By Yusif Moigua
When President Julius Maada Bio came into office, a little over two years ago, he appointed a cabinet of close allies including Prof. David John Francis to serve as his Chief Minister in the Office of the President.
A Chief Minister position is equivalent to that of a prime minister, and that office used to be the Ministry of Presidential and Public Affairs under former president Alhaji Dr Ahmed Tejan Kabbah of blessed memory.
The late president Kabbah used to hire top notch experts and policy think tanks to hold offices at the presidency. But it is now far from what is unfolding in the Office of the Chief Minister.
Besides, there has always existed with the best trained and qualified civil and public service personnel, including a permanent secretary, an accountant, a procurement expert, an internal auditor and other professional staff posted at the presidency from their various MDAs as well the Human Resource Management Office.
That now operates under the mandate of the Chief Minister, Prof. Francis, whose role and terms of reference in the presidency is not clearly defined by the laws of Sierra Leone. And don’t ask me why, for the president and his party owe it to Francis.
Bringing Prof. Francis to government by the president was like a symbol of hope for many Sierra Leoneans. But sadly for the government and the people, with all their development plans clocking over two years now, the Sierra Leone People’s Party is taking Sierra Leone down the road of a mere economic mess. One Political Analysts opined that the Chief Minister Prof. Francis and his team have failed.
Unlike his predecessors-former State House Chief of Staff, Dr Kaifala Marah, Dr, Richard Konteh and later Mr Saidu Conton-Sesay who were all supervising Ministries, Departments and Agencies to fully implement government’s flagship programmes, Prof. Francis look like he is only managing only the President.
Prof. Francis’ role is still not clear, which is why many people believe that his office is now underperforming, His office is said to be full of a bunch of incompetent and inexperienced diaspora members and supporters who have nothing to offer the government, but are bragging all over the place of being president Bio’s financers during his campaigns for the presidency.
In fact, most of government’s top job holders were McDonalds boys in the United States and those from the United Kingdom were always seen roaming around the Peckham area in London. So what do you expect from them, when they absolutely have no magic of giving what they don’t have.
To the vague nomenclature in question, a Chief Minister is an elected or an appointed position of head of government in most British overseas territories such as Nepal, Pakistan, India, Sir Lanka etc. and back home all three Chief of Staff, appointed by former president Dr Ernest Bai Koroma, performed extremely well in their respective assignments.
Mr Saidu Conton-Sesay, Dr Richard Konteh and Dr Kaifala Marah didn’t position themselves as self-imposed ‘prime ministers’ like Prof. Francis sees himself in the Bio led administration. They were humble and diligently delivered the then government’s flagship programmes, through the implementation of series of effective pro-people policy reviews, regulations, administration, managements, monitoring and evaluations of contracts which Ministries Departments and Agencies signed with the executive.
These were always rolled out and fully implemented by the Strategic Policy Unit along with periodical performance management contracts signed with all public and civil servants and accomplished with a specific timeframe. Performance contracts under those three Chiefs of Staff of former president Koroma were periodically appraised, assessed, monitored and evaluated by the Performance Management and Service Delivery Directorate in the Office of Chief of Staff, Office of the President, to regulate the performances of MDAs.
That was why every MDA had to be on its toes to deliver on its mandates in sync with their various contract timelines that led to the successful implementation of the AFC and the AFP. So for them, failures were not options for successes of both national development agendas.
A policy the Chief Minister Prof. Francis is still expected to have borrowed from to sincerely help government successfully implements president Bio’s most ambitious national development agenda. Instead, with all the solid foundation Prof. Francis inherited from his predecessors-Dr Marah, Mr Conton-Sesay and Dr Konteh, he is busy presiding over the destructions of every legacy left behind by former president Koroma and the last administration.
However, critics are of the views that if Chief Minister is well paid in thousands in United States Dollars from tax payers’ monies and could not meet the demands of his job, owing to his completely lack of capacity and technical knowhow to deliver, then president Bio has no reason to have in the place first created for him such an office.
For it does not worth it at all but a mere waste of tax payers monies, and president Bio himself who is no stranger to the seat of power, cannot tell the nation why such an office should be up running in the presidency at the expenses of the consolidated revenue fund, having vowed to curtail wastages of public funds.
Prof. Francis’ OCM, an insider confirms, urged president Bio to create for him the Office of Chief Minister, though now hardly prove the required competence to hold and run such a high placed office and meet the great expectations of his boss. For his part, president Bio has met the payback deal to his former Peace and Conflict Studies lecturer on a win-win basis, for the help he offered him whilst studying at Bradford University in England.
In line with their mutual understanding before they took up office, president Bio offered the Bradford professor a fat job without a clear terms of reference. That is now rendering president Bio the most regretful of all people for placing Prof. Francis, a square peg in round hole in the area of state governance and public sector management and administration. That is also the more reasons for high demand for punitive cabinet reshuffle now than later, so that Prof. Francis can be replaced with either the well experienced Prof. Alpha Tejan Wurie or Alhaji Kanja Sesay who has better understandings of state governance in Sierra Leone.
These two are the most experienced ministers in the Bio led government and have what it takes to bring the SLPP closer to the people, that the ruling party continue to be less accommodated, leaving the masses dissatisfied.
Under Prof. Francis much is not seen in action as far as the rolling out and implementation of the mandates of government’s crippling free education flagship project is concerned. Instead, everything seen, read and heard of the Chief Minister are very uncomplimentary. The reason being that Prof. Francis does not know what exactly to do in terms of public service administration in Sierra Leon; so his best way to please president Bio is to be always chasing political opponents and victimizing them with his powers from above.
Unfortunately for Sierra Leoneans, with all his western education in development, law, human rights, peace and diplomacy from the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe; Prof. Francis actually does not provide any professional governance advice to president Bio and the ruling SLPP, yet he’s well taken care of by the state. That is why president Bio confessed his displeasure at the incompetence of Prof. David John Francis and his team’s underperformances at a retreat hosted early this year in Freetown for ministers and other public sector workers. The president clearly charged all of them for failing to deliver on their mandates and declared 2020 a ‘year of delivery’. But the Chief Minister continues to fall below the great expectations of president Bio.
Their collective failures to many cynics are unreasonably deceptive to the extent that president Bio never expect the so-called ‘prime minister’ to disappoint his administration with the kind of capacity deficiencies being manifested so far by Prof. Francis in the last two years in office thereby clearly exposing the failures of president Julius Maada Bio’s SLPP led government.