By Umaru Fofana
Sometime in 2011 I met in Dakar with a dedicated access to information campaigner from a Nordic country. She had taken interest in my name on the guest list to a regional conference on freedom of information. As one of those who put together the model Freedom of Information Law for the African Union and for some other reasons, she told me that I had been nominated as one of those to meet with US President Barack Obama who had taken keen interest in access to information especially in Africa.
While I smiled at the opportunity, she apologised to me thus: “I am sorry we deleted your name just yesterday”. She said my name was struck out because my country was “not doing well” on some benchmarks of good governance that had been set out for selection. I argued with her citing the setting-up of the Open Government Initiative, the conduct of regular elections and relative freedom of the press, among others. She opened a spreadsheet on her MacBook and showed me the country’s ratings by various organisations. Conclusion: Sierra Leone was deemed not on the right path of governance and transparent leadership.
One would wish to think that the government is changing tact by aspiring to become more transparent and open. After all the Freedom of Information Bill is back in the news – this time for all the right reasons. It seems for real. We welcome it with all our heart. It could just spell the beginning of the prosperity of Sierra Leone. It is the instrument with which we will collectively advocate to accomplish the dreams and aspirations of our founding fathers through exposing the rampant pillaging of state resources that is going on and has been for ages. Yes, the law will be here in a matter of days and we owe it to the United States of America!
We owe it to the USA and not to our government or our parliament who have been dithering with it since Adam and Eve were in diapers. Yes, it has to be mentioned that the law is not coming into being because government is interested in accountability and openness. No! Rather because Damocles has been brought down and the government, it is implied, has been forced from outside. So much for accountability in governance! So much for a government that listens to its own people! So much for a government that respects the views and aspirations of its people who have been clamouring for an FOI Law!
However late in the day the FOI Law is a welcome development. But my concern is that history teaches that in Sierra Leone a law that is promulgated willy-nilly, as this one seems to be being done, brings about reluctance galore on the part of the authorities to implement it. The three Gender Acts and the Child Rights Acts that were passed not because of the pressure the women and children mounted because they needed them, but rather because the United Nations and its partners wanted them legislated and brought pressure to bear on the authorities. Have you stopped and thought of their implementation? Or even the structures they need to be implemented which have not been set up?
Anyway…MPs were called last week, rather surprisingly to them, and told to get ready to promulgate the FOI Bill after years of unfulfilled promises and inexcusable excuses. So who were those saying that Baron De Montesquieu was the reason for the stall in the promulgation of the piece of legislation? When we argued and cited clear instances of Separation of Powers being suffocated and State House and Marine House instructing Tower Hill on what to pass and what not to pass into law, they called us names. Who were the misleaders, the spinners and outright liars telling this nation unashamedly that the executive does not tell the legislature what to do? Who were those saying that all the FOI was aimed at was to give journalists a fiat to cause more trouble for the government and the country? Now the chicken may just have come home to roost. The known unknowns and the unknown unknowns that were used as a scare-mongering antic to stall and send into comatose the passing of the FOI bill into law seem to have all but disappeared. We welcome the FOI Act or the Right to Access to Information Act 2013, but with some ifs and buts.
On 19 December 2012 during “its quarterly meeting…, the U.S. Government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Board of Directors selected Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Morocco, and Tanzania as eligible to develop proposals for new compacts…” It is a rigorous but worthy programme for any beneficiary country. Now, Sierra Leone stands the risk of losing out on the lucrative and prestigious US-government MCC initiative because our government’s accountability and transparency credentials are in sixes and sevens. Hundreds of millions of dollars could be missed out on because government has entrenched secrecy in mining lease contracts some of which are very corruptly awarded. Almost all government contracts even for the supply of stationery and construction are awarded rather opaquely. Cronyism and waste have become the order of the day. The masses cannot ask questions without being labelled as fifth columnists. Where they have developed broad shoulders to be courageous to ask they are told half-truths or outright lies. What’s more is the questioners are spoken down on or even targeted for vilification and derision.
We cannot force government to disclose information even that which is unclassified. Nor would government pass a law under which citizens can hold them to do so. Despite repeated assurances from the Speaker of Parliament, the political parties represented therein, and from the executive branch, FOI was left to gather dust on the shelves where it even risked being ripped apart and dumped. It was subjected to what no other law in the recent history of our country was subjected to – taken throughout the country to consult the people at town hall meetings on whether or not they wanted the law to be passed. The people said they needed it and they wanted it. Yes the House refused to pass it. And they, obviously, had the backing of the executive arm.
Now thanks to the MCC, Sierra Leone must have transparency entrenched, including a Freedom of Information Law, if it is to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the US government which will get no opposition from the US Congress since the MCC is a bipartisan project initiated by President Bush and supported across the political divide. That explains the urgency in the executive pushing parliament to push the bill through in the next week or two.
Liberia, another country in contention for the MCC grant, has a Freedom of Information law even if with teething problems besetting it. Another candidate country, Niger, also has freedom of Information Law. When the media and civil society advocated for the FOI bill to be promulgated here, excuses – some of them puerile – were advanced, including the fig leaf that the structures needed to be first put in place. Conditions that were never put in place for several other pieces of legislation.
As a nation we hope and pray that Sierra Leone benefits from the MCC project. It will help us build our roads, improve our pitiful water and sanitation situation and save more women and children from needless deaths, among others. But in the event that we miss out, we will blame our government. Our immunization records have been good over the years thanks to government commitment and our external partners. The free health care has added to that feat. If we fail, the main disqualifier could just be the lack of transparency and accountability in governance. And this has not come as a surprise. During the celebrated White House meeting Barack Obama held with the leaders of Cape Verde, Malawi, Senegal and Sierra Leone, the US president emphasised the need for an access to information law and a true open governance initiative, not the namby-pamby one that we have here.
If we miss out on this, our image will be dented as a nation, especially coming just months after Sierra Leone was suspended on another transparency initiative, the EITI. I dare say that we missed out on the EITI again because some government officials did not want the initiative to succeed so they would continue the romance with mining companies who are themselves corrupt and thrive in corruption in government. It is our turn to demand transparency in government. It is our right. America we are grateful. We hope you precondition the decriminalisation of libel as well bearing in mind that an FOI law when defamation is criminal will further endanger the lives of journalists because the reporting of the truth in some sensitive matters, may get the journalists in the soup – it is called, BREEDING DISAFFECTION AGAINST THE STATE. Whatever that means! I would hate to miss out on a future opportunity to visit the White House simply because my country is pretentiously well governed, than it is in the actual sense of it.
© Politico 17/10/13
