By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
It will be appreciatively appreciated in an appreciative way if members of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) stop parroting, or pretending, about fighting grand corruption in Sierra Leone. They should discontinue this pretentious pretence because from the Office of the President to the Vice President’s to Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies unto the gardens at State Lodge; the stench of rejuvenated corruption is offensively offensive!
The manner in which grand corruption has saturated the entire SLPP government is not only shamefully shameful but shockingly shocking. It appears as if members of the Bio-led administration are competing amongst themselves to loot the National Treasury. The looting seems to be so systematic, and shameless, that I’m beginning to get the sick and frightful feeling that Sierra Leone is now faced with a seemingly modern version of the administration of either Sani Abacha of Nigeria or Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire now the Democratic Republic of Congo in terms of the noticeable free-for-all looting of the National Treasury.
The obvious free-for-all looting of the national coffers is so frightening in its free-for-all-ness that a situation appears to have arose in which the looters are looting the looters in a looting spree! But I’m surprised at those who are surprised at what is now taking place in Sierra Leone under the watchful watch of President Julius Maada Bio considering his chequered political past.
The 2020 Auditor General Report is a pointer that the Bio-led administration is not only neck deep in the alleged misappropriations of public funds but is recklessly reckless in the manner in which the Consolidated Revenue Fund is being managed. Even the drug lords of the Mexican cartels could not just stroll out from a hospital in Lebanon and pay US$170,489.04 in cash to settle their medical bills. But President Bio, who has been reciting the claptrap of “plugging the leakages” like a political catechism, could exhibit lack of financial sagacity that he could just put his hand in his bag and fish out US$170,489.04 to settle his medical bills in Beirut like a starving excited school boy paying for hot “akara”.
If, prior to the 2018 General Elections, the SLPP was accusing the erstwhile All People’s Congress (APC) government of spending state funds like “drunken sailors” then the 2020 Auditor General Report has shown that the Bio-led administration is behaving like an over-intoxicated Kamikaze pilot! Imagine President Bio allegedly spending US$352,481 (about Le3.5 billion) of the tax payers’ money on his “honeymooned” medical adventure (courtesy of the First Lady) to Lebanon. Such money could have given the Connaught Hospital, in Freetown, a little facelift! But when you have a government that appears to be run by people who act before they think, then it should not be surprising that a construction company could be contracted to provide catering services and a pharmaceutical company signed-up to hire private jets for the First Family and their hangers-on! I only hope that in the next Audit Report, from Audit Service Sierra Leone, citizens will not be told that a shit-clearing company was hired to supply drinking water to State House in their shitty septic tanks!
I’m confusingly confused that President Bio, who has made the fight against corruption the focus of his government, could allow his Office to allegedly use corruptive means to justify some of his overseas travels. According to the 2020 Auditor General Report, “Original receipts all with dates in September 2020 to support total payment of US$352,481.77 for hotel accommodation and medical treatment [were] presented during the audit verification exercise. We however concluded that one of the receipts of US$156,113.73 for hotel accommodation dated 18th September 2021 was marred by discrepancies, inaccuracies and inconsistencies. It was also disputed by the concerned third party, whose record show that the bill remains outstanding…” Such an informed opinion by the auditors is not only damningly damning to the country’s image, which President Bio says he has been travelling overseas to launder and rebrand, but a dent on the very image which he has been trying to carve out for himself and government. That portion of the 2020 Auditor General Report, which highlights “discrepancies, inaccuracies and inconsistencies” in one of the receipts submitted by the Office of the President, could be likened to Ali Baba sitting atop the cave shouting about the thievery of the Forty Thieves whilst he still has the password for the cave’s door!
It is ironically ironical that President Bio, who has all along been talking about “plugging the leakages” so that the State could save enough monies which have been falling on the wayside, could allow millions and millions of United States dollars to get missing under his watchful watch since 2018! And when you add the US$68 million which the Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, Professor Kelfala Kallon, confessed to Members of Parliament to have been “wasted” on “bribes” to lure hoarders of the local currency, the Leone, then you get a creative picture that could be likened to unruly boys chancing upon the cookie jars where their parents had hidden them.
What is now taking place in Sierra Leone reminds me of the theme of corruption which William Shakespeare explores in his play “Hamlet”. The play’s main idea is that “corruption permeates the lives of people who are close to it”. Like the Denmark in that play; there are anecdotal instances of corruption in Sierra Leone as highlighted in the 2020 Auditor General Report. And in the place of Marcellus I will insert Lara Taylor-Pearce, the now suspended Auditor General, to produce that well-known remark that, “Something is rotten in the state of [Sierra Leone]”. And also for President Bio to repeatedly show hatred for corruption in public whilst his Office is allegedly indulging in corrupt practices reminds me of a line in another Shakespeare’s play, “Coriolanus”, that says, “Action is eloquence.”
But our Head of State’s action against corruption within his family, his inner circle, his party and Government does not seem to be eloquent. This is where I’m disappointedly disappointed in President Bio’s selective style of fighting corruption. As the holy Bible tells us in Matthew 7:4-5, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye”. This quote is lucidly lucid to President Bio’s double standards in his fight against corruption.
But since I’m not Jesus Christ preaching the “Sermon on the Mount”; and not William Shakespeare authoring both “Hamlet” and “Coriolanus”, and not even Lara Taylor-Pearce authoring annual audit reports; I will remain Mohamed Sankoh aka “One Drop” authoring “One Dropian” droppings. And, certainly, I will be the gadfly that is always irritatingly irritating to the “drunkardnomists” and “Paopagandists”.
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