By Umaru Fofana
How many of you, may be us, still remember the date on which the first round of the 2007 elections happened? Please be honest and do not read this piece any further until you have quizzed yourself and have come up with an answer, however wrong.
Please still keep your eyes off this article? Any date yet? Did you say 17 or 18 September? No that was the date of the announcement of the final runoff results. Any more dates? Anyway voting took place on 11 August 2007. You are not alone in the struggle to come up with the correct date if you do not already know it. I had to do some research myself after some of my expert data journalist colleagues including Kelvin Lewis could not help me at the spur of the moment.
Anyway … On the morning after the night before (Sunday 12 August), I received a call from the then opposition leader Ernest Bai Koroma. I was in Bo where I had gone to cover the election for the BBC. “Hello Honourable” I answered the opposition leader’s call. Incidentally he had been a Member of Parliament up to those elections. I was obviously expecting a scoop.
“It seems it is all clear and we have won eh?” he said. Never mind the question mark, he sounded more emphatic than inquisitive. I could hear a tinge of smile and bullishness in his voice. I replied that votes were still being tallied and that we needed to give ourselves some time to get a clearer and factual picture of the situation. And from the mood in Bo on that day, I could tell the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party were in trouble and were staring at defeat in the face. By Koroma’s reckoning was that a runoff poll was unlikely. I said to him that he was in the lead but an outright win was unlikely. He sounded circumspect.
Even in opposition such was the way the All People’s Congress were well organised, at least on that front of getting in the results, that from the way Koroma sounded you could tell he had his eyes beyond the mountains.
Of course Koroma’s challenger had and still does have a different narrative of events. In his memoir, to be launched today, which I finished reading yesterday Solomon Berewa has a different take on events. He did not lose at the polls, he still maintains in his book. But I am not at liberty to say anything beyond that until after the book launch lest I should betray the trust under which I was given a copy before today’s event when it will be officially out.
Whatever the difference in perspective, it is interesting how sides have switched from that time. It is common these days to hear people on radio, or read them in newspapers, eulogising President Ernest Bai Koroma with some saying he is the best thing to have ever happened to Sierra Leone. They could have said so about Berewa if Koroma had lost in 2007. Some have even called Koroma “Messiah” and some will go to the blasphemous length of referring to him as the closest there exists to God perhaps after Jesus and Muhammad. Of course they would have said so about Berewa if he had won. Religious leaders kowtow before him and tell lies to please him. Journalists praise-sing Koroma and deride all others to get his attention. I bet my life they would not have said so about him if he had lost in 2007. Some of those who voted for him even deify him and do outrageous things to gain his favour. To all of them, Koroma is infallible and saintly.
All of that is a feeling engendered by sycophancy. And that if allowed to sink into the head of any leader as it seems to be being taken in by President Koroma in that he is compensating them or not discouraging them, it is the quickest and surest way to self-destruction.
I wonder whether president Koroma sits down sometimes and realises that a good number of those who make him believe today that he is the best there has been and there ever will be, would have said the same thing about Solomon Berewa if Koroma had lost in 2007. Among his recently sacked ministers was someone who had almost secured a symbol to run for parliament for the Sierra Leone People’s Party in 2007. Everybody who has been following Sierra Leonean politics knows that former minister.
Among those journalists who today see him as God’s best friend on earth are those who chastised their own colleagues in the past because they were either independent or were deemed supportive of the very Koroma. The president must be naïve, at best, to ever think that those who hover over him like flies over excreta are really genuinely his admirers or even disciples. They would have said worse about him had he lost the election in 2007.
If President Koroma had lost the 2007 election he would have been in far more oblivion that Berewa is in today with most of those drumming his praise now trumpeting his derision and even referring to him as one of the closest there is to Satan in Sierra Leone. Koroma’s business would have slumped because we know that it was already on a shoe string. Rokel Leaf Tobacco would have been bought over by someone else. His insurance company, RITCORP, which seems to be attracting all insurers today including government, would still be in that cocoon and not in the state of the art manse it now owns.
When I interviewed President Koroma shortly after declaring his assets in 2009, he would not say how much they were worth. When I pushed him and suggested whether they were in tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of US dollars, I still have a record of what his answer was. That must have shot through the skies now, four years on.
Some civil servants who are stealing the country’s resources and trying to hide under the cloak of making the president believe that they are his tribes people or supporters if only to be protected even if at the expense of the nation were the same who would be deriding the man called Ernest Bai Koroma if he had lost in 2007, if only to let their selfish desires flourish.
Some members of the national electoral commission who today want Koroma to think he won the fairest election ever conducted in Sierra Leone in 2007 would have said the same thing about Berewa had he been declared the winner even if the figures had been finagled.
These, among other things, are exactly reasons why President Koroma must not allow himself to continue being drunken by sycophants and their utterances. He must learn to respect and appreciate those who say the unpleasant things about him or his administration or his policies and learn to respect them. I refer him to Bob Woodward’s book, SHADOWS.
Now if Koroma allows the continued deification of him, the APC party will demise in part because of that. It will be so difficult for anyone else to stand on their own merit in the 2018 presidential election that he will always be seen in their shadows. He will get so intoxicated that he will want to determine who succeeds him. I know the president will read Berewa’s memoir and he should pay special attention to Tejan Kabbah’s dogged determination to determine the next president and the next vice president after his vice president.
Now there is an internal and hitherto latent struggle for the soul of the APC party. Koroma’s recently recycled cabinet would suggest that the Port Loko wing that had been clipped off midway through his first term has been re-established. The Makeni faction is displeased. The dismissal of perhaps the most powerful man in his first cabinet, IB Kargbo, has left a bitter pill in the mouths of many who are still struggling with whether to spit it out or keep it in the mouth until some sweetener comes in. if at all.
Alpha Kanu, who has replaced Kargbo and seems to be riding high in positions of power, is from the Port Loko wing of the party. Kemoh Sesay who was sacked after the cocaine saga was brought back last year as presidential adviser and now as a cabinet minister is from the Port Loko wing. He and Kanu have had no love lost. Whether this is an attempt at saving the Port Loko sould of the party and keeping the possible re-emergence of PDP-Sorbeh is still being analysed. Obviously there was something cooking on the Port Loko end of the party. I would seem that fire has not been put out. It has only been transferred to another kitchen. One of the best ways President Koroma meanders his way around this apparent maze will depend greatly on how he discourages sycophants and praise-singers and realises that if he had lost in 2007, the winner would be being eulogised probably more than he is being.
Just a piece of advice, Mr President, from someone you always saw as a good friend of yours when you were in the opposition. In actual fact just a conscionable compatriot of yours, and a friend of ordinary Sierra Leoneans, who likes speaking truth to power. Just as you proved me right on that morning of the 20 August 2007, so you may prove me right by early 2018.
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PATHWAYS TO DEVELOPMENT – What We Know and Don’t Know -
…It’s not only about growth and development
Development is about improving people’s lives through economic, social, political and technological change. it is a transformation that certainly requires incomes to grow but it is also about reducing poverty and inequality, building individual skills, having access to social services and raising the quality of life. Economic growth and development both depend on distributive politics ( which is absent in the agenda of Sierra Leone’s Politics) how society deals with vested interests and social conflict – spur by inciting and treachery media programs and individuals such as Tam Mbayoh Monologue-. New priorities are emerging as development economics reviews its track record over the 20th century.
MIXED RESULTS
SIXTY YEARS of development experience tells us that the pathways to development are varied, guided by different visions, different strategies and different definition of progress ( not misguided visions as Tam Mbayoh whose ideology is based on spurious target and misguided arrows). If sustain growth is the measure, then progress has also been mixed. between 1990 and 2008, the developing economies have grown nearly twice as fast on average as the developed countries. But over the past decades, only a dozen countries have sustained their growth for twenty years or more because of frequent years or more because of frequent shocks, redistributive conflict and difficulty in sustaining reform efforts over time. The number of people in developing countries who live in absolute poverty (less than $i a day) dropped from 40% of the population in 1981 to 18% in 2004 (Courtesy of Ferreira and Ravallion 2008) the largest reduction have been in China and India, countries with high growth rates; the smallest countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (Sierra Leone). But inequality has been on the rise worldwide ( Courtesy of Ferreira and Ravallion, and Firebaugh and Goesling 2007). Clearly, the benefits of development have not yet reached the neediest.
MARKETS VERSUS STATE: A False Dichotomy
OVER THE PAST SEVERAL DECADES, economic theories have espouse various systems of resource allocation, ranging from free market to state intervention and centrally-palnned systems. The collapse of the Soviet and various crisis in other state-controlled economies in the 1990s ( such as Sierra Leone’s Civil Unrest) prompted development thinkers to return to the Washington Consensus with its policies of economic liberalization, privatization and micro-economic stabilization programs. This yielded mixed results and considerable controversy. A number of countries, however, had successfully applied mixed models of government intervention in otherwise fundamentally market-based systems of resource allocation. Sierra Leone a typical case! There is an alternative pathway to
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economic development, describing a proactive role for the State in promoting selected industrial policies – a role that complements market mechanisms (which is a lost sheep in the Agenda for Prosperity) and compensates for negative externalities (Land lease, rent, etc to indigenes in the mining and extra extractive and multinational projects).
KEY SUCCESS FACTORS
WE KNOW that the upper middle and high income countries have grown mainly because they have become more productive.
Most researchers believes that sustained long-term growth is a function of the quality and quantity of the factors of production (labour. land, capital-entrepreneurship and energy) all of which contribute to total factor productivity (TFP). Successful developers have, to varying degrees, emphasized five objectives in their pursuit of growth, with a view to increasing total factor productivity:
• Creating Learning Economy that values skills, ideas and technology, and lays the foundations for domestic innovation. this includes the schooling and vocational training system, tertiary education, research by universities and public institutes and by domestic and foreign businesses ( As Africell Mobile Network in the Public Entrepreneurship public lectures for middle-class businesses), and the harnessing of digital information using state-of-the-art information and communication technology (ICT). Research has showed that labour productivity can be enhanced by investing in human capital and ICT.
• Stimulating Entrepreneurship and Organizational Efficiency. Where entrepreneurship is weak, innovation and technology adoption is slow. Entrepreneurship must be complemented by strong managerial skills to keep the business going and to make the best use of existing as well as frontier technology.
• Promoting Competition and Openness. Trade openness (as opposed to protectionism) is associated with higher growth and the adoption of new technologies. Public ownership, procurement rules, local regulations, and standards ( Acknowledgments to PRSU and The Anti-Corruption Commission), labour rules affecting entry and exist of firms and financial market constraints, can damped competition if they are not carefully designed or controlled. regional integration is enhanced by open borders and regional transport networks but the cost of doing business is a constraint.
• Building Effective Institutions. In complex modern economies, government must craft and institutional infrastructure to implement their long-term strategies (not the unnecessary
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• increase of ministerial positions which undermines the consolidation funds of Sierra Leone’s financial and capital markets). Institutions such as the legal system and governance mechanisms in the public and private sectors, need to consider both labour and the business community, and to strengthen the administrative capacities of the State to formulate and implements policies and service delivery programs. on that note, there is the need for creating land market as a means of transferring land from lower productivity farming to the higher productivity manufacturing and services sector. especially in densely populated countries.
• Managing Urban Systems That Take Advantage Of Agglomeration Economies and Positive Spillover Effects To Other Parts Of The Economy. Development relies increasingly on the urban sector which is much more productive and innovative than the primary or the rural sector. Urban populations will continue to grow and urban gross domestic product (GDP) already accounts for between 60 to 80 percent of total GDP. Industries gravitates to urban centres and there has been a correlation between urbanization and development. But, over the past years, feedback from different samples show that the composition of industrial production and the size of cities are interrelated and can raise productivity through agglomeration (a lot of different things gathered together, often in no particular order or arrangement) and scale economy.
…AND OTHERS CONSIDERATIONS
LONG-TERM SUSTAINABLE GROWTH and development also depends on other factor. Fir example, population growth is negatively correlated to per capita income levels and its growth across countries. one of the main challenges is to productively employ working age people. To do so requires public policies that invest in health, education, and labour thereby promoting more rapid economic growth. In contrast, the growth of aging-populations that is occurring in many countries places a burden on public budgets and curtail productivity. What are the best social safety nets for the elderly and the vulnerable?
Energy is another factor that affects sustainable ‘green’ growth. it shows that higher growth creates higher per capita energy consumption, which if unchecked could lead to higher carbon emissions and global warming. To reduce carbon emissions to zero over the next two decades, research and development spending on new technologies will have to increase fivefold, which in turn requires carbon pricing and perhaps some government funding to support research.
Although we know a great deal about the role of public budgets and finances in development, we can’t seem to avoid periodic fiscal and financial crisis. there are many questions that still need to be answered: what are the limits to globalization- that is, the free movement of capital, labour, goods and services across countries? what is the optimal regulation of finance? of Utilities? How does one manage economic booms and busts? What is the policy of economic booms and busts? What is the policy for affordable housing [Case: National Social Security and Trust (NASSIT) Sierra Leone)].
UNDERSTANDING THE SOCIOPOLITICAL LANDSCAPE IN SIERRA LEONE
EVERY GROWTH and development policy has an economic and social dimension. In my observation taking Sierra Leone into consideration, there is increasing recognition that institutional and political economy factors are central to economic development. Many problems of development result barriers to the adoption of new technologies ( Fiber Optic – which is still epileptic), lack of property rights over land ( one person owns over 40 to 50 acreage of land while the poor can’t have one piece of acreage – the advantage of steel over iron), labour and business ( underemployment vs. unemployment, and only the strong survive), and policies distorting prices and incentives.(more to think about). Typically policymakers introduce or maintain such policies to remain in power or enrich themselves, or because politically powerful elites oppose the entry of rivals, the introduction of new technologies, or improvement in the property rights of their workers or competitors.
Affluent individuals or groups, private firms, or oligarchs attempt to “capture the state”, that is, to shape the laws, public policies, rules, and regulations to their own advantage. This shaping may be done by private firms (African Minerals, ADDAX, London Mining, Avivit Mining, Lion’s Heart, Koidu Holdings Cape Lambert, to name but few etc), rich elites [ Hon. Alpha Khanu, Hon. Kemoh Sesay, Moseray Fadika, Hon. Samsumana, Keile, Egotistical and egocentric→ David Tam Mbayoh (Social pimp and Enemy of progress etc Who is David Tam Mbayoh? see below)], ethnic groups (Mende, Temne, Krio ) or the military. In Sierra Leone, where the State is highly captured, all or most of institutions may be affected: parliament, political parties, the executive including ministries and public enterprises, judicial courts, and key bureaucracies. Omega-Salone, assess participatory approaches to development and find out that decentralization of resources and more authority to local governments can lead to experimentation and innovation and, under the right conditions, improve welfare of the many and not only the few.
NOTE
The pathways to development are narrow and winding and all too often blocked by political obstacles. Successful development depends not only on good policies but also on domestic political dynamics that under ideal circumstances should be highly supportive or at least neutral.
Ω”Integrity comes from deep within”
Indeed, Integrity comes from deep within… Names mention on this note are by any form of malice, their names are mentioned. They should know their status in the minds of Sierra Leoneans. If one may think of those that mortgage our country for cocoa-porridge, their names should be written down in the Guinness Book of World Record and in the history of Sierra Leone.
David Tam Mbayoh (Rabble-Rouser) – He is a well-known journalist (not popular nor prominent), who found his pathways of survival after he was thrown out (Never Return- NR) of the Kizito Seminary in Kenema. He was thrown out of several misconducts and social and moral deficits, but for professional reasons, I will highlight one of the reasons. He committed a Sacrilege. As you know him, his hysteric, vilification, vituperation and above all his profane attitude has poisoned the minds of many Sierra Leoneans who tend to be unpatriotic. His ‘disreputable and seedy Monologue program’ has helped him to acquire dirty monies at the expense of decent and respectable Sierra Leoneans who doesn’t want their names to be showered from Tam Mbayoh’s contaminated discharge.
The Citizen’s Radio in Thunder Hill, Kissy Mess-Mess, is a Community Radio established by donor funds to promote peacebuilding, human security and development. At present, the Community did not know this essence. He has also converted this radio station to his, lavishing funds coming in for trainings for volunteers, employments, travelling / trips, vehicular supports, rents and maintenance etc. To confirm this information, contact the following agencies: OSIWA, IRISH AID, INFORMOTRAC, USAID, etc. Going down towards Waterloo about 150m to the Police Station, the Recidivist Tam Monologue Mbayoh has erected 3 three gigantic buildings, on a one go. My question is: where did he acquires those monies from? what is he doing to come out so early? what about his immeasurable chronic and persistent poverty family background? He should come out as a potential indictee for Unexplained and Unjustified Wealth. Nothing would come out of it. He is just like any other Sierra Leonean.
His Monologue program is a means of extorting huge monies from reputable individuals in society after threatening them of publishing them out, whether, good, bad and ugly. To our government of Sierra Leone, history repeat itself. Tam Mbayoh’s Monologue program should be scrutinized by injecting some ingredient of respect, morals, honesty, independence and respect for culture. He is full of tribalism and this has the potential of spurring conflict of all nature. Tam Mbayoh is ‘when a broken glass floats’.
The next edition would address his sense of change and adherence and title: Recidivist David Tam Monologue Mbayoh – ‘Breaking the Cycle of Impunity’. This guy is sooo smart, he employs extorting agents countrywide in his desecrated tabernacle of Monologue. This is part one. Tam, No more business as usual……
NOTE
The pathways to development are narrow and winding and all too often blocked by political obstacles. Successful development depends not only on good policies but also on domestic political dynamics that under ideal circumstances should be highly supportive or at least neutral.
Ω”Integrity comes from deep within”
Indeed, Integrity comes from deep within… Names mention on this note are by any form of malice, their names are mentioned. They should know their status in the minds of Sierra Leoneans. If one may think of those that mortgage our country for cocoa-porridge, their names should be written down in the Guinness Book of World Record and in the history of Sierra Leone.
David Tam Mbayoh (Rabble-Rouser) – He is a well-known journalist (not popular nor prominent), who found his pathways of survival after he was thrown out (Never Return- NR) of the Kizito Seminary in Kenema. He was thrown out of several misconducts and social and moral deficits, but for professional reasons, I will highlight one of the reasons. He committed a Sacrilege. As you know him, his hysteric, vilification, vituperation and above all his profane attitude has poisoned the minds of many Sierra Leoneans who tend to be unpatriotic. His ‘disreputable and seedy Monologue program’ has helped him to acquire dirty monies at the expense of decent and respectable Sierra Leoneans who doesn’t want their names to be showered from Tam Mbayoh’s contaminated discharge.
The Citizen’s Radio in Thunder Hill, Kissy Mess-Mess, is a Community Radio established by donor funds to promote peacebuilding, human security and development. At present, the Community did not know this essence. He has also converted this radio station to his, lavishing funds coming in for trainings for volunteers, employments, travelling / trips, vehicular supports, rents and maintenance etc. To confirm this information, contact the following agencies: OSIWA, IRISH AID, INFORMOTRAC, USAID, etc. Going down towards Waterloo about 150m to the Police Station, the Recidivist Tam Monologue Mbayoh has erected 3 three gigantic buildings, on a one go. My question is: where did he acquires those monies from? what is he doing to come out so early? what about his immeasurable chronic and persistent poverty family background? He should come out as a potential indictee for Unexplained and Unjustified Wealth. Nothing would come out of it. He is just like any other Sierra Leonean.
His Monologue program is a means of extorting huge monies from reputable individuals in society after threatening them of publishing them out, whether, good, bad and ugly. To our government of Sierra Leone, history repeat itself. Tam Mbayoh’s Monologue program should be scrutinized by injecting some ingredient of respect, morals, honesty, independence and respect for culture. He is full of tribalism and this has the potential of spurring conflict of all nature. Tam Mbayoh is ‘when a broken glass floats’.
The next edition would address his sense of change and adherence and title: Recidivist David Tam Monologue Mbayoh – ‘Breaking the Cycle of Impunity’. This guy is sooo smart, he employs extorting agents countrywide in his desecrated tabernacle of Monologue. This is part one. Tam, No more business as usual……