By Kabs Kanu
As if to add insult to injury after stealing the elections, defying all international stakeholder condemnation, and imposing himself on the people, now President Maada Bio has gone on and appointed the most over- bloated government in the history of our nation.
This President is deaf like an adder to the clamours of the people. At such a very dire time when the Sierra Leone economy is slowly sliding into a coma, where does this president hope to have the money to pay all these multitudes of ministers, their deputies and other appointees?
That in the midst of all the condemnation of his electoral shenanigans and self- imposition on the people, President Bio will go on and create more ministries, ridiculously split other ministries and open more positions –All to please his cronies, bootlickers, acolytes and tribemates–show what Bio thinks about our country and its economy. It is just a honeycomb to be sucked dry by him and his greedy SLPP cronies. Why not? The Consolidated Fund is his private property, and he raids and empties it as it pleases him. This is a president that has nothing like accountability and economic frugality in his mantra. Everything is done to satiate his megalomanic desires and ambitions. A wrongheaded man that nobody can advise, Bio is doing whatever he pleases now. After all, by a demonic dint of luck, he is getting away with everything.
President Bio had the wasteful effrontery to divide the ministry of information and communication into two —-ministry of information and civic education and ministry of communication, technology, and innovation. Though we have a resident minister of the Northwest, Bio also has a minister of the western region. Also, Bio created the office of presidential initiative for climate change, renewable energy and food security to reward the aimless ‘nearly man’, Kandeh Yumkella but he still also appointed a minister of environment and climate change and a minister of agriculture and food security, all with deputy ministers of course. How can somebody be so economically wasteful with his country’s meagre resources?
In all, President Bio has 26 additional ministers; 26 additional deputy ministers and 10 additional presidential appointments and he is not done yet, we have been told. He has not even appointed ambassadors and foreign diplomats yet and according to reports, he is going to open more embassies and foreign missions. What a profligate and wasteful president! He does not care a tinker’s dam for the economy or the welfare of the people, who will suffer because of his exorbitant spending on useless government officials.
Nobody knows where President Bio is going to get the money to pay all these ministers, their deputies and ambassadors and diplomats, plus their benefits and other emoluments, with the economy teetering on the brink of collapse. The president is very thoughtless and reckless. Is he going to borrow more money from the IMF and World Bank and overburden future generations of this country with more debts? Is that the legacy he cares to leave?
With such an over- bloated government to run, how much will President Bio allocate to essential services like the economy, health, food security and education? Everybody in the country is complaining about the terrible economy, the escalating prices of food items and basic commodities; the crumbling health care delivery services and government’s failure to deliver free and quality education, with failed promises and parents overburdened with multitudinous expenses to keep their children in school.
What about infrastructural developments? They are very essential. We need good roads, bridges, drainage systems, decent building and better school and hospital buildings to replace dilapidated ones. Unlike President Ernest Bai Koroma, President Bio is the worst head of state for infrastructural developments. Now, the situation will only get worse.
God help Sierra Leone if this is the president, we are going to have for another five years.
Economic doom is all we can hope for, when you factor in his other lavish and white elephant agendas, including his wasteful, excessive travels and inordinate and unchecked corruption.
