Jimmy Bangalie.
Retired Brigadier Maada Bio, President of the Republic of Sierra Leone (my Bonthe Brother, who is an indigene of Bonthe District like me; who could be biologically related to me, because my father’s mother, my paternal grandmother, hailed from the Bonthe District area which is the President’s homeland, Tihun) has yet to prove that he is “well-meaning” and “robust” – in proportion to the enormous challenges of the socioeconomic situation he inherited in 2018; a situation which had festered since the 1980s; has not proven yet he is a statesman of the stature of Paul Kagame of Rwanda; Jerry Rawlings of Ghana; Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore.
If Retired Brigadier Maada Bio has been “robust”, he would have:
1. Sustained his sporadic monitoring of government offices which he started with in 2018; and he would have completely overhauled the civil service and public sector to eradicate the suicidal mediocrity there, and enshrine meritocracy.
What he has done rather has been to perpetuate the 50 years political ethos of the political elite and bureaucratic elite: “Nar we yone tehm for chop”.
2. When President Bio was campaigning to be elected President, he said top of his agenda would be to harness the human resources of the country. As President, his idea of harnessing the human resources of the country has been to appoint into well-paid government jobs his SLPP partisans he was beholden to; to appoint cronies into senior government positions; to appoint those not from opposition strongholds who can help lie to their own ethnic and regional people that their lives would be made better by his presidency. And even when some of these appointees have clearly failed to perform, he has sentimentally kept them in office.
3. What President Bio is fixated on is winning a second term and not on sustainable development.
4. Surrounded by praise singers, the President has blocked his ears to Patriots and Thinkers, and widened and deepened the political chasm in the country between the Mende-speaking Southeast and Temne-speaking Northwest blocks. Where is that sterile commission for national cohesion established by President Bio?
What the President urgently and desperately need – and the SLPP as a political party more so – are well-educated (not mere possessors or higher academic credentials); professionals with vast experience and proven track records (not classroom doctorate degree holders learning on the job to manage ministries); courageous men with the balls to fight for the country, and speak the truth to the President.
I have hope that the President will listen to me, and others like me.
Please never forget this: according to the National Medium Term Development Plan put out by the Bio Administration in 2019, 42% of our population are below 15 years of age. Children. Not of working age. When they are hungry, they demand food. Immediately. They won’t eat political propaganda!! If the agriculture minister has not stimulated conditions for cheap and affordable food in four years, why keep him in office because he is your friend? A well meaning President would not allow millions of children to be hungry because he rationalize his friend maintaining his job as agriculture minister .
I am pro-Bio. Don’t attack me O!! ‘Bio nar me Bonthe small broda’. Tradition demands I tell him the truth. The praise singers of the SLPP will sing sweet songs to Bio, but they endanger the SLPP post-Bio.
More later.
I pause,
Oswald Hanciles, The Guru
+232-76-757634.
November 17, 2022
07:17 hours in Freetown, Sierra Leone
