There is a central information pool of the government headed by the Information and Communication Minister. And that Ministry is supposed to disseminate government policy and to report the reactions of the populace to those policies. It would appear however that that has been so fragmented that the centre is seen to be abdicating its functions. The original organogram has been discarded in favor of a splintering of functions whose end results are uncertain.
The original structure of the Ministry as bequeathed by the British had a Chief Information Officer as professional head, a Deputy, a Principal Information Officer, Senior Information Officers, Information Officers and Assistant Information Officers properly recruited through the Public Service Commission. There were News, Publications and Visual Aid Departments. Officers were posted to the provincial headquarters. In order to get the reactions of the people to government policy Information Agents were employed directly on political basis and not through the Public Service Commission.They were the counterparts of the American C.I.A. and the British M.I.5. Whether the equivalence of these offices still exists in the Ministry is unclear.
At the dawn of independence there were no Public Relations Officers attached to various Ministries. Even the then Prime Minister’s Office had officers from Information Department News Room attached to it on a daily basis which later transformed into a permanent official to the President’s Officer as well as a Photographer. Permanent attachments of officials to various ministries followed. All that has changed. The urge of every government to impress the electorate for reelection grows stronger and stronger necessitating new devises whether utilitarian or futile.
Thus we were pitchforked into the era of Spokesmanism with the President’s Spokesman and the Spokesman of the Minister of Information vying for prominence. Cabinet Ministers did the task which was later devolved to a lower cadre of officials assumed to be pundits. As in some other facets of policy the APC made a hash of this spokesman idea by appointing Spokesmen in other ministries in addition to the public relations officers in those ministries.
Still unsatisfied with the level of convincing the public of their good works they have ostensibly done better by establishing Communications Units in various Ministries.
Heaven alone knows the core functions of this bunch of officials doing jobs which were done by individuals efficiently. They keep falling over one another earning fat salaries while many hard working teachers and nurses earn less in this unequal republic.As the idleness takes hold of them, they issue press releases from time to time. Their end result seems to be ‘the more the messier.’
Along the route to maximum positive publicity the Sierra Leone News Agency (SLENA) was established, which was a thriving institution for sometime. Established to feed the local media with releases or data for their news items, it became another kettle of rotten fish. The government seems to be at its wits end as to the future of the Agency that is becoming an encumbrance.As its influence waned it was run unsuccessfully as a newspaper which was not its original purpose.It is still in limbo.There are likely to be ruminations with regard to the fate of this laudable project.
Back to the centrality of the Ministry it would appear that it is going with the crowd in the Old Direction without initiatives to map out a New Direction. It cannot be new by winding into the old at several intersections.It is obvious that the electronic media is instant and has an advantage over the print media but this does not argue that the party’s only newspaper UNITY should be neglected with a consequent lowering of standards. The number of newspapers styling themselves as pro-government slyly for advertisements should not be taken for granted.
Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Lahai Lawrence Leema’s appointment while Public Relations Officer of the SLPP has made nonsense of the idea of superfluous battalions all over the place posing as information units. He was a one-man unit who succeeded in creating a positive image of the party to the extent that the party was victorious.We did not even know of a Deputy P.R.O.Too many cooks are spoiling the information broth. The units have not for instance been able to explain some of the government’s intriguing issues like the non-adherence of public officials to presidential orders and the bloated presidential delegations, etc. in spite of lip service to the contrary.
If the Old Order of Information units failed to return the APC to power why stick to it in the New Direction? The Baraytays, AjibuJallohsand Agricultural Spokesman et al added up to the failure.Why not revert to a system that resulted in success such as operated during the Dr.Ahmad TejanKabbah regime? Even previous Commissions of Enquiry were well covered only by the then Ministry of Information and Broadcasting without hitches. The Ministry should not be rendered redundant.