Sierra Leone economy before April 4, 2018, was on a sound footing with stable monetary situation and good standard of living. It took a nosedive during the last five years under former President Julius Maada Bio. His rule was plagued with high inflationary trends, monetary instability and economic vulnerability due to bloated public expenditures by the government, leading to a nonworking economy.
The situation left behind by Bio is still occasioned by high taxes, dwindling rate of the Leone in the foreign-exchange market, weak and shrinking GDP, unproductive bloated wage bill, hike in prices of food and other essential commodities, rising cost of production and shortage in supply of essential needs of the society.
These negative and woeful economic indicators under the 5-year rule of Bio have caused inflation to go through the roof, hitting a record high of 43.8%, and leading to excruciating hardship and extreme poverty for Sierra Leoneans and the nation.
No wonder the latest Human Development Index Report by the UN rates Sierra Leone as the second poorest nation in the world – a land of milk and honey, a land of gold and diamonds, of arable agricultural land, and of enviable sea and rivers awash with precious fishes and other seafood!
The damaged economy left behind by Bio is also impacting negatively on the supplies of goods and services and cost of food to a point that 50kg bag of rice costs seven hundred new Leones.
The inflationary conditions in Sierra Leone are also affecting sectors ranging from housing to utility bills, healthcare, public transportation, energy, water and others, which can be hardly forgotten by Sierra Leoneans.
The reversal to the current trends surfaced when the then opposition SLPP frontrunner for the 2018 elections, Julius Maada Bio, was declared winner and duly elected president of the country, by the one-time National Electoral Commission’s Chairman, Mohamed Nfa Alie Conteh, following the presidential run-off.
It is ironic that the Paopa-Salone-go-better rule of Bio instead brought unprecedented hardship for Sierra Leoneans and dashed many hopes and aspirations, by way of reversing so many gains made in the last twenty years or so by his predecessors to the point of killing thousands of livelihoods, if not millions.
These are all caused by bad fiscal policies and wrong financial and economic management in the last five years by the Bio regime.
The Bio regime has systematically destroyed Sierra Leone’s economy to the extent that even the transformative national development trajectory left by the ten-year rule of former president Dr Ernest Bai Koroma has been misdirected to doom.
Koroma’s APC administration’s Agenda for Change and Agenda for Prosperity have all been reversed by the incompetent Bio rule due to wasteful spending, divisive rule and identity politics.
Memories of Wednesday 4 April recently returned to Sierra Leone as Bio’s 5 years of failure and misrule came to a dim end under an administration that raised hopes and aspirations of better livelihoods with their New Direction campaign manifesto.
Instead of holding true to their promise, the Bio-led SLPP administration ended up deceiving the people and shifting blame with unending excuses about everything including the national economy they looted and have left in shambles.
Hence the much-needed fiscal, economic and political governance and a host of other reforms should be taken up to address the problems Bio has left behind. The nation is today grappling with hyperinflation, poor financial and fiscal management, high cost of living, direct foreign investments, foreign exchange rates against the dying Leone and other economic challenges that have been affecting the people. All these Bio promised to fix but failed in doing so.
Sierra Leone economy in the last five years under the Bio regime is not worthy of celebration though it formed part of his legacies of bad governance.
And questions trending on the lips of every Sierra Leonean now are that who runs the broken caretaker economy left behind by Bio? Who is exactly in charge of the caretaker government business? There are concerns that really required legitimate answers from duty bearers for clear public understanding of the next direction after a five-year misrule and bad governance of Bio. Is it the man himself, former President Bio? Or his wife, the former co-president Mrs Fatima Bio? Or the erstwhile Hon Vice President Dr Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh? The outgoing Speaker of the House of Parliament of Sierra Leone, Dr Abass Chernor Bundu et al?
The public is eager to know the nexus of the leader of the main opposition APC, Dr Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara, the leader of the NGC’s Dr Kandeh Kolleh Yumkela, the C4C leader, Saa Emerson Lamina Hon, the Inspector General of the Sierra Leone Police, William Fayia Sellu, and the Chief of Defence Staff of the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces, are with the current custodian regime?
FORUM too and its readers are eager to know how critical the highly discredited leadership of Mohamed Kenewui Konneh of the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone, and Abdulai M. Bangurah of the Political Parties’ Regulations Commission are pivotal in the running of the affairs of the caretaker administration, considering how ECSL and the PPRC have mortgaged their neutralities and keep playing to the dictates and satisfaction of the ruling SLPP and former President Bio.
One needs to be very much certain about who does what now moving forward into the elections for good.
These influential players and the public institutions they manned especially in the management of the country’s governance and electoral situation are highly expected to be neutral, independent and credible and objective in the discharge of their respective responsibilities.
Others are however required to serve as very strong caretakers in handling the affairs of the state, in circumstances wherein former President Bio is now off stage until the outcome of the June 24 polls determines who is next.
With the existing situation occasioned by hyperinflation and economic challenges, the emerging electioneering and campaign activities are not expected to be micromanaged by police and security interruptions with orders from above. All players in the tightly regulated democratic contest are thus expected to participate fully without any interruption by the incumbent and regime security personnel. The more reasons the security forces including the SLP, RSLAF, ECSL, PPRC and other key players in the process are expected to remain neutral in the performance of their responsibilities to avoid taking orders from above.
Unlike past elections, the June 24 polls can be hardly discussed without touching on trending economic challenges the masses are going through now, caused by the wasteful spending by former President Bio and his bunch of liabilities. Much was expected from Bio and the SLPP manifesto promises but their blueprint failed the nation. All expectations anchored on Bio for the betterment of the country were dashed due to his leadership failures.
Little did most people know that promises made by the Bio administration were not pro-people but mere self-centred jokes that have enriched him, his wife and their close allies.
To the shocks of their followers, most of the Bio-led SLPP policies didn’t even affect ruling class supporters, their south and easterner admirers – communities the SLPP claimed to have invested in so much.
Bio and the New Direction gimmicks came in with deceitful sloganeering such as ‘Paopa Salone go betteh’ meaning, ‘Sierra Leone will prosper by all means, ‘talk and do’ a slogan stolen from former President Koroma, along with dozens of other fake promises of providing better solutions to the national economy and job creations. Those vows were not met in the last five-year misrule of the SLPP, and nothing change except the Bio legacy of over 43.8% inflation, high cost of living, imposed poverty and gross human rights violations. Retrogressions for which Julius Maada Bio’s leadership can be always remembered by Sierra Leoneans.
Rather, the standard of living of the people has even gone worse than they were before 4 April 2018. And things have in fact graduated from bad to worse in all sectors, with a huge negative magnitude of plunging Sierra Leone into a complete financial and economic crisis.
The problems of the inflationary trend, occasioned by high public expenditure, hike in foreign exchange rates which led to the closure and collapse of so many investments, have scared potential foreign investments from the country.
These are not what Sierra Leoneans voted in President Bio for in 2018, as everybody thought he would provide the anticipated servant leadership to fix the national economy. Sadly, though he couldn’t and told the world that there is nothing (he) Bio could do about the poor economic situation and high cost of living in the country, a situation that warranted Sierra Leoneans to organise a peaceful protest on 10 August 2022, which turned out to be a bloodbath that led to the deaths of dozens of people including civilians and policer personnel. The peaceful citizens were only calling on government to address the economic hardship but were gunned down by security forces. And the poor economic situation dragged onto the last hours of Bio’s term of office. That is certainly no leadership, Bio failed to provide the required leadership he promised to provide in 2018.
And the hyperinflation, gross human rights violations, fiscal and financial mismanagement of public expenditures, wasteful spendings state resources, tribal, regional, divisive and identity politics, backed by imposed poverty among others are some of the achievements Julius Maada Bio and the SLPP can boast of and point at as legacies.
