By Crispina Taylor and Tanu Jalloh
Opposition Member of Parliament, Dixon Rogers, has called for the resignation of newly appointed minister of information whom he accused of lying under oath in parliament, in complete breach of basic standards for probity.
Under the 1991 Constitution a minister or a deputy minister “shall not enter upon the duties of his office unless he has taken and subscribed the oath for the due execution of his duties as set out in the Third Schedule”.
The MP, representing Constituency 89 in the Pujehun, southern Sierra Leone, said he was “completely disappointed in parliament for letting Mohamed Bangura go through to become a cabinet minister “after he clearly lied about his credentials” and supporting documents.
“I am challenging the minister to resign because a person that is not credible should not hold public office. I am not saying the committee members of appointment and public service did not do their work properly but the fact is that the minister of information should resign”.
He told Politico that Bangura, recently approved as minister after he was nominated by President Ernest Bai Koroma, had “falsified certificates that he presented to the committee on appointments that interviewed him for the said position”. At the well of parliament on Thursday 7, April this year, Rogers, MP, challenged Bangura that he was not “trustworthy”.
“He should never have been approved in the first place because he is not credible and should not hold public office. He lied under oath during the interview. He presented two different CVs, one with certificate and another without a certificate. When the mistake was picked up and he was challenged and probed further, he withdrew the CV with the certificate”, he claimed.
The opposition lawmaker said the committee might not have thoroughly investigated the falsified certificate presented before them by Bangura as was promised during the interview. He said if they knew that the matter was not going to be thoroughly dealt with, it shouldn’t have been picked up in the first place.
But minority leader, Dr. Bernadette Lahai, argued in parliament that the committee had actually done their best when they interviewed the nominees, adding that: “We have advised were advice is needed and cautioned were caution is necessary,” she concluded.
Mustapha Brima, another opposition MP for constituency 02 in the eastern district of Kailahun, said he was proud of the young ministers who had been approved but cautioned that they should be positive in their duties.
He, however, cited instances of how young ministers had disgraced both their offices and their personalities in the past and cautioned that the new minister of information should be more proactive than being the talkative that he was.
“As a politician looking for a job like this, you talked a lot. So now that you are a minister, you should talk less and be disciplined because anything you say now is a policy statement”, MP Brima said, adding that “there should be no more fighting between young ministers and there deputies.”
Meanwhile, Alhasan Kamara, MP, of the All People Congress for constituency 96 western urban, registered his support for the presidential nominees, noting that the president had given young people the mantles of power.
In late May 2013 the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament ordered the arrest and subsequent detention of William Alpha, the Chief Administrator of Bo City Council, whom they had accused of lying under oath. The committee had resolved that the CA should spend at least three days in detention because he completely misled them.
The Open Government Initiative, in the office of the president at State House, apparently saw the case as a reference for accountability and transparency, reported that the committee took the decision after they “found out that the CA submitted incomplete documents on the income and expenditure activities of the Council for the 2011 financial year”, adding that the MPs were so keen “to investigate that financial report following revelations of huge financial misappropriation in the council”.
No nominee for the position of a minister has ever been probed and rejected by parliament in all the appointments so far made President Koroma since 2007 when he first came to power.
(C) Politico 13/04/16
