By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
Majority of Sierra Leoneans are, at present, angrily angry because they are hungrily hungry. And when you add the fact that the bulk of them are hopelessly hopeless in terms of putting a loaf of bread and a plate of rice on their tables daily; then you will realise why they are angrily angry because even the “masankay” palm oil they can no longer afford to pour on their “mileju gari”!
No doubt, Sierra Leone under the watchful watch of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) is now facing the shoddiest economic policies since Independence in 1961. The country’s economy is currently being “characterized by double-digit inflation, low domestic revenue mobilization, high domestic debt burden, unsustainable external debt, and huge arrears to contractors” (to borrow President Julius Maada Bio’s words from his first address to Parliament on 10 May 2018). It’s like the President had had clairvoyance of what the economy would look like when he would have taken three years at the rudder of state. Those words have come full circle and might now be haunting him like an obstinate ghost from the past which is refusing to be exorcised.
And that’s not the end of the story. “In the 2020 Global Hunger Index, Sierra Leone ranks 101 out of the 107 countries with sufficient data to calculate 2020 GHI scores. With a score of 30.9, Sierra Leone has a level of hunger that is [seriously] serious.” And that’s not all. According to the 2019 Global Hunger Index, “about one out of every four people in the country is undernourished”. And when you add the fact that “more than 3 million Sierra Leoneans lack reliable access to adequate food”, then you will get the graphic picture of why majority of Sierra Leoneans are now hungrily hungry, which is making them angrily angry!
Yet, the Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, Professor Kelfala Kallon, has the audacity to even float the idea of slashing the three zeros from the local currency, the Leone, with the warped illogical argument that “citizens will have the psychological feeling that their currency is doing well.” Little wonder a business Fullah chieftain gave him a commonsensical lecture late last week on basic economics principles, telling him that while he was ensconced in his ivory tower at the Sam Bangura Building in Freetown, churning out impracticable economics theories, Sierra Leone’s economy “ladom nar tret” like an unclaimed corpse!
And to compound the economic woes further, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has just said, “Sierra Leone’s capacity to repay [its] debt is constrained.” This is a euphemistic way of telling the SLPP government that, under its watchful watch, the country is now in an economic mess similar to that of Lebanon! Yet, the SLPP “Drunkardnomists” will have the Dutch courage to conjure sexed-up so-called facts and figures from phoney surveys by SLPP-leaning Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to fit into their propagandistic mumbo-jumbo that the economy is doing well. But as I noted in my One Dropian dropping of 24 August 2021, “No matter how one dresses a baboon in queenly frock and diamonds-studded crown; it is still a baboon.”
The SLPP government’s continuous failure to provide basic solutions to the bread and butter issues, coupled with the current cement and iron-rod problem, has become a sort of pop culture that even local comedians are now cracking jokes at President Bio’s expense. Even the SLPP’s flagship “Free Quality Education” programme is reminding me of the African proverb that says, “only a fool tests the depth of a river with both feet”. The President jumps into that programme without first giving it a thoughtful thought! Now the “free” has elbowed the “quality” from the “education”, which has made it look like a substandard product made by mad Chinese people.
And it is that seemingly thoughtlessness that has now made some “Concerned Teachers” in Kenema District, one of the bastions of SLPP-dom, to have become so angry that they have now planned to stage a peaceful demonstration on 5 September 2021. It is truly amazing that the Ministry of Finance will always find funds to fund President Bio’s overseas travels but has been unable to pay the salaries of pin-coded teachers for more than three years now.
Although I’m in sympathy with the “Concerned Teachers” of Kenema District, because as the holy Bible says in Genesis 31:9 that “in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”, but they are some of those who are the architects of the current mess which Sierra Leone finds itself today. In 2018, they took tribalism into consideration when they voted for the SLPP like programmed zombies. So, in disrobed language: the SLPP government is the Concerned Teachers’ Frankenstein monster!
And like Victor Frankenstein, the creator of the monster, in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, “Frankenstein”, the Concerned Teachers are now disgusted with their creation and are trying to flee from it in revolt. But just like how the monster threatens his creator; the SLPP government is now threatening the Concerned Teachers that they should be mindful of “…section 17 (1) of the Public Order Act of 1965, [which] condemns the organizing or holding a demonstration without prior notice to police…[and that] contravening the 1965 Public Order Act will meet a strong resistance from the police…”(according to a press release released on 27 August 2021 and signed by one Morie Mohamed Kamara of the Kenema Police Division). This is equivalent to the monster threatening to annihilate everything Victor Frankenstein holds dear if he fails to create a female companion for him.
And even the opinionated fools in the SLPP government know that their party is now a failure in summary. The SLPP government has failed to fix the economy, which is now being “characterized by double-digit inflation, low domestic revenue mobilization, high domestic debt burden, unsustainable external debt, and huge arrears to contractors” (to borrow President Bio’s words). The SLPP government has failed to provide solutions to the bread and butter issues, as “more than 3 million Sierra Leoneans lack reliable access to adequate food”. And the SLPP government has woefully failed because “Sierra Leone [now] has a level of hunger that is [seriously] serious.”
It is on that note that I will end today’s One Dropian dropping with a quote from Chinua Achebe that says, “When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool”. And that “suffering” is the SLPP government which has now left majority of Sierra Leoneans hungrily hungry! And their anger will be manifested in 2023!
medsankoh@yahoo,com/ 232-76-611-986