By Hoccas Siwel
As President Bio unleashed a media blitz on the country in defence of his corruption and other manifesto promise credentials three years into his presidency, another devastating corruption revelation was being told to this medium.
A very close source at Sierra Leone’s National Sports Authority (NSA) has said officials at the authority are still in possession of the close to Le 8 billion that was left over from the recent away match between Leone Stars vs. the Crocodiles of Lesotho match/trip and home game against Benin, for which the Ministry of Finance had allotted and disbursed close to Le 12 billion.
The source said that now that the dust that was kicked up calling for the authority to account for the Le 8 billion has died down, the officials are actively looking for ways to spend or share the loot.
While this other revelation of possible graft by yet another government functionary, added to many such others, might come as a shock to the public, this medium was not taken off guard as the timing of the Ministry of Finance press release a day before the Lesotho game that it had disbursed the requested Le 11. 2 billion to NSA for that and the Benin game had raised some eyebrows that something was amiss.
According to our source, after the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) had submitted a budget to the NSA that it can execute the Lesotho trip for under Le 1.8 billion and the home game against Benin for Le 2.5 billion, the NSA inflated the Lesotho budget upward of Le 8 billion. After using the SLFA spending plan, the remainder was the NSA’s inflated difference.
Upon receiving the allotment, the source said the NSA executed the Lesotho trip using the SLFA spending plan. As Sierra Leone was expected to have an easy time getting rid of Lesotho, the expectation was that had that happened, the anticipated excitement from possibly qualifying to the African Cup of Nations (AFCONS) final would have negated any talk of giving an account for the whopping missing sum of cash.
But now that Leone Stars had miserably failed to defeat Lesotho, a plan was concocted to dish out to Benin what it had done to Nigeria by using the COVID test hoax to prevent the team from playing Benin, and so deflect the public’s attention from the mission billions.
After paying the Leon Stars players for the Benin game that didn’t happen, the question now is where is the country going to get the further cash needed for us to play the June scheduled game against Benin? Would NSA then use the Le 8 billion for that game, or is the Ministry of Finance going to make another disbursement? Finally what has happened to the Le 63 billion the Ministry of Finance gave to NSA since 2018 to handle running the country’s sports sector?
Our source said that since NSA is still in possession of tax payers’ money, the only way for the authority to quell any further talks of it having compromised the president’s flagship campaign promise to fight graft is to either do a snap audit of its fiduciary discipline in the handling of allotted public purse, or call a press release stating such and return the money back into government coffers, instead of looking for how to chop our money.
Meanwhile, our source said that should the authority deny this allegation, paperwork is available to substantiate said claims.
To be continued in subsequent editions.