Less than three months after his still disputed elections victory that has the nation’s economy in a spin, things have gotten worse in terms of the prices of goods and services, thus increasing hardship and suffering, that the people of Sierra Leone have taken note that things will only get worse going forward. The prices of goods and services that were up to seven times their pre-2018 levels have all shot up. The exchange rate between the leone and many leading currencies has also gone up. Less than three months after 24 June, the price of fuel has gone up twice, which last went from Le21 to Le30.
The three months mark that the nation was told would be enough to fix the economic issues from 2018 to 2023, in a promise by former minister of finance and the chief ministry ‘JJ Blood’ Jusu Saffa, will be reached this week. Yet the prices of goods and services in these past two months are higher and harder to provide for than they were for the whole first term under president Bio and the SLPP. 
At present there is no word from Bio and his new finance guy when they will be able to arrest and address our economic situation that has been further exacerbated by the sanctions being imposed on our government because of the stolen elections mandate that the executive is operation on.
It must be recalled that in the heat of the 2018 elections campaign, when the New Direction kleptocracy was still a united force, spewing what we now know as mere rhetoric, boasted that they can fix the nation’s economic woes in under six months, if given the helm.
The ‘tok en do’ people then considered fixing the economy the least of their worries. They convinced a mostly uneducated and illiterate people that they can fix our economy if and only if we address the issue of public corruption, with people treating the nation’s money with levity.
They talked a good game with their plans to fight corruption and financial leakages, which they blamed for our then economic situation. It was concluded; after a hefty document was produced by the Governance Transition Team that described the previous regime as a ‘criminal racketeering enterprise’ whose grand scale theft of the public’s money was the reason the nation couldn’t handle the financial mess, that if we fix public corruption, we can fix the economy.
SLPP then reckoned they had a formidable team of finance and people with background in economics to sort out the economic mess they claimed to have inherited. They boasted JJ Blood, his deputies, the financial secretary, and even a professor at the Bank of Sierra Leone. Fixing the economy was going to be a walk in the park. Prices were going to be reversed to pre Ernest Bai Koroma times.
Sadly two years after the 2018 election that can in retrospection only be described as a stage managed regime change, the first minister of finance, Jacob Jusu Saffa (JJ Blood) openly admitted that they could not fix the economy. JJ Blood gave us some reasons for the then situation including an over bloated government wage bill due to the many people and new ministries, departments and agencies hired and formed without the money to meet their wages, but failed to mention the scale of public theft under their administration, including the excessive and mainly unnecessary travelling by the first couple and their entourage, even to places and events the executive could have had a shoe in, especially people he hired to handle such events. It was speculated that such trips became necessary to stash stolen public money in such offshore locations. Fixing the economy was much difficult than they had thought because they never factored into their plans how to tackle internal corruption, when the focus was on the previous regime.
The reason the SLPP and president Bio, the three ministers of finance and the Bank Governor failed to fix the economy, what they have failed to tell us is that between 2018 and 2020, the grandest and most systemic organised crime happened under the watchful gaze of the Anti- Corruption Commission, which commissioner took it upon his commission to explain away the actions of people entrusted with public money, with no talk of investigating them.
The ACC and the Fifth Parliament failed to respectively act on and debate all the Auditor General’s reports from 2018 onwards that show massive levels of public malfeasance. By their audits, the nation’s supreme auditing agency – Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL), has shown that our situation continues to worsen because of the continuation of the corruption regime the SLPP had said they would fix.
While APCians were being chased to give up the loot and properties they illegally acquired (many such monies were paid and properties including those of the dead were all confiscated and forfeited to the state), New Direction saw a window to exploit the masses while their attention was drawn to the courtroom and other dramas that ensued with people being invited for investigations at the ACC.
Complicit in this are former Chief Minister David Francis, the author of that damning GTT report on the previous regime, the Offices of the President, first lady and Vice President, Parliament and many others, who were supposed to lead the assault on public theft to save the nation’s economy.
Sensing that they had lost the fight to fix the economy, especially after hundreds of millions of dollars flowed into the economy due to support nations like us received during the global COVID-19 pandemic, a shuffle was necessary to save face. David Francis and Jusu and others were shuffled to other MDAs.
Meanwhile, that didn’t fix the problem because the root cause, corruption and financial leakages, continue to get worse. That was why despite us having three ministers of finance and a Bank Governor in a professor that ended up quitting his work citing the very corruption that Paopa was preaching against, the economy performed worse than it had under the criminal racketeering enterprise headed by Ernest Bai Koroma. By elections time 2023, the prices of what the nation needs the most climbed more than seven times their pre-2018 levels, with the US dollar rising more than fourfold.
We all know that all these resulted to widespread complaints of hardships which forced many into protesting that ended in the killings of protesting and armless civilians, curfews and the start of a police state, all aimed at keeping the people from protesting against corruption, high prices, violence from the state, and wanting a new regime at State House.
As the 2023 election time approached, the SLPP, sensing that the people from all across including their supports in their southeastern heartlands, had planned on unseating them, that regime that had not accomplished anything they promised in 2018 started saying that they will need more time to fix the economy, citing accomplishments that are still questionable, going as far as saying that the accomplished all they set out in their 2018 manifesto.
If they had accomplished all their 2018 manifesto promises then why was and is the economy still a mess?
Also sensing that their promises were catching up to them, Mr Bio and his team started saying that even if we were to have 10 ministers of finance, ‘we cannot fix the economy’. That should have been the nail to the SLPP and incumbent’s coffin had the people of Sierra Leone been looking through nationalistic instead of partisan lenses.
The question should have been: ‘If you can’t fix the economy then what are you useful for as a government?’
The economy would have been fixed had we had a free, fair and credible 24 June elections process. If the executive had not stolen the people’s mandate, investor and donor support confidence would have been restored and Dr Samura Kamara, who those that tallied the elections results from across the country claim to have won the 24 June vote (a second round was not possible to avoid as neither leading candidate had the required threshold to offset such), would have been allowed to do what a doctor of economics does to an ailing economy like ours: fix it!
This was and still is the only solution to our economic problem: getting rid of the albatross hanging on our collective necks as a nation and people.
Meanwhile, three months into Mr Bio’s much disputed electoral victory second term regime, we are still unable to fix the economy. The prices of goods and services, going by how they rose between 2018 and 2023, will rise a further seven fold if we allow this situation of failing to address the 24 June elections to continue while Bio slowly completes his disputed, and from their admission that they can’t fix the economy, and seriously unnecessary second term.
Lonta!
