By Malte Werner, Amjata Bayoh, Tamba Tengbeh
Men hiding in freezers. Suspects running away on roofs. When the Scorpion Squad marches up, people run for cover – mostly in vain.
The special unit is spearheading the fight against rampant corruption in Sierra Leone. Videos of their operations show raids of armed forces in camouflage uniforms, with investigators securing evidence and arresting suspects.
Francis Ben Kaifala came up with the name Scorpion Squad that sounds like the title of a Hollywood action movie, but their most powerful weapon is very real: fear.
3 years ago, the 37-year-old took over the management of the national Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and breathed new life into the organisation. For a long time the ACC was little more than a fig leaf of corrupt governments, with neither a real mandate nor effectiveness. Under its new boss the ACC’s ambitious to “make Sierra Leone a very powerful model for a successful fight against corruption in Africa”, as Kaifala puts it bluntly. And the former human rights lawyer is trying to achieve this goal by any means.
In 2019, in a startling, widely noticed and harshly criticized move, Kaifala displayed allegedly corrupt teachers publicly in Freetown – without allowing them a court hearing or legal assistance. They were standing, handcuffed, at the busy intersection at the capital’s landmark, the Cotton Tree, with cardboard signs dangling around their necks, saying:
“I am the Principal who was arrested on 07/09/19 by the ACC and other law enforcement agencies for exam (WASSCE) malpractices”
A few days earlier, the Scorpion Squad had caught them helping students in their final exams in exchange for bribes. By naming and shaming them publicly, Kaifala sent a clear message to the population: "We're watching you!"
Human rights activists in the country foamed,
President Julius Maada Bio apologized publicly, and some called for Kaifala's resignation. But the ACC boss shows no sign of repentance. "Had the country allowed us to go on, trust me, it would have been a different country by today," he says. Due to public pressure, the ACC has since refrained from displaying suspects and has limited itself to mentioning their names in press releases.
Kaifala is committed to fight corruption, but he cannot win the fight on his own. One of his most powerful allies is a minister, a Harvard graduate - and a rapper.
For decades, corruption almost unhamperedly penetrated all areas of social life in Sierra Leone and is considered one of the causes of the civil war in the 1990s. Today, bribes are part of everyday life. They grant access to medical care or help avoid getting in trouble with the police. The situation is particularly striking in the education sector, where poorly or even unpaid teachers sell exam questions or demanding sexual favors from schoolgirls promising them better grades.
Corruption in education is the clash of two of the most important problems in Sierra Leone. It is part of the answer to the question why the country of 7 million is among the least developed in the world and therefore highly dependent on international development aid. President Bio of the social democratic Sierra Leone People’s Party promised to clean up both areas. He appointed Kaifala and made David Sengeh the new Education Minister in 2019.
As it was for Kaifala, the situation was sobering when Sengeh took office. The 34-year-old with a doctorate from the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) took on responsibility for a school system that reliably ranks at the bottom of global education indexes. "I like challenges," is what Sengeh says, when he is asked, why on earth he took the job.
The former head of research at IBM Research Africa, who is also the National Innovation Officer, has 3 whiteboards full of notes in his office on which he keeps track of the most important tasks he wants to tackle during his time in office.
In the first few days of his tenure, Sengeh had walked the corridors of the run-down ministry to literally get a picture of the state of things. He saw garbage in the hallways, broken furniture in the offices, shabby sanitary facilities and a staff that either showed up at work only occasionally or did not make an overly motivated impression. He found no up-to-date curricula and most of the teaching staff in the country was on no government payroll. Sengeh, the youngest education minister Sierra Leone has ever had, speaks in retrospect of "decades of neglect and stagnation" in his area of responsibility.
For a long time, education was an unaffordable luxury for a large part of the poor population. In the past. parents who could not afford school fees, books, uniforms and lunch sent their children to work instead. And although President Bio has abolished all remaining school fees as part of his "Free Quality Education Program", education remains the most pressing problem for the people of Sierra Leone - only topped by food insecurity.
Today, the country pins its hope on David Sengeh, who outstands Bio’s administration not only because of his young age, his educational background, his dreadlocks and his music career (Sengeh released his first album as an Afrobeat rapper at the end of 2020). After a photo of him went viral, showing the minister with his little daughter in a sling on his back, a Swiss newspaper called him one of the “most creative, coolest and most successful men on the continent”. Active, openly displayed parenting by men is not too common in Sierra Leone - as it is elsewhere.
People who still know Sengeh from Harvard say: If anyone can make a difference, it’s him. After more than one and a half years in office, there actually is improvement. Increasing student numbers, more girls in classes, new teachers and new curricula. The construction of schools and the renovation of existing buildings are progressing, and Sengeh is rigorously cleaning up in-house.
However, this progress is only possible because it is funded by the international community.
Although the government has almost doubled government spending on education compared to 2017, Sengeh's budget is still only a modest 120 million euros. But with foreign money comes foreign ideas on how to reform the education sector.
Isn’t it about time to decolonize the sector? Sengeh, almost never at a loss for an answer, tergiversates. For the fight against corruption, however, the question is of great importance. A large part of global development aid is given as so-called budget support - and this is particularly prone to corruption.
This is why the EU, which claims to be the world's largest provider of budget support, chose a different path in Sierra Leone. The roughly 80 million euros provided over the past 5 years do not go to the treasury but are disbursed to individual partners and contractors – as long as they deliver.
Mario Caivano, team leader in the EU delegation in Sierra Leone, calls it a “bureaucratic nightmare”, but currently he sees no alternative.
The EU’s investments in the education sector are intended to enable 5,000 children to attend school. The EU also promoted teacher training. An internal interim report from last year praises these projects, but at the same time warns that existing problems could "jeopardise all efforts on improving the quality of teaching and learning and thus reduce the impact on the quality of teaching and learning to almost zero."
The interim report asserts, among other things, there was limited government interest in the results. That is said to have improved since Sengeh took office, but problems remain. "It's one thing to have a minister with innovative ideas, with energy, who is willing to deliver,” Caivano explains. “But this has to be translated at the different levels of the national administration, and this is not always easy, with the existing institutional capacity constraints."
Mr. Caivano and his team referred to the significant increase in the national budget allocation to education in the last years. They found out that the current public spending per pupil is between one and two Euros, which is insufficient compared to the significant needs.
Instead of pumping more money in a fragile and inefficient sector, the EU decided to fund projects to improve the country’s fiscal management. They helped implementing a digital registration system for teachers that allows government to save 300.000 Euros per month that were previously used to pay for so called ghost teachers, who remained on the government payroll even though they are not longer working.
The country's chief ghostbuster is ACC boss Kaifala. Under his leadership, infringements are rigorously punished for the first time in history, and lobbied for tightening criminal law. His overarching goal: deterrence.
From his office in a very narrow house in the city center, guarded by nuts nibbling soldiers, Kaifala is working on his vision:
"We can make Sierra Leone a very powerful model for a successful fight against corruption in Africa."
This would require sustained political will and a significant increase in the financial and human resources of the ACC, which operates with a nationwide staff of only 200, caretakers and security personnel included. Kaifala also has to convince the population to dry up the swamp of everyday corruption. That is why awareness campaigns accompany the spectacular appearances of the »Scorpion Squad«. All over the country there are "Pay No Bribe" posters that urge citizens to report any form of corruption immediately.
The hope is that the ACC measures and a (modest) pay increase for teachers will raise the threshold for corrupt practices in education. But financial incentives only help, if at all, stopping bribery – not sexual exploitation, though.
Far away from the capital, in the provincial town of Kamakwie, which can only be reached via dirt roads, 19-year-old Mayelie Kamara tells a story that many schoolgirls in Sierra Leone have experienced in one way or another. Her teacher continuously harassed her after class. The student refused to sleep with the man for more than a year. In return, he gave her bad grades. He even threatened to make her fail the final exams. Mayelie Kamara was brave enough to speak out. Now it was her mother who threatened the teacher. Finally, the dispute was settled.
This is where Kamara's story differs from that of many girls. Sexual exploitation, especially of girls from poor families, is common. Before school fees were abolished, girls often sold their bodies to "sugar daddies" who would pay their school fees in return. Today’s bargaining chip is the fear of bad grades and failed exams.
The Scorpion Squad also investigates cases like these. But the chances of success remain slim - even if the burden of proof is overwhelming. During a raid at a school, the investigators found numerous condoms and clear indications on the headmaster's cell phone that he had arranged to have sex with a student. ACC boss Kaifala believes the sex was part of a barter deal. In court, however, the girl testified that she had a relationship with the man. Sexual intercourse was considered consensual. The headmaster could not be charged. "This happens a lot," Kaifala says.
But the mere fact that cases like this are brought to light and prosecuted raises hope for change. In another important step towards gender equality Education Minister Sengeh finally abolished the school ban on pregnant girls in Sierra Leone, which has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in the world. It’s all part of Sengeh's policy of "radical inclusion" that is supposed to bring his country forward by the means of education.
There is little doubt that the young, energetic politician is ready to bring about system change. But are the people of Sierra Leone ready for it too? “We have to be,” Sengeh says.
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