Our Head of State Julius Maada Bio reminds me of the fabled man in Abraham Lincoln’s fable who “murdered both his parents, and then, when sentence was about to be pronounced, pleaded for mercy because he was an orphan”. The bottom line: a man who appears to be a hypocrite full of hypocritical hypocrisies! President Bio’s newfound pastime of going overseas to give meaningless “paid-for” public lectures, at some prestigious universities mainly in the United States of America and Britain, when the majority of his compatriots are starving could be compared to Nero, the immoral and unpopular Roman emperor, who allegedly played the fiddle while Rome was burning. (Photo: Maada Bio is a fake politician).

Instead of him staying at home and try to make things better for the majority of starving Sierra Leoneans; our Commander-in-Chief seems to be now more concerned about his globetrotting public lectures to give international audiences the impression of him being a man of intellect! I am still wondering what benefit a public lecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for African Studies will have on the dining tables and in the pockets of ordinary Sierra Leoneans. Considering the thousands of dollars used to charter the flight, the thousands of dollars doled out as per diem to the “President’s men” and other accompanying hangers-on, the thousands of dollars wasted on hotel bills, and the thousands of dollars wasted on the public lecture itself; it seems to me that fiscal recklessness has reached a new level of recklessness in the Bio-led administration!

Of what benefit will such a public lecture be to ordinary Sierra Leoneans and the economy of Sierra Leone in totality? Should such monies be wasted on a meaningless public lecture while the majority of Sierra Leoneans are struggling to put bread and rice on their tables? Shouldn’t such financial leakages (previous public lectures and other meaningless presidential overseas travels) be plugged so as to try to service the unpaid debt of around US$40 million owed to Turkey’s Karpowership which has repeatedly threatened to switch off electricity supply to Freetown if the Government of Sierra Leone still wants to be a perpetual debtor? As I see it, one of the reasons why Sierra Leone is in the current state of affairs is simply because President Bio doesn’t seem to have the knack for prioritizing his priorities!

What is actually humorous about President Bio’s latest seemingly dollars-wasting intellectual adventure is the sort of Stop Press (so to speak in my journalese) put out by Mohamed Massaquoi, the Press Attaché at Sierra Leone’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. He writes that the event in Pennsylvania “which is to be held at the Perry World House, will provide a platform for President Bio to share his contribution to, and lessons learned in democratic governance, transformational politics and inclusive development…with a focus on the Sierra Leone experience….As committed democrat and people-centric leader, [he] has demonstrated a strong commitment to promoting good governance, human rights, and sustainable development in Sierra Leone”.

From the above, and knowing who and what President Bio and his government really are, it seems to me that the “President’s men” are on massive public relations campaigns to do some amount of international image-laundering for, and on, their “Principal”. Even those Sierra Leoneans who danced and “beat pot coba” in wild jubilations in June last year, after Mohamed Konneh had announced his seemingly “electoral coup”, will now respectfully disagree with the epithet of President Bio being a “committed democrat” who has “demonstrated a strong commitment to promoting good governance, human rights, and sustainable development in Sierra Leone”. My point, and the fact, is: no matter how best a beautician tries to manicure, lipstick, and dress a sow in a royal frock complete with Lady Gaga-like shoes; it will still be a pig as her piggishness will always be seen whenever she goes back to the pigsty!

Since he ascended the Seat of State in 2018 to date, President Bio has consistently been trying to create a persona of himself which he seems not to be—and might never be! He starts off by presenting himself as someone who hates corruption and corrupt practices in all their shapes and forms by going after the so-called “Ayampi” of the past government of the All People’s Congress (APC). But, sadly, he too is still carrying the baggage of an “Ayampi” through the allegations by former President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah that he allegedly stole from the national treasury and stashed the loot in a bank overseas when he was military Head of State in the 1990s. And while he has been carrying the moniker of being “the Father of Democracy”, his wife is reported to have allegedly shattered that shiny armour by claiming that President Bio has “a PhD in coups”!

So, in simple language, a man who stands accused of stealing by someone who was once head of the political party he now leads shouldn’t have the moral right to accuse others of stealing. And a man who was part of a group of soldiers who murdered multi-party democracy in 1992, when the late Joseph Saidu Momoh was trying to midwife it by commissioning the current 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone, shouldn’t be going overseas to give public lectures on the tenets of democracy. It is like Ali Baba preaching against counter-thieving or one of the sons of General Sani Abacha trying to argue that democracy was ushered in Nigeria through their father’s death!

What I have noticed in all of these seemingly desperate international image-laundering campaigns by President Bio and his men is the fact that they are at pains to rewrite the history of Sierra Leone. But it seems to me that such attempts at rewriting our country’s history could be likened to remnants of the Nazi regime trying to take some credits for the Marshal Plan! Nevertheless, one thing I hate to love about President Bio is the fact that he has been constantly trying to reinvent himself. From one of the coup-plotters who overthrew the Momoh Government to a coup executioner who toppled Captain Valentine Strasser in a palace coup; from someone once accused of corruption by ex-President Kabbah to a modern day anti-corruption fighter, and from a re-brander of Sierra Leone to a guest lecturer! Surely and truly, and indeed, President Bio is metamorphosing. Would it now be appropriate to start calling him Lecturer Bio?

Courtesy: Mohamed Sankoh aka One Drop [email protected]/+232-76-611-986; https://nationalistsl.com

CULLED FROM THE ORGANIZER NEWSPAPER BY ABU SHAW