By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
It was Dr Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945, who propagated the belief that, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it….” And President Julius Maada Bio appears to be one of Dr Goebbels’ acolytes in that genre!
President Bio and his ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) have been telling a Big Lie about their Free (minus “Quality”) Education policy and keep repeating it with the hope that majority of Sierra Leoneans will eventually come to believe that it is working. So, it is not surprising when the Commander-in-Chief tells the entire world that, “…Families [in Sierra Leone] are saving in excess of US$500 a year per student [because of the Free Education policy].” I cannot say the President is lying. But all I can safely say is that such a statement is euphemistically inaccurate!
It is funnily funny that President Bio, who seems to be hiding in a fog, could tell the world over that his shambolic sham of a Free (minus “Quality”) Education policy is working. If he truly believes in that policy then why is it that his children are not attending Government-owned or assisted schools but the super-expensive British International School (BIS) at Hill Cut Road in Freetown? If that policy is successful then why is the Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE), Dr David Moinina Sengeh, sending his children to expensive private schools in Freetown?
The Anti-Corruption boss, Francis Ben Kaifala, seems to be so ashamed of the President’s sham of a Free (minus “Quality”) Education policy that he has removed his daughter from the elitist International School at Jomo Kenyatta Road, in Freetown, and readmitted her at the Anne Walsh Memorial School east of the capital. This appears to be a direct slap on President Bio’s face. Ben Kaifala is tactfully telling the President that charity should begin in one’s own backyard! Simplistically, if you are a cookery seller and you are refusing to eat your own cookery, then how do you want your customers to eat what you cannot eat? Let President Bio and the Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education send their children to Government-owned or assisted schools, where the Free (minus “Quality”) Education policy is being guinea-pigged, then I will be convinced that they are seriously serious about that policy!
Even the nationally acclaimed and well-respected Professor Joe A.D Alie seems to believe that President Bio’s flagship Free (minus “Quality”) Education policy is a sham that is shambolic in its shambolic-ness. In a recent article titled “Looking At The Bigger Picture”, he notes that the SLPP’s created Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education “looks like a vintage car”. The heavyweight Historian is also sceptical about those running that ministry because he is not sure whether they “are the right people in the right places”. And Prof. Alie is also not sure of whether those at the MBSSE’s hierarchy “are fully committed” to giving Sierra Leonean children in Government-owned or assisted schools quality education. And that what is now happening at the MBSSE is “business as usual”. Yet, our Head of State could look his audiences in their eyes and with a straight face tell them that, “…Families [in Sierra Leone] are saving in excess of US$500 a year per student [because of the Free Education policy].”
Deep down his heart, President Bio knows that that is not true. He knows that it would be outlandish for anyone, in Sierra Leone in particular, to claim that poor parents and guardians, who cannot afford a single decent meal a day under the watchful watch of the SLPP government, are capable of saving US$500 annually because of what they would have spent on paying school fees, buying textbooks, uniforms et al. How can poverty-stricken Sierra Leoneans save US$500 yearly when they are living on less than US$1 a day? Or is it that our Commander-in-Chief is so poor at rudimentary mathematics or basic economics that he could just conjure up figures without commonsensical justifications. To assert that the bulk of Sierra Leoneans, who are barely scrapping to eke out a living, are saving US$500 yearly is insultingly insulting.
I believe that when President Bio was growing up he might have been taught the virtues of honesty and truth-telling in his primary school. As a practising Catholic I know the priests, at his church at Wilberforce and those at the church at Regent where he wedded his beloved devout Muslim wife, might have preached to him that lying is sinful. And as a father, he must have inculcated in his many children the Christian adage of “speaking the truth and let the devil be ashamed.” But at a time when his siblings, his Catholic priests, and even his many children are expecting him to tell the whole world how shambolic his Free (minus “Quality”) Education policy is, he instead tells them that, “…Families [in Sierra Leone] are saving in excess of US$500 a year per student.” That statement is disappointingly disappointing as it is shamefully shameful because it doesn’t seem to have an iota of truth in it!
By making that euphemistically inaccurate statement to the entire world, it would be safe to liken President Julius Maada Bio to someone who is hiding in a fog. Someday, the fog will clear and s/he will be seen for who s/he really is. Telling a lie repeatedly cannot transform that lie into the truth. A lie is a lie, and always will, no matter how it is being dressed.
It is on that note that I will end today’s One Dropian dropping with a quote from an unknown author who says that, “You can’t believe some people, even when they swear they are lying”. And President Bio and his SLPP government have proven for the umpteenth time that they cannot, and should not, be trusted with the truth!
[email protected]/+232-76-011-986