By Umaru Fofana
A secondary school in Kono District, which I cannot name, had electricity when such was a dream even for college campuses in the country. The students’ hostels, chemistry and physics laboratories, staff room and other offices, even staff quarters, etc. were all assured of electricity for a certain number of hours, daily. Then one day, the campus was left in pitch darkness, ostensibly forever. That was decades ago. And here is why:
The generator man had been given money to buy some litres of engine oil that would last for five nights, in the hope they would replenish the stock over the weekend. Two days later, in the middle of the night, the oil dried up and the generator packed up to never again come up.
It so happened that the generator man had swindled some of the money and bought far less oil than he had been given money for, that would have lasted much longer. By that single action and show of greed, the school could no longer produce the brilliant science students it had been used to, because the labs stopped functioning. Never mind the health and other implications the blackout would later cause the students and teachers. I am sure you have a story or two to share of how graft has wrecked this country.
The consequence of corruption, petty or grand, is grave. Unfortunately, it is an incontrovertible fact that in Serra Leone there is corruption galore, from the cradle to the grave. A bribe is expected or even demanded in happy and expectant times such as when a pregnant woman is about to put to bed, and in sad times such as when a death certificate of a loved one is being processed before they are buried.
People run for public office and those who contribute towards their campaigns don’t do so because they want the country to get a good leader who will develop it, but rather someone who will give them a job when they win.
Often they don’t seek these jobs to serve the country, rather to aggrandise for themselves and their families. Otherwise how do you explain the statement by a government minister of old who said that he didn’t like the ministry he had earlier been appointed to because it was “dry” – not lucrative enough for him. And when he was transferred to another ministry he celebrated. What that means in case anybody needs telling, is that even though both ministries get the same salary, they have different thieving opportunities.
The consequences of corruption are all too familiar to every Sierra Leonean. Sadly, often victims of graft see themselves as beneficiaries simply because they are politically or ethnically related to the thief. So people celebrate or criticise in a corruption matter based on who is involved and not what the person is alleged to have done.
In this country we have seen people running amok with the security forces and causing discomfort to the public simply because some politician they share party affinity with is being brought to court for often clear cases of stealing state resources. In one instance a former Freetown Mayor was convicted of corruption and his supporters nevertheless celebrated him and carried him shoulder high regardless.
I have seen a video on social media apparently involving some of the teachers who were allegedly involved in the recent examination malpractice. They were treated to a hero’s welcome. The students were particularly celebratory of these apparent cheats and they sand for them songs like “Nobody can bring you down”, “Thank God for what he has done for us”.
But so were the school authorities who, by the look of things, orchestrated the rapturous welcoming of the teachers. How far we have sunk as a people and a country! How shameful! Such people should at the very lease be treated in a lukewarm manner. If they are acquitted - ok, and if they are convicted they should be ostracised to the extent of serving as an example to others that if they get involved in such despicable act the same fate would befall them.
High school students are blaming and even cussing the government for the stringent measures surrounding the writing of school-leaving exams so as to ward off cheating. But it will be unfair to blame only high school students. A few years ago some law students insulted me on their WhatsApp Group and elsewhere. My crime: I had published that three of their colleagues, whom I did not name for certain reasons, were caught red-handed, cheating in a brazen manner in an undergraduate law exam at Fourah Bay College. They argued that if I had not exposed the cheating, the students – who were eventually expelled – would still be in college and later become lawyers. How despicable! So the person who should be hailed for exposing the rot became the villain and was being derided, while the wrongdoers were treated as the victims. How sickening!
Our sense of decency has waned considerably. Our moral compass has weakened. We have been so befuddled that our ability to think outside material acquisition at all cost, is almost nonexistent. With this our professed love for the motherland is in reality a joke.
Today people graduate and in two years or so they want the latest cars in town and want to build a house. Even though they know that things don’t work that way. Very few are concerned about their salaries. The shenanigan they get involved in that brings them ill-gotten wealth is what their priority is. However much they are paid.
Perhaps the silver lining in all this is the fact that it is safe to say that since Abdul Tejan-Cole left as head of the Anti-Corruption Commission, we have been nowhere where we are today in the fight against corruption. It was Tejan-Cole who pushed to have the ACC Act amended in 2008 shortly after his appointment. Tough new provisions were added to the new law to include illicit enrichment, unexplained wealth, conflict of interest, the obligatory declaration of assets by public officials, among others. The fight was taken to the sharks and whales and not just confined to the snappers.
With Francis Ben Kaifala, that fight has regained momentum. At this stage I am a bit cautious in rating or grading the anti-graft czar or even his boss, President Julius Maada Bio. I’d rather wait for a couple of more years when the apparent corrupt practice happening in the current administration will be exposed and actions taken or not. But it is safe to say that the signs are very promising. Hopefully parents and teachers will start inculcating yet again, the values in their children and pupils or students. Those values will include teaching them that stealing is not good. And they will also show that in the way they carry themselves.
© 2019 Politico Online
