Grand Corruption is by senior government officials and political heads of government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies – where hundreds, sometimes, millions of dollars, of the people’s money put through government by the people to these officials to manage… would be STOLEN (tiff‼️‼️) by them.
The other corruption is “petty corruption” – stealing of Le20,000 to Le50,000 as bribes, or selling of medicines or grades by the policeman and policewoman; nurses; teachers, drivers, etc.
Those who engage in Grand Corruption have created a system wherein ordinary government workers are paid between Le700,000 and Le1,500,000 monthly. It is almost impossible for nearly all of them to live on such pay. A government worker at Youyi Building in Brookfields, for example, or a teacher at a government school in Lumley in Freetown… both living at Wellington in Freetown, would have to spend about Le400,000 just on transportation every month.
If he has two children attending school, they would have to spend about the same sum monthly. We have not counted the cost of food, medicine, rent, clothes… With the salary of the low-level government worker not even adequate to cover his expenses for food and transportation and medicines, he would be suicidal – and he would implicitly murder his children – if he does not take advantage of corruption in his government agency. And also, for those government workers in the provinces, they would not be paid for three months straight. (I have reliablly learned that some contractual workers for COVID-19 in the NARCORVEC agency in the provinces have not been paid for three months straight).
What would the teacher or the nurse or court clerk do? Get corrupt. Or, commit suicide slowly if he is honest. A couple of months ago, during the countrywide Meet-the-People tour by Anti-Corruption Commissioner, Ben Kaifala, he was confronted again and again during public meetings by this conundrum of ordinary government workers almost being compelled to be corrupt – because they would not be paid for three straight months. Ben Kaifala called it “CORRUPTION RISK”. The law establishing the ACC gives Ben Kaifala no power to address CORRUPTION RISK – but the law mandates the ACC to investigate, indict; have prosecuted and convicted a driver earning Le600,000. The law should not be sentimental.
Subconsciously, because too many of our nurses, teachers, court clerks… daily engage in petty corruption that would gain them about Le2,000,000 monthly just to survive, they lose the moral authority to be outraged or to denounce those senior government officials or politicians immersed in Grand Corruption and stealing about Le3billion every year. Except we educate the ordinary people who are the victims of Grand Corruption to induce Parliament to overhaul the governance systems of Sierra Leone, we would just be deferring the implosion of our economy, and the explosion of another civil war. For Grand Corruption and petty corruption is not only like tapeworm in the stomach, it is also a Ticking Time Bomb.
If the educated elite in government think the few hundred thousand dollars they steal, and the one or two houses they built, would protect them and their children from being collateral damage when Sierra Leone explodes as the ‘Corruption-Ticking-Time-Bomb’ is detonated, they fool themselves; they have learned nothing from the 12 year old child combatants who recklessly murdered, and coldbloodedly amputated, men, women, and children during our civil war years between 1991 and 2002. They have learned nothing from global history. The people would always rise against an insensitive and selfish elite.
The logic of Grand Corruption, the propellant of Grand Corruption, is “Political Tribalism”. But, that’s another piece.
I pause,
Oswald Hanciles, The Guru
