By Crispina Cummings
Parliamentary committee on finance and development has called on police to arrest the Chief Administrator of Makeni City Council and force him to face their probe after he refused to show up four hours after the summon.
Ahaji Alhaji Bangura, who was supposed to face the oversight committee on finance and development to give account on finances disbursed by the central authorities to the council, was nowhere to be found.
The committee, which was on tour of the provinces, said his “absence and obstinacy” to cooperate was tantamount to contempt of parliament as prescribed in Section 95 of the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone.
Committee chairman Hassan Sheriff, MP, expressed disgust at the behaviour and called on the Local Unit Commander in Makeni, Gibril Turay, to order the arrest of Mr. Bangura.
The Mayor of Makeni later called to tell the police that Mr. Bangura was on his way from Freetown. He showed up later and apologized, saying he had come to Freetown to finalize his transfer arrangement to Kono.
He said his finance officer, director of agriculture and accountant had all been transferred but assured that all documents on financial transactions were intact. They could not be accessed because the accountant’s office was locked, he said.
Meanwhile, after a closed door meeting the committee dropped the case of contempt against the chiefdom administrator and moved on.
In Magburaka, Tonkolili district, the committee commended the district council for providing enough financial records for the years 2011 to 2013.
The committee chairman said they had demonstrated “excellent performance” in the way they had disbursed money was allocated to them by the central government.
He observed that all financial records were in place and so were all supporting documents. He urged other councils to emulate their “fine examples of good management”.
Chief administrator Abubakarr Daramy gave a breakdown of all monies received from government and outflows for 2011 to 2013.
In Port Loko the finance officer, Abdul Bangura, and chief administrator, Alfred Samura, gave a detailed breakdown on how monies received from government for the first and fourth quarters of 2012 and first and second quarters of 2013 were expended.
© Politico 30/07/13
