By Kayce Brown
If you asked me, I do not think President Julius Maada Bio deliberately intended to misinform Sierra Leoneans and the world at large when he made that controversial statement about sufficient electricity production in the country’s capital, Freetown. I believe he said it just as his overzealous speechwriters, who have proven time and again that they careless about facts, prepared it for him.
But maybe it is high time now that Mr President started scrutinizing what his communication specialists give him by conducting his own research.
Those days when leaders, be they heads of state or what have you, leave the preparation of their speech entirely in the hands of their aids, have long gone. Not only is information easy to get these days, it is also important that you get it right because it is easy to conduct fact checking by citizens. And the platform to contend unsubstantiated claims like that ‘sufficient’ electricity generation speech are abundant.
President Bio’s speech at the State Opening of Parliament comes at a time Sierra Leone, or should I say Freetown, was going through one of the toughest periods of recurrent blackout. To his defence, Mr President wouldn’t know this, even if these blackouts affect State House too, as I have on two occasions witnessed in the past.
Imagine that Mr President gets chauffeured into State House through a path very much away from where the emergency power generator is located within the presidential office complex; he walks through to his office in airconditioned corridors. How can he know if there is no power in the rest of the city? No way.
But we are told that Mr President uses social media, including facebook and whatsapp. So we expect that he follows development through these means and acquaint himself with how Sierra Leoneans, including the over 50 percent that voted for him in 2018, are struggling to cope with the effect of policies his government is taking on their behalf. This is why President Bio should have made sure that his communication experts did their homework well before accepting that embarrassing portion of his speech.
Sadly, we have seen regime defenders coming swiftly to the defence of the president and trying to explain to the rest of us they consider as fools that we didn’t understand simple English.
“The president said sufficient generation of electricity is generated,” they point out, arguing that what is consumed is an altogether different issue.
These SLPP propagandists continue with their defense that the government inherited a bad distribution and transmission system that made it difficult for people to access all these power that is generated.
Firstly, we have had enough of this over abused cliché of bad inheritance; it’s three years now since the APC stopped making decisions on behalf of Sierra Leoneans. Three long years. Whatever the Bio administration needed to fix within that period, it is enough time to do so.
Secondly, do we really need to tell President Bio and his Energy Minister that they are expected to work on generating more power while at the same time ensuring that consumers this power is meant for access it unhindered?
The problem is, President Bio has for a minister of Energy a man who is more preoccupied with his future political career than his present task of providing electricity for the people of Sierra Leone. If you have by chance passed by the Energy Ministry offices on Pandemba Road in the last few weeks you would understand what I am getting at here. It’s like the SLPP head office these days. If Kanja Sesay is not busy entertaining these jobless youths who are seeking some miracle from him, he is up-country conducting grassroots elections, while residents of Freetown deal with long and tortuous periods of blackout without any explanation for the poor service.
And then when you get the president coming to tell the world that he has fixed the problem of power, you understand why he gets so much back clash.
President Bio should blame his speech writers and his Energy minister for this insensitive statement. They must learn to be sensitive enough in what they tell the public. You can’t be failing in your responsibility to the people and you are using your failures to rub it on their faces, in broad day light. This is unacceptable!
The SLPP inherited an improved energy sector, regardless of the problems in government at the time. The least Sierra Leoneans expect is for the New Direction administration to build on these gains.
Enough of the excuses and blame game!