By James Tamba Lebbie
I had vowed that only an official trip would take me to Kono again this year because I will likely have to use an official vehicle. My decision was borne out of the unpleasant experience I experienced while travelling on a commercial vehicle on the so-called Matotota-Kono Highway in early May 2012. It was an emergency trip; I had travelled to join my relatives bury my uncle who died after a short ailment. And that was just on the onset of the rainy season.
When the rainy season peaked, comments about the nature and shape of the Matotoka-Kono Highway have been rife and uncomplimentary to say the least. And that the road to Kono is appalling is at least, one fact where everybody across the political divide in the district agreed with. But perhaps, people are economical with the truth. My experience on the Matotoka-Kono on 9 and 13 October left with me with no alternative but to make up my mind that should there be an urgent need to travel to my home district, I will prefer the roundabout route of going through Kenema and Tongo to reach “Koidu City”. This is because the Matotoka route is everything but a road. “It is not a bad road; it is a very terrible road”, an expatriate staff of an international non-governmental organization operating in Kono told me at my hotel lobby in Koidu. The road is punctuated by vicious muddy potholes that create the impression of an excavated land. In fact, the entire road to Kono appears to be a stretch of a vast alluvial diamond mine field. Little wonder therefore that the government’s public bus service and the privately-owned transportation service run by Melian Tours among others have ceased their operations to the district.
But the road leading to what the people there called a “city”- once the break basket of the country - is very symptomatic too; symptomatic of the district’s socio-political malaise, the paradox of its economic meltdown and the infrastructural decadence that pervades the entire place. Ten years since the war was declared “over” by former President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, Koidu City and its satellite towns still look as if they civil war has just ended.
For instance, people in Koidu are caught between walking on muddy roads on the hand and inhaling dust on the other; the streets are either muddy when it rains or they are very dusty in the dries. In addition, the people lack electricity and pipe-borne water, except for the “resettlement camp” established by the OCTEA mining group, (formerly known as Koidu Holdings) where I saw a couple of standing pipes. Residents in the camp confirmed to me that they were functional even if the source and quality of the water are suspect.
And talking about electricity or the lack of it in Koidu City, work is apparently underway. I saw several men clad in oversized overall garments fixing cables on street poles. My source told me they were staff of the National Power Authority (NPA) and that they have been given an October deadline for switching on the street lights. Many of the residents I interacted with expressed hope that this time round they will benefit from a social service that has long eluded them in spite of the district’s rich mineral deposits and not just another façade meant to score political goals.
But off course, many have reasons to be apprehensive if not suspicious, not least because of the timing of the project; elections are just around the corner coupled with the case of déjà-vu – the people saw a similar undertaking in November 2010 when they were promised by the former Energy Minister, Prof. Ogunlade Davidson that they will get light within three months of the commencement of the project. Two years have passed and that promise has not come to fruition. My friend, also a journalist, told me the political climate then is a bit different from what obtains now. And perhaps, he is right. With a president desperate for a second term in the face of an equally determined and resurgent opposition, coupled with the realization that Kono is a “swing district”, the government cannot afford to be defeated in that relatively small but vital constituency, which many political pundits believe is one of the two districts (the other being the capital, Freetown) that could tip the balance in favour of the winner.
And it would appear that the President’s decision to reappoint his vice president as running mate for the 17 November polls has been appreciated by a section of the Kono Community, if the crowd that rallied on 11 November for the All Peoples’ Congress (APC) nomination of its members of parliament is anything to go by. Whether that will translate into votes for the APC is another thing. ut it is also apparent that it is only out of the factor of ethnic identity that many in Kono are ready to support the vice president and by extension the APC party, given his huge baggage of high-profiled corruption scandals that has tarnished his good governance and accountability credentials coupled with the fact that the district has hitherto not really benefited from the government’s so-called “infrastructural development” projects. Among other indicators, the “terrible” road to Kono, the shambolic condition of the government hospital and the general decadent state of the city are cases in point to substantiate the latter point in my assertion.
But Kono is also lacking in many aspects from my observation during my four night stay there. For instance, the standard of education in that district is nothing to write home about. A source working with an international NGO told me that conditions for attracting primary school teachers (trained within the district through a distance learning project) is nonexistent. He said that was because they would work as volunteers until they lose patience and migrate in search of greener pastures. In fact, I’m told that not a single primary school teacher in the entire Kono District was approved by the Ministry of Education throughout the five years of APC rule. In addition, my source said only a handful of secondary school teachers were recruited (under replacement) to serve the growing enrollment of pupils in secondary schools across the district. “The Education Minister has spent all the five years in chasing verifying teachers”, my cousin, also a primary school teacher lamented to me.
Further, the health service in district’s main hospital in Koidu is both a sham and a shame. While officials acknowledged that drugs are available in the stores, the patients grumbled that they don’t receive medicines from the nurses. Also, the on-going rehabilitation of the hospital is a complete façade due to substandard job done by the contractor. For instance, there is section in the hospital called the “Maternity Complex” which roof is leaking. And standing on the corridor, one can actually see that one of the CI sheets has already given way. In addition, the mortuary is totally useless. The grass around the building is enough evidence that the building is not utilized because the hospital lacks the wherewithal to preserve corpses. When my uncle died in early May this year, we had to burry him in haste because his corpse could not be preserve.
Telecommunications service is another serious headache for the people in Kono. While it is common knowledge that the unreliable nature of the airtel network is driving people nuts across the country, the challenges of running an efficient telecommunications service in Kono cuts across all the mobile phone companies. For instance, on the better part of the morning of 10 October, people in that district using different services found it difficult to communicate via mobile phones. In fact the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation in Kono had to announce that the interactive segment of its morning show had been cancelled because there were no lines. And I was told that was usually the case whenever it rained.
To put my point in a nutshell, Kono District has really not benefitted from the two major political parties that have dominated the political landscape since independence. After ten years of SLPP rule and five years of APC governance, (with the Vice President and First Lady as part of the latter) the district has continued to wallow in abject poverty despite its rich mineral deposits.
