaciated troops are drenching in the trenches? And which President would charter a flight to Turkey and stays there for two weeks just to take few bland photos with the Turkish First Family? President Bio has repeatedly shown majority of Sierra Leoneans that he is no longer fit for the purpose for which he was elected Head of State. He seems to be giving citizens the impression that he is a personification of failure. He cannot keep a simple promise such as building a “tapalapa bakery” let alone the construction of the Lungi Bridge which he untiringly promised in 2018. He doesn’t even believe in his own Free Education policy as his children and those of most of his senior cabinet ministers are attending expensive private schools in Freetown. And the horrid fact is that in his first address in the House of Parliament on 10 May 2018, President Bio committed himself and his Government to “transforming the economy, creating the ecosystem for investment and private sector growth, investing in human capital development, and making wide ranging institutional and governance reforms”. But over three years now, all those commitments appear to be some of the greatest hoaxes ever foisted on the unsuspecting people of Sierra Leone. You and I now know that the President with his SLPP Government is all propaganda and no substance! To many Sierra Leoneans, President Bio now appears to be the metaphorical king without kingly regalia! So, all that is left with the main opposition, the All People’s Congress (APC), is to choose a presidential candidate that can fix the country’s economy and be acceptable to the International Community and the Bretton Woods institutions. The 2023 General Elections would not be about might but about which candidate and his team would stabilize the current economic mess which President Bio and his economic team have cascaded the country into. For 2023 must not be 2018. It is on that note that I will end today’s One Dropian dropping with an African proverb that says, “no matter how far [a man] urinates, the last drop always falls at [his] feet.” That’s truly true. There will always be consequences for one’s action or actions. So, there are going to be electoral consequences in 2023 for the actions (and inactions) of President Julius Maada Bio and his Sierra Leone People’s Party. [email protected]/+232-76-611-986
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