By Umaru Fofana
It is a behaviour very untypical of the Sierra Leone Police unless there is a presidential hand behind it. The Criminal Investigations Department invites the State House Chief of State "for questioning" over an alleged illegal export of timber. Some other members of staff of the Chief of Staff are also called in by the police and asked to bring along their State House computers - of all paraphernalia - which are subjected to the same "police investigations".
Obviously a serious matter - the allegations being levelled - but worse things have been done and are probably still being done by people close to the president that ordinarily do not warrant such gumption from a police force we know all too well, to invite those kingpins.
Senior police officers usually reticent in such situations are widely quoted in the media as having spoken to journalists in unflattering ways about the presidential firewall. In a real attempt to swing the movement of the media and set the agenda for us for very easily discernible reasons, a senior supposed opposition politician regarded as a ventriloquist for the president and the ruling party, is meanwhile busy phoning newsrooms to draw their attention to the fate of the Chief of Staff. You have to be dumb not to understand what is at play or numb not to feel the pulse of State House on the matter.
Our police being the marionette that they are in the hands of those in power, it was easy to know that Konteh's sacking was imminent. Forget about the police! They may well drop the matter if State House so wills and say "we could find no evidence". Yes, that's the way things are - sort of like George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM.
The sacking in early June of Dr Richard Konteh asks a deluge of tough questions around the goings-on at the presidency - the highest office in the land - and the way the country is being run, or not. He was sacked because of malfeasance, as alleged by his boss, President Ernest Bai Koroma. If you believe the president, the former trade minister was shown the door for two reasons which, no doubt, are serious offences. But for a president who had hardly sacked any of his bloated number of aides or made known the reason for such even when they apparently stole money at State House and feigned a road accident and were later made deputy minister and awarded a party symbol to run for parliament, sacking Dr Konteh for "undermining existing institutional arrangements, and exposing government to potential loss of revenue" is ludicrous and suspect!
Unless the president is saying that no one at State House has ever had their hands on the tiller, Dr Konteh's sacking is a blatant show of what has become a very common feature of his presidency - one set of rules for one set of people and another for another.
Do not get me wrong, conniving at the illegal exporting of timber which has been banned for years is a grave offence. So grave that I believe President Koroma himself has a question to answer in this matter. And that is not simply because Dr Konteh was his closest aide. Among the questions is the president would temporarily lift a ban he had imposed himself simply to please one person. The president has admitted, as indicated in the press release announcing the sacking of Dr Konteh, that he (Koroma) asked for the timber magnate, Allie Sumah, to be allowed to export 30 containers of his processed timber even though the commodity remained banned from export. The release reads in part thus: "the Sierra Leone Police are investigating an unauthorized executive order allegedly issued by Dr. Konteh granting an open-ended mandate to the timber harvesters, processors and exporters (SL) Ltd to undertake the export of an unlimited quantity of value-added processed timber, in direct contravention of the approval granted by His Excellency the president for a fixed quantity of 30 containers only."
The president has Executive Powers, I agree, which is one of the banes in our country's constitution. But it is also true that these powers are open to a lot of abuse not least because the country's institutions lack the capacity to put that in check in a society so compromised that there is hardly any hue and cry when such powers are exercised beyond the pale. How can the president lift a ban for a few days and for only one single person to export his timber whatever the discrepancy in what he approved and what was shipped! This is akin to stealing your own property, or divorcing your wife and later committing adultery with her. Could the president who imposed the ban not have simply lifted it to allow access to all to be treated equally and allowed to export their timber? Why did that have to happen based on cronyism as this seems to have been for the timber magnate Sumah who just a couple of weeks earlier had threatened to stage a demonstration against the ban but was stopped by the same police? Seriocomedy is what this is!
The manner in which Dr Konteh was sent packing - what preceded and what ensued - is such that the invisible hands are so colossal that they cannot hide themselves. It is the sad reality of the way things are in today's Sierra Leone that you are only deemed to be saintly so long the praise-singing of Koroma lasts. Any challenge or criticism of some his warped policies or naked corruption going on in government you are tagged a fifth columnist and unpatriotic. How small-brained!
Is anyone blind to the reality that while Sierra Leone is being touted as an economic success even by agencies like the World Bank and the IMF who say so without qualifying it for fear of political repercussions or attack dogs unleashed on them, the masses struggle to eke out a living at the same time as those in public offices bask in affluence and build manses and buy big cars? What is wrong with us!
All so suddenly we have forgotten about the reasons that bred dissent forcing a once-peaceful country to wage one of the most brutal wars in recent times. Even the most pacifist of campaigners, Martin Luther King Jr said "violence is the voice of the unheard". We do not wish for further civil disturbances, but wishes are not horses, it has to be said. If you plant groundnuts you cannot harvest tangerines.
Now the thousands who would eulogise Dr Konteh just a few weeks ago, are deriding him as the worst man that ever served the country simply because he has fallen out of favour with their god, further beclouding the real reason for the fallout. It is being alleged now with utter certainly and louder drumbeat, that Dr Konteh had been corrupt at WACSOF in Nigeria hence his alleged sacking. Why was this not trumpeted before his appointment went through in parliament or throughout all those years he served for? And we raise all of that only now - after he had served as trade minister before being appointed COS? Why did those claiming to know all of that now not say so before his ratification by parliament! And who says our MPs did not know about it? We are a sick people!
And hear the second reason given for the sacking of Dr Richard Konteh, according to the same State House presser: "It has come to the attention of His Excellency the President that Dr. Richard Konteh...was not open and transparent in the conduct of official negotiations for a mining agreement with a private sector operator, thereby violating established policy, undermining existing institutional arrangements, and exposing government to potential loss of revenue." Huh!
The release does not name the mining company but I understand it is NIMINI GOLD and is apparently based in my home chiefdom of Nimikoro in Kono District. If this is serious, the circumstances leading to the revoking of the licences of a mining company recently are galling and appalling. And here we go:
For six weeks between August and October 2013, I investigated a story that exposed an apparently well-entrenched corruption ring in the mines ministry with the highest bidder ostensibly given licence to explore and to mine our precious mineral resources with the country's interest and fairness thrown to the cesspit.
Those investigations bordered on mining concessions in the minerals-rich Masumbiri, in the northern Tonkolili district which were taken from Transcend International Resources Sierra Leone Limited (TIR-SL) and given to China Kingho after the latter had been deemed to have been working there illegally and kicked out of the place. It followed a visit to China by President Ernest Bai Koroma and we have still the publication of that story in October been struggling to get an official reaction or clarification as to whether there was a nexus between that China visit and the contract to the Chinese company.
Preceding that murky awarding of the contract to China Kingho, Wangtong - another Chinese company - had been mining there ILLEGALLY as several official documents I saw indicated. Yet mines ministry officials asked that the rogue company be allowed to clear their piles of gravel containing gold, iron and zircon and ship out of the country before the genuine one would have access.
Shocking as that may sound, it had been kept under wraps until government signed an exploration licence agreement with Transcend on 23 February 2013 for a 240.70 KM2 concession site in the same Masumbiri area. This, after the then Director of Mines, Jonathan Sharkah (now deceased), had written to the Assistant Inspector General of Police in Makeni asking that they remove the assets of Wangtong because the company refused to respect the dictates of a letter written to them in March. The only reason for such defiance was that they had the backing of people in authority. Apparently senior ones too!
Even preceding that illegal mining activity by Wangtong, China Kingho had been given an exploration licence in 2010 for the same area. That licence was cancelled. Yet shortly after President Koroma's trip to China in July 2013, coincidentally or not, Transcend had their licence cancelled and China Kingho reissued with the licence which had been taken from them for "serious breach" as ministry correspondences had suggested. It is fair to say that Paul Kamara of Kingho denied the allegations but would not say what they had done to warrant a cancellation.
Note again that the reissuing of the contract to Kingho came just days after President visit to China in July. TIR-SL were notified that their licence would be cancelled with China Kingho taking over the area. A cancellation letter was duly sent on 25 September instructing the company to remove all their equipment from the concession site. A lawyer for Transcend, Mohamed Pa Momoh Fofana even said at the time that both defaulting companies - Wangtong and KIngho - were linked. And the mines minister, as is typical of him in such situations, would not talk to me. Primarily I wanted to know whether Kingho had a hand in the president’s visit to China as alleged, and why their licence was reissued to them despite their default and only after the return of the president from China.
So sacking Dr Konteh for alleged skulduggery in the mining sector is and will remain a farce, until more people known to be pillaging our mineral wealth are equally dealt with. Otherwise such an enterprise is bound to have a boomerang effect and burn the fingers of architects and foot builders. By the way my sources say that Konteh was to have resigned since February when the Nimini Gold scam first popped up. It involved allegations of backroom dealing, insider trading and blatant bribery.
Among many other things, this latest in a string of cases bordering on sleaze calls into question yet again, the president's judgement in appointing people to positions. This is not the first, nor the tenth, not even the twentieth such blatant display of voraciousness for personal aggrandisement by public officials some of whom we all know yet are still ensconced in their seats. Making dogged partisanship or relationship bordering on alumni or blood relationship as the primordial reason for the appointment of people into public office is destructive not only to the appointer but to the society.
(C) Politico 24/06/14
