By Mabinty M. Kamara
The Commission of Inquiry (COI) report that was submitted to President Julius Maada Bio last week singled out the Ministry of Education under Dr. Minkailu Bah as the most corrupt ministry over the course of the Ernest Bai Koroma presidency.
The report states that more than Le 44 billion was unaccounted for in the ministry.
Justice Biobele Georgewill oversaw the probe into the Education Ministry. During the presentation of the summary of his findings, he said: “I discovered that in this Ministry alone, the sum of Le 44,764,428,798 and USD 67,951,222 were misappropriated and or unverified and had remained unaccounted for.”
The report also featured the controversial deal between the government and the Limkokwing University of Creative Technology which has been topical in recent months. The apparent refusal by the current administration to honor that deal, has left many students in danger of not completing their studies as the university’s management is insisting on getting its fees before allowing the students to take lectures.
There have been several protests by students in the last few months over the issue.
“The issue of indebtedness of the Government of Sierra Leone to Limkokwing University is a farce as exposed in the findings under Ministry of Education, Science and Technology!” the COI report notes.
At the weekly government press briefing on Thursday, a day after the COI report was submitted to the president, Minister of Information Mohamed Rahman Swaray said the report was a vindication to the point they had always been making.
“What this has done is to merely exonerate us, it is vindicating us. We have, from the word go, said that this was a fraudulent agreement which puts current generation of Sierra Leonean students in such a situation. It was badly conceived, poorly implemented and so as government we had raised the red flag even before the commission started,” Swarray said.
He added that they would continue to pay the fees, but only at the same pace with which they pay for students in government-run universities and the rest to be settled by the students themselves.
Following the submission of the report, the government will now discuss and decide on whether or not to adopt the recommendations.
Shortly after the submission of the report, the opposition All People’s Congress rejected its findings on the basis that the Commission wasn’t founded on any legal basis.
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