When the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) gained the reins of power as a result of the March 2018 polls, its supporters, officials and President Julius Maada Bio and other party sympathisers were on roof tops castigating and damning the outgone All People’s Congress (APC) Party government that was being led by former President Ernest Bai Koroma. The flair of winning was such that the APC was hounded left right and center. The nightwatch joined that melee because of the suffering Sierra Leoneans had gone through for ten dastardly years.
Talks about inheriting a failed economy and rampant corruption by the APC regime gained momentum. Calls for a commission of enquiry to look into the APC regime echoed across the length and breadth of Sierra Leone. Because of the momentum gathered as a result of the SLPP shouting and wailing about the pitiable economy, many Sierra Leoneans wholeheartedly welcomed the new actors on the political stage. The nightwatch too!
However, six months into the President Julius Maada Bio’s tenure things have started softening. The language that talked about ‘crucify them’, ‘hang them’, ‘bunch of thieves,’ ‘organised crime’, ‘state thieves’ and ‘jail them’ is gradually yielding to compromises. The APC, it would appear, is now calling the shots.
In Parliament, Sierra Leoneans have seen how the APC is influencing issues, with the issue of salary increase being very prominent among the compromises between the APC and the SLPP. Such compromises have a tendency to continue to sow the seeds of destruction in Sierra Leone.
Another case in point, which the nightwatch strongly believes and remains worried over, is the issue of the retention of alleged former APC contractors, leaving behind the new contractors. It should be noted that all those former contractors had effectively relied on sole sourcing and we all know what sole sourcing actually involves.
Invariably the SLPP is so structured that the present government ministers and other actors have converged behind individual contractors and are now visibly working to secure contracts at the expense of genuine contractors. It is a well known fact that State House and the Ministry of Finance are competing to retain and engage former APC contractors like Gento Group. For example, Gento Group of Companies is being protected by State House in the award of contracts. The Ministry of Finance, too, has contractors they highly protect.
So, what are we saying? We are talking about a New Direction which does not seem to be new. The former contractors have milked this country enough and Sierra Leoneans are still grappling and continue to endure that mess. By retaining them is simply saying that they are being more armed to continue to rip off this country. Besides, where has the momentum of fighting and curbing corruption gone? Are we now settled with the corrupt APC regime’s contractors that the SLPP has initially lambasted and called all sorts of names? And where are we going with this talk about fighting the menace of corruption, when those that have shouted ‘corruption, corruption’ have now worn the garment of corruption?
The nightwatch would like to call on the New Direction government of President Julius Maada Bio to tread cautiously when dealing with the APC. The SLPP should not forget to empower the new contractors. To begin to sideline them because of colluding with the alleged knownAPC corrupt contractors is a step into the SLPP finding itself in another political wilderness after this term of office.
The SLPP should be wary of the APC in anything under the sun. If the party wishes to have another political term, after this current one, the APC should be distanced a lot in the award of contracts. SLPP should not hide behind hilarious condemnations of the APC only to end up colluding with them in the furtherance of Sierra Leone’s demise.
Sierra Leoneans have suffered a lot under the ten years of APC misrule. We cannot afford something similar or even worse than what the people of this country have gone through. The APC should not be allowed to teach the SLPP old tricks. It is a New Direction and it should remain thus. Nothing more nothing less! Lonta.