By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
The current Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC)’s script was scripted on the very day its Commissioner, Francis Ben Kaifala, was commissioned by President Julius Maada Bio to see how the main opposition, the All People’s Congress (APC), could be annihilated. And, true to that unwritten job description, the ACC Czar appears to be doing the biddings of the Head of State and his wife with other party faithful hanging either on the First Lady’s frock or the President’s tail coat for protection!
Whenever corrupt practices are unearthed involving any member of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), or even at the Office of the President and that of the First Lady, Ben Kaifala and his clowns of ACC investigators always behave “like toads in a state of petrification”, to quote from Wole Soyinka’s 1986 Nobel Lecture titled “This Past Must Address Its Present”. Or at best; they behave like ghosts who are terrified by their own terrified shadows!
So, I’m still not surprised that Ben Kaifala and his clowns of ACC investigators are yet to start full investigations into allegations that fake receipts, in relation to President Bio’s countless overseas travels, were submitted by the Office of the President when Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL) went there to verify the veracity of those receipts. According to Winstanley R. Bankole Johnson, the former Mayor of Freetown, “For the very first time since Independence in 1961, the 2020 Audit Report made direct and specific references to financial inconsistencies, irregularities and inaccuracies at as sublime an office as the highest seat of government – State House – and they relate to outright frauds and forgeries….”
But “inconsistencies, irregularities and inaccuracies” in recklessly spending public monies are not worthy of an investigation, or investigations, by the ACC as long as they have to do with the Office of the President whose chief occupant says he hates corruption. By willfully failing to investigate the Head of State’s office, but harassing prominent APC members undeservedly; Ben Kaifala and his clowns of ACC investigators have “provoked a feeling of indecency…like the deformed arm of a leper which is thrust at the healthy to provoke a charitable sentiment”, to quote Soyinka’s1986 Nobel Lecture again. The Fake-Receiptgate, at President Bio’s Office, is suggestive of, or a metaphor for, what the SLPP government has turned Sierra Leone into: a country of seemingly state-sponsored corruption being accepted with alacrity by the very institution established to swordfight it!
I have written it many times, and I will write it today for the umpteenth time, that Ali Baba cannot sit atop the Cave shouting about the thievery of the Forty Thieves whilst he is also helping himself with the loots inside the Cave. Probably, President Bio might be feigning ignorance of the maxim of “He who comes into equity must come with clean hands”. The Commander-in-Chief cannot be telling his neighbours to weed out the grasses in their backyards whilst the frontage of his own house appears to be full of elephant grasses and garbage.
For four years now, Ben Kaifala and his clowns of ACC investigators have failed several honesty tests. From the one-point-five-million-Dollargate to the Chinese Ricegate to the New York Missiongate unto the current Fake-Receiptgate; yet Professor David Francis, Alpha Timbo, Ali Kabba, and the Chief of State Protocol (SCOP) at State House are still untouched. The common thread that runs through these eminent law-abiding citizens is that they are all SLPPers who are pushing the “New Direction” to the liking of President Bio. This fact was not lost on Maria Elena Brewer, the United States Ambassador to Sierra Leone from 2017 to 2021, who before her departure asked the Bio-led administration to start removing the specks in its eyes instead of the Opposition’s.
In Diplomatic-speak, the former US Ambassador was telling President Bio that whilst he was fumigating his neighbours’ houses; his own house was reeking with the very stench he was trying to get rid of in the homes of his neighbours. It was like she was appealing to the Christian virtues in the President to “…first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5, King James’ Version.)
Also, Maria Brewer was indirectly speaking to Ben Kaifala. She might be sending a coded Christian message to him that “the man who finds fault with another for sin, while he is more guilty, is a hypocrite” (quoting the Book of Matthew again). The anti-corruption chieftain and the President are not expected to duel corruption with preconceived accused persons in mind. But looking at all the major “indictments” from the ACC, since President Bio took over the rudder of state in 2018 to date, it is clear that Ben Kaifala and his clowns of ACC investigators have been humorously exaggerating APC corruption whilst turning blind eyes and giving deaf ears to SLPP grand corruption.
That same trend of thought is being thought out by lawyer Basita Michael who notes, in a recent tweet, that “…It would be ideal for the ACC and the [SLPP] government to change course and take on the fight against corruption impartially and avoid appearing to use their authorities as a weapon to repress [their APC] opponents….” The last two Audit Reports (2019 and 2020) have shown that the SLPP government seems to be infested with certified thieves. Majority of Sierra Leoneans are now frighteningly witnessing the frightful rags-to-riches statuses of most presidential appointees. There are countless instances of “unexplained wealth” (in the parlance of the ACC) amongst those walking on, and working at, the corridors of power. But my good friend and younger brother, Ben Kaifala, always sees flawless thieveries in SLPP’s thieveries!
Francis Ben Kaifala and his investigators have transformed the ACC into a circus to such an extent that most of their indictments are becoming amusements for certified inmates at “Krase Yard”. And most right-thinking Sierra Leoneans no longer take the ACC Czar and his investigators seriously. They are often being seen as clowns who clownishly clown their clownishness even when comic relief is seen as a sign of bad taste!
It is on that note that I will end today’s One Dropian dropping with an African proverb that says, “no matter how far you urinate, the last drop always falls at your feet.” Indeed. Ben Kaifala and his clowns of ACC investigators should get it at the front of their minds (they might forget it if they get it at the back) that there will always be consequences for their actions and inactions!
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