By Hoccas Siwel
It is without doubt that Sierra Leone is at a crossroads. At this fork in the road, certain reflections must be made with a view to answer once and for all the question; are we heading in the right direction? Ask yourself this question, if we as a nation, with all things being the same as they’ve been and all things being equal, continue on this developmental and moral trajectory are we going to have anything to be proud of? Should year in and year out produce the same financial, educational and moral decadence with multifaceted manifestations that have come to be out lot? Are we satisfied with this?
The country is presently at that point of reflection in deciding what kind of future we want as a people. The days of impunity when one man or group can hold an entire country hostage are over. We can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines and watch unbridled insolence and disdain for constituted order by the very same people who should be setting good examples for us.
From Independence to now, a lot of our elected leaders have come to use the law and its applications as tools for oppressing others and getting their way in any situation. A complicit and enabling police and judiciary make the getaway complete.
For the past three days, it is expected that the attention of the entire public be glued to our television and or radio sets listening to the 2021 budget debate in Parliament. Sadly, the public has shown very little interest in the debate. A cursory glance at what people at PZ in Freetown had to say can be generalized to include the entire makeup of the country. An Ataya base is really a place for sound qualitative research.
“My brother, I could care less about next year’s budget. What has this year’s done for me? What I care about is to do my business and take care of my family. The budget is being debated by the very same people that stand to benefit from it,” said Shekuba Bangura, a trader at Salad Ground by PZ in the CBD.
“Why is it that the sectors that usually get the most are the ones that perform the worst? Look at just what happened with our WASSCE students. Imagine in the whole of Kono, not one student got university requirement. Talk about healthcare. Despite the monies that continue to be pumped into building our healthcare infrastructure, a man is more susceptible to die from treatable disease in Sierra Leone than most other poor and developing nations. Ours is a new direction in the same ole,” he added.
Chipping it, Neyo, who called himself a staunch ruling partisan, was forced to concede that “maybe the New Direction is rather a new direction in the same old direction.”
He said, “What we are seeing on the ground does not encourage us. I have to be honest with my reality, not what our leaders are trying so hard to sell to us. Look at transportation and power supply. We cannot even talk about a national transport system of the government’s. Regardless of our potential for generating enough power not only for the country but to also sell regionally, why are we still grappling with electricity supply issues? Why is that karpowership on our shores? That boat is an embarrassment to us.”
As the Finance Minister journey on to make known what’s been allotted to the different sectors, it would seem the people that they should benefit have come to a point where they are tired of the status quo and want some real and tangible evidence on the ground of these appropriations trickling down to them and not bypassed or rerouted to some politician or benefactor’s pocket/account.
“I don’t think that we are changing as a government and people. The expectation that governance be a system of continuity is lost on Sierra Leone. We are truly a people for the moment, as we can hardly say we consider, say, 100 years from now what would the country be like. While others are projecting beyond a 100 years, we are only concerned with the moment because those who are coming after will take care of what’s to come then; we have to eat now,” said Kadiatu.
“I am tired of being made poor by decades and decades of thieving public officials backed by a naïve and ignorant but clever acting, and mostly violent proletariat that mostly see nothing wrong with us being pillaged by our so-called leaders.”
So, the question remains: where are we heading from here? “This is not a New Direction in the same old direction, because the old direction was better than this new direction,” opined a youthful looking man, which raised the ire of what had become a focus group.
“Look at where the Old Direction has gotten us. Are we where we should be education wise? How about healthcare, provisionally, even infrastructure development? We do need be forthright; people don’t eat GDP (gross domestic product). The old direction and the new are the same: they are both cleverly designed protocols to continue pillaging an unsuspecting and naïve populace that care little about querying past and current public officials. This country is heading nowhere fast if we continue in any direction put forward by either of the main political parties. What we need is to scrap all directions that didn’t originate from the people. If you look across Africa, besides Botswana and likely Nigeria and Ghana, which country is better-off where the party that came to power at Independence is still actively involved in governance? So you see these guys came into power wanting to be just like or even worse in terms of how they treat us than the colonialists. We need to be practical with where we are heading as a people.”
With that the young man seemed to have turned the whole debate on its head.
That notwithstanding, the nation is at a crossroads. But which direction is it going to head? Are we going to take the path of sustainable development that requires tremendous and very personal sacrifices (including bringing public officials including teachers to book) geared to not only the present generation benefiting, but more so generations yet unborn? This has been the bane of our existence as we have so much sidestepped this outlook that many believe that it is a pipedream to think that Sierra Leoneans are so disciplined as to work their way out of dependency.
Or are we still going to continue on the current trajectory that after 59 years of Independence, we are worse off than we were 70 years ago? It’s time to reflect.
And let that reflect in holding our leaders, even us, accountable.