By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
Those of us who attended Sunday School, at the Ebenezer Methodist Church at Circular Road in central Freetown in our childhood in the early 1980s, were told that the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden was an Apple.
But we were not told whether the Apple was a Rose Apple or our local Apple which, those of us who grew up at Soldier Street, we used to call “Krio Apple” because the tree of that fruit was typically found in most “Krio Yard”.
So, an Apple it was until some of us, years and years and years later, stumbled upon the writings of some skeptics which gave us a little rethink from what we had been hearing from The Pulpit. And some of us are still rethinking that rethink!
It is being submitted, in some religious debates, that “the book of Genesis never mentions what kind of fruit Eve grabbed from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. And even “[some] Biblical scholars think that it could be a fig since Adam and Eve were dressed in fig leaves….And according to ancient Iranian Christianity the pomegranate was said to be found in the Garden of Eden, and thus that may very well be the forbidden fruit”.
Since you and I were not there, all that could be glued together is that there might have been a Garden; there might have been a Tree in the middle of that Garden, and there might have been a half-naked Woman who picked a fruit after being tempted by a Serpent. A conversation was said to have taken place; but we are not told whether the Woman and Serpent spoke in the Aramaic language or the Serpentine language!
That brings me to today’s One Dropian dropping. When, in 2018, the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) said that it would steer Sierra Leone to a “New Direction”; many Sierra Leoneans didn’t ask where that “new direction” would take the nation to. They didn’t ask whether the “new direction” would take the country to the path of tribalism and maladministration. They dumbly followed the SLPP like sheep being led to the slaughter or lambs that are silent before their shearers (to paraphrase Isaiah 53:7).
Now, nearly five years down the line, hundreds of thousands of those dumb Sierra Leoneans have realised that the ruling SLPP has taken Sierra Leone to nowhere. Education is now so free in the country that the “quality” in it has been thrown to the dogs. For the very first time in the country’s history, public examinations are so questionable that several national universities are now talking about conducting their own entrance exams, which is a restrained way of telling the Bio-led administration that its free-for-all education policy lacks “quality”.
It is laughably laughable that the SLPP government is now producing Arts students who are exceptionally good at Mathematics but extremely poor at English Language and Literature while Science students appear to be now extraordinarily good at Government and History but very poor at the core Science subjects! Yet, the dreadlocks aspiring rap artist, Dr David Moinina Sengeh, is still talking about “amazing” 2022 WASSCE results. What is “amazing” about those results which you and I know are phony at best and shameful at worst?
And it is under the watchful watch of the SLPP government that Sierra Leone is now being flooded with fake PhDs and other Degrees to the embarrassment of even illiterate Sierra Leoneans. Our universities are now being bespattered with allegations of sexual harassments, soliciting of sex or money in exchange for grades. And sadly, the SLPP government appears to have taken our universities as dustbins just to give the impression that the “Free Quality Education” policy is successful!
Everywhere President Julius Maada Bio goes he talks loosely about his “Free Quality Education” and “human capital development”, feigning forgetfulness of the fact that the “Free Quality Education” is just a segment of his entire Education policy. He has not been touching on the other segments of his Education policy. But just a glance at the SLPP’s 2018 Manifesto shows that the SLPP government has failed woefully in its promised Education policy!
In its 2018 Manifesto, dubbed the “People’s Manifesto”, the SLPP promised to “Build staff quarters and embark on long-term housing scheme for teachers”; “Provide free university education for three children of every school teacher with at least 10 years’ teaching experience”; “Build and support at least one primary school in every administrative section in every district, at least a Junior Secondary in every administrative chiefdom or electoral ward and at least a Senior Secondary School equipped with a science laboratory in every electoral constituency”; “Construct student hostels for at least 500 pupils attending different schools in every district headquarter town and support schools with boarding facilities”, and the people of Sierra Leone were also promised that if given the chance an SLPP government would “Remove the double shift system within 3 years by constructing additional classrooms and schools in populated communities to reduce overcrowding in school”. But has the SLPP government fulfilled those promised promises? Even the opinionated fools in SLPP-dom will not answer that question in the affirmative.
No doubt, about that, the people of Sierra Leone seem to have been conned by the SLPP which promised, in that same manifesto under review, to “Establish functional district libraries equipped with computers and promote mobile library services” and to also “Establish technical and vocational centres in all chiefdoms that would provide training in areas relevant for the rural sector such as hand-pump repairs, bicycle, motorcycle (okada) and vehicle repairs, fabrication and maintenance of agricultural tools and equipment”. Methinks it would be better for President Bio and his toadies to stop talking about their failed Education policy and be honest enough to accept that they have taken education to the sewers!
And as things now stand, Sierra Leone could be likened to the Garden of Eden with the “Free Quality Education” being the forbidden fruit. Dr Sengeh, the Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, could be equated to the Serpent; while the boys and girls with “amazing” 2022 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results could be likened to Adam and Eve who are now afraid to face the would-be entrance exams in our universities because they are naked after eating the forbidden fruit!
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