By : Ing. Yayah A. B. Conteh.
I sometimes bow my head in shame each time I think of the backwardness and underdevelopment that has engulfed our country since we stumbled into independence, a period that has spanned over 60 years and more.
The fact that one can only better compare and contrast his own country with others whenever they travel outside its shores need not be over-emphasised here.
But, even without travelling to other countries probably within the same geographical latitudes like ours, just reverse the clock of history a bit and see where Sierra Leone was in pre- and even early post-colonial times, and compare to where it is today.
The differences speak volumes in more ways than one.
Quite a pride and admiration for me to have learned that Fourah Bay College(FBC) was the first university to have been established in Africa south of the Sahara since 1827, and got affiliated to the UK Durham university years later.
But google and prove it for yourself that with all its years of existence (over a 195), almost two centuries ago, it is lamentable to say here that it does not even fall within the first 100 best universities in Africa, let alone to talk about the world.
The sad reinforces the fact that our country has lagged behind enormously in the field of education when compared to other African countries which established their own universities years after FBC was founded. Even students from as far afield as Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and the Gambia, to name but just a few, use to darken the walls FBC just to drink from its spring of knowledge.
Today, most of the countries from where these foreigners used to originate are not only a force to reckon with in the educational arena but an envy to the world at large.
Examine the status of the road from Model junction to FBC, West Africa’s first citadel of Higher Learning.
It is nothing to write home about considering the threats and challenges it poses not only to the students and lecturers themselves, but to all those who ply it from time to time in the name of transacting business with the university. Government has paid, and continues to pay, a blind eye to this all-important road where the rough edges of most of the so-called well-balanced academics and professionals now occupying positions of trust and responsibility in our Ministries, Departments and Agencies were neatly chiseled to the required products we see today.
Quite a pity that governments past and present have constructed major roads not only in Freetown but in most other district headquarter towns, leaving behind what to me I consider as the most important single road in the nation: the road leading from Model junction to Fourah Bay College! What has really gone wrong, I may ask?
A colleague of mine applied to be recruited as an associate lecturer in one of our universities. Not even an acknowledgement letter of his application letter was sent to him in return, at least to notify him that the university was already in possession of his application.
That was two years ago, and even as I write, the whole interplay with people’s destinies by the university authorities charged with this responsibility still rings a sinister bell in the ears of this applicant. Take a look at some of the youth of our generation today who have cultivated the obnoxious habit of visiting our cemeteries in the dead of the night to break and destroy the tombs of the deceased in search of human bones and other valuable items last buried with them.
It is a mere attempt to appease their thirst for money, and to satisfy their insatiable hunger for the purchase and intake of the ‘Kush’ drug, the new epidemic ravaging and destroying the well-being of most of them not only in Sierra Leone but throughout West Africa and, probably, even beyond. Can the dead not be left alone in peace to enjoy their rest- a rest that the looters themselves sooner or later may be obliged to experience?
Can they not embark upon other alternative sources of income in order to satisfy their material wants and emotional longings? Has it ever dawned upon them that the dead are not mere play objects to be toyed with?
Are authorities in the City Councils nationwide still sleeping? Have they still not awoken from their deep sweet slumber?
A casual look at the neglect of our local cemeteries, especially in Freetown, leaves no room for compromise but to equally impute blame on them.
City Councils have never been able to clean up our cemeteries for quite sometime now. Is it that monies are no longer deposited into their coffers to enable them accomplish this? Our local cemeteries in Freetown and the provinces are an eyesore. They depict a state of squalor and total neglect.
Take a drive or a walk to one of them and see if you can recognise that portion of land where your loved one was last buried.
The cemeteries are so overgrown with weeds and wild vegetation that one can hardly distinguish one grave from another, especially during the rainy season when torrential downpours are the order of the day.
At times, community people uphold the task of cleaning up these cemeteries, mostly in areas where their relatives and beloved ones are buried, leaving a large proportion of the cemetery unattended. The callous and unholy act not to be indeed since it heralds a sense of irresponsibility on the part of City Council workers charged with this task.
The health system to me, on the other hand, has always been a major challenge for both past and present governments, since the birth of independence. No particular robust health system has been able to be adequately sustained since that time.
If government can embark upon the construction of a modern and sophisticated health centre in the country, the better it would be for the rest of its valued citizens. That would mean citizens no longer be travelling to India and Ghana with sick relatives and friends to seek advanced medical treatment, at least, for those who can afford it.
Those who cannot make it to these foreign lands for lack of funding is another story altogether. When construction work on Freetown- Masiaka road was completed, the Okra Hill then with its long horizontal and vertical layers of corrugated partitions used to be the envy and admiration of not only tourists visiting our country, but the average indigenous citizens as well.
Today, it has been overgrown with thick vegetation transforming into forests, gradually engulfing its natural beauty and making it loose its original technical design each passing day.
I would personally not like to see the once-upon- a time natural beauty of Okra Hill just fizzle out into nothingness like that; the need for government to re-focus attention to it is quite paramount.
Generations born and yet unborn will continue to enjoy its natural beauty and magnificence year- in and year-out for only very few landscapes of this nature adorn our country.
I know that our country lacks maintenance culture, not only in the upkeep of major and towering edifices in our cities and provincial towns, including many other vital areas of concern, but even on the road sector as well.
What is normally delivered by these experts by way of addressing most of these issues in several aspects of national interest is insufficient. A thorny issue that normally tears me apart is the sight of our brothers and sisters displayed on television screens dying on the high seas in search of better conditions of living elsewhere. This is not only true for most African nationalities, Sierra Leoneans not being an exception, but for several other non-African nationalities as well who migrate with the same motive.
We know that government cannot provide employment opportunities for all its citizens, providing room for those desperate brothers and sisters to migrate to other lands they consider more productive in order to improve upon their material lot. The chances for most of them to make a successful livelihood in their homeland without migrating to other lands is quite enormous, depending upon how they harness their minimal resources to transform their lives and existence, but the thirst and hunger for quick material gains elsewhere often lures them into deadly consequences. Government’s intervention by creating more employment opportunities can minimise the hazards. Nobody can dispute the fact that running a country is not the same as presiding over a colony of angels; It is quite a difficult undertaking anywhere in the world to govern a country. It can be a daunting task, but not insurmountable altogether provided the best and workable policies are enacted and implemented accordingly.
Ing. Yayah A. B. Conteh is the former Director of the Mechanical Services Department of the Sierra Leone Roads Authority (SLRA).
Tel. nos: 076640364 / 077718805.
E-mail: contehyayahab2020@gmail.com.