By Mohamed A Warisay, MSc, MBA, BSc, PMP, CISA.
The Institute for Governance Reform (IGR) has once again thrust itself into Sierra Leone’s political discourse with a survey claiming to project frontrunners for the 2028 presidential race. Far from providing rigorous empirical insight, this latest release exemplifies how speculative, methodologically deficient polling is leveraged to distract the public, normalize unresolved democratic crises, and construct artificial political momentum.
A scrutiny of IGR’s track record, technical shortcomings, and political timing reveals a survey built on fundamentally flawed foundations.
IGR’s credibility as an independent polling authority remains heavily shadowed by its role in the contested June 2023 general elections. On June 14, 2023—just days before voting commenced—IGR released its “Sierra Poll,” predicting that incumbent President Julius Maada Bio would win re-election with approximately between 53% to 59% of the vote.
When the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL) subsequently declared Bio the winner with 56.17%, national and international observers, including the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM), the Carter Center, and local observer coalitions, heavily criticized the process for severe mathematical inconsistencies, lack of polling-station-level transparency, and tabulated results that failed basic verification tests. The fact that IGR’s projection eerily matched an outcome that neither ECSL nor independent verification could credibly account for left serious questions about whether the institute was conducting genuine empirical research or preemptively setting the stage for an unverified official tally.
The credibility of any survey depends on whether the variables being tested reflect reality. Measuring voter sentiment toward individuals who have neither declared their candidacy nor expressed an interest in running invalidates the study from the outset.
Dr. Samura Kamara has repeatedly clarified that his priority remains the resolution of the contentious 2023 election and the comprehensive implementation of the Tripartite Committee’s recommendations. Inserting his name into hypothetical 2028 match-ups constitutes political bad faith. It attempts to drag an ongoing electoral accountability struggle into future campaign politics, deliberately manufacturing a narrative that the opposition has moved past the 2023 dispute.
By elevating untested names alongside active political figures, the survey functions less like a research paper and more like an unvetted public relations exercise designed to stir internal party rivalries ahead of time.
Credible political polling is a science governed by strict empirical standards. Polling in developing and politically polarized environments requires robust methodologies that IGR consistently fails to transparently demonstrate:
- a) Probabilistic Sampling and Frame Integrity:
A valid national survey requires multi-stage stratified random sampling based on verified, up-to-date census and demographic data. Without a verified sampling frame, the results are susceptible to severe geographic and partisan clustering bias.
- b) Non-Response and Fear-Factor Weighting:
In an atmosphere marked by acute political tension, respondents frequently conceal their true preferences out of fear or intimidation. Professional research entities employ advanced list experiments, randomized response techniques, and non-response adjustments to counter response bias. IGR provides no methodological evidence that it controls for these distortions.
- c) Construct Validity of the Questionnaire:
Asking citizens to rank prospective nominees for elections years away—before official candidate declarations, delegate conventions, or party primaries—violates construct validity. The responses measure unprompted brand recognition or local rumor rather than genuine electoral intent.
- d) Auditable Data Pipelines:
Legitimate polling institutions use Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) tools equipped with timestamp auditing, GPS verification, audio-audit checks, and publicly accessible anonymized microdata files. Until IGR publishes its raw datasets, survey scripts, and weighting algorithms for independent peer review, its findings cannot be treated as valid academic or policy research.
Distraction from Urgent National Priorities:
At a time when Sierra Leone faces severe governance and socio-economic challenges, the decision of a self-styled “governance reform” institution to publish premature speculative horse-race polls is deeply misguided.
Civil society organizations bear a civic duty to hold democratic institutions accountable. Rather than acting as an echo chamber for future electoral cycles, genuine reform organizations should focus their resources on:
1) Insisting on the complete and transparent implementation of the Tripartite Committee’s 85 recommendations to fix broken tallying and electoral systems before any future vote is held.
2) Investigating the devastating social and economic consequences of the drug crisis (notably cocaine and kush), which has crippled communities and compromised national security.
3) Monitoring rampant inflation, food insecurity, and institutional corruption that directly affect the daily survival of ordinary citizens.
By prioritizing speculative polls over systemic electoral accountability and urgent national crises, the Institute for Governance Reform undermines its stated mission.
Doubling down on unverified methodologies will not confer credibility on flawed data, neither today nor in 2028.
References:
Agreement for National Unity / Tripartite Committee (2023–2024): Final Report of the Committee on Electoral Systems and Management Bodies Review, detailing 85 structural recommendations to overhaul the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL).
European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) (October 2023): Final Report on the 2023 General Elections in Sierra Leone, documenting statistical anomalies and lack of transparency in the official presidential tabulation.
Institute for Governance Reform (IGR) (June 14, 2023): Sierra Poll: Public Perception on Governance and Election Readiness in Sierra Leone, projecting incumbent Julius Maada Bio to win the 2023 presidential race with approximately 56% of the vote.
The Carter Center (2023): Preliminary Statement on the Sierra Leone General Elections, noting significant irregularities in the collation process that undermined result credibility.