By Umaru Fofana
How fast time has flown! How quickly we have moved on! How short our memory spans have shown! So true to the Sierra Leonean SPRINT MENTALITY: we express outrage at something today, days later we let it die naturally! Classic! Vintage!
The issue about the public brawl between the minister of social welfare, gender and children’s affairs and his deputy has disappeared. The cabinet reshuffle, the demise of FlySalone airline, the second refusal by the president to sign the abortion bill into law, etc. They have all buried the very important issues that should fall out from that public humiliation by two men paid to work for the public but were busy cussing and fighting.
There was only one consequence - the minister and his deputy were sacked. In a country where such brawls - and even worse - had happened before and no action had been taken, you have to give this a thumps-up. But should that be all? Not at all all! At least I have a couple of things to take there from.
Audio
In the audio that was on almost every smart phone with a Whatsapp App, the then deputy minister Mustapha Bai Atilla said the following to his minister Moijueh Kaikai, in Krio: “You are not a member of the APC [the ruling party], you have only come to eat”. It reminds me of the book titled: IT’S OUR TURN TO EAT written by a former BBC correspondent Michela Wrong about unchecked corruption in Kenya early this millennium.
That comment by the deputy minister is one many people would not have paid much attention to, if any. Reason: it seems to be an ingrained acceptable convention or norm in the psyche of the average Sierra Leonean that people are appointed to public offices “to eat” - and not necessarily to serve the public. Little wonder why there are huge parties and victory tours to their home towns and villages with praise songs sung by even the dumb and the dumped. So much so that if you get into public office and leave without living an ostentatious lifestyle and owning houses and fat cars and sending your children abroad you are deemed to have failed. Hence the clamour by many public officials.
Moving with the better salary
For those who are only being transferred from one government department to another, some can even afford to move about with their salaries, depending of course on which one is more lucrative. So for example if you were director of aviation and you were paid Le 50 million, that’s the salary you ask to be paid when you are made a minister of transport since the pay there is less. It speaks volumes about the lack of a proper system in today’s public service which is anything but for the public.
Public perception:
I remember very vividly, as if it were yesterday, in the mid 1990s just after the NPRC junta. I was in a taxi on Circular Road. At the then Model Junction stood marine biologist, Dr Ernest Ndomahina. He was waiting for a taxi. He beckoned to the taxi I was in but there was no space so the driver didn't stop. A lady inside the car remarked thus: “Is that not the former minister of fisheries? He did not even buy himself vehicles and I doubt whether he owns a house, despite having been a minister.” Then she hissed loudly.
I was at pains to respond to her but restrained myself. But only just, and I could only do so for a few moments. “Do you know where that money would have come from to buy those cars and house you're talking about?” I asked her. She did not respond so I continued: “You money would have been stolen. And assuming he did not steal which is why he couldn't buy a car, you should be praising him instead of insulting him for not stealing”. The taxi went quiet. Then another passenger nodded in agreement with me so much so that you would think his head was going to fall off as the nodding got frenetic. Unfortunately, a generation later that perception persists even more so.
Mentality in public office
When a government appointee says to another that they are only in government to eat and that they don't belong to their political party to be accorded such, it can only mean one thing: the speaker sees himself - and perhaps all other political appointees - as being in office to eat and not to work in the interest of the public. So government officials can afford to get rich while the masses suffer to reach anywhere. It is not uncommon these days to see public officials showing off things they have acquired not from their genuine salaries.
Spare parts for ministers’ vehicles
The other thing in the utterances in that brawl was the apparent reason for it. Mr Atilla says on the tape that he needed tyres and that the minister would not let him get one for his official vehicle. Additionally, the minister had struck out his name for some journalist to be on the team.
Under a system in which the barest minimum standards are kept, a minister does not handle things like vehicle spare parts. Nor is he asked for them. There is a special unit in government handling that. And in a country where corruption is very rampant in procurement a serious supervisory role is given to a body that ensures the hands don't get to the till.
Overseas travels
As to who prepares the list of delegates who attend international conferences, this is the biggest joke in Sierra Leone. One of those things the outgoing finance minister said he would do but clearly failed to do: control overseas travel and ensure all government officials excepting the president and the vice president travel economy class.
Atilla probably had no reason to attend the UN women’s conference if the minister was going. But so did many others on that list who would have gone in the place of Atilla. Unfair and wasteful! It is shocking how public officials treat overseas travel like their weekend trips to the provinces. And I have been to a few conferences attended by government officials and they were virtually useless there. Some showed up for the opening and were never seen but at the closing ceremony. Shopping like kids in an ice-cream shop. In fact in one instance a minister attended a “conference” in Malawi which was a hoax. In their zest to see the world and save per diem they don't care about the cost-benefit analysis of overseas trip, as long as they travel.
Allegation of rape
Regarding the damning allegations of rape by the deputy minister against his boss, I understand - and I cannot confirm this - that he said somewhere that he made the allegations out of temperament. But that is only a rumour. In his audio apology days after both men had been sacked, Atilla makes no mention of that statement or accusation having been made out of anger. That is an allegation worth investigating. And it is strange - may be not - that the women;s groups have kept quiet about that in as much the same way they did when another cabinet minster said that a fowl was worth more than a woman in Sierra Leonean. He has also been recently sacked.
(C) Politico 22/03/16
