One of the areas which the governing Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) should pay great attention to is the energy sector, which many people believe is the driver for most economic activities and eventual economic development for every nation.
If we are to talk about sustainable national development in present day Sierra Leone, the current SLPP government should try to emulate the last administration of former President Dr Ernest Bai Koroma and his All People’s Congress (APC) which, in less than six months in office, transformed Freetown from “the darkest city in Africa” to a regular electricity consuming city. The Koroma administration brought electricity as promised within its first one hundred days in office, thereby changing the situation from hopelessness to hopefulness.
Prior to the presidential, legislative and municipal elections in 2007, Freetown’s residents had relied on generators, known as ‘Kabbah Tiger’, for constant electricity supply which angered many people to the point of changing the then ruling SLPP to the APC party.
That is one of the reasons why President Julius Maada Bio needs to pay keen attention to ways in which Freetown, and other main provincial cities including the SLPP’s heartlands of Bo and Kenema, could get regular electricity supplies. If the Government fails to meet such commitment, it might result to the same resentments which many people had for the ruling party prior to the 2007 elections which kicked the SLPP out of power.
Though the SLPP may argue that the Free Quality Education and plugging the leakages are their two main election campaign promises; the issue of constant electricity supply to the capital, Freetown, has now become a political hot potato which is very hard to ignore. If the SLPP tries to ignore it, it will be at their peril.
For now, if President Bio is very much concerned about going for a second term in office then he needs to stop the babysitting of his Minister of Energy, Alhaji Kanja Sesay, who many people now regarded as one of the non-performing ministers because of the constant blackout in the city. Something must be done by president Bio and his newly crowned Mandingo chief, Kanja Alhaji Sesay, to immediately salvage the acute electricity outage in the country now!
So President Bio and the SLPP should be wise enough to learn from the mistakes of the late Ahmed Tejan Kabbah and ensure that this time round, Kanja Sesay does not serve as an agent of the SLPP’s would-be defeat in 2023 because of plunging Freetown and its environs into total darkness.
President Bio should, therefore, put party politics and personal friendships aside and take the necessary action to effect changes in the Energy Ministry and other auxiliary sectors. This is because there is no two ways about it; Kanja Sesay has failed the president, the Government, and the people of Sierra Leone and therefore should be honourable enough to take his exit before he is pushed.
Under Alhaji Kanja Sesay as Energy Minister Freetown, Bo, and Kenema cities have experienced power outages than ever before. If the present government could not maintain the electricity pace left by the last government of the APC, they should not make it worse.
If anything, electricity has now become a political weapon which a party in power could use to their advantage. That is why it is our opinion that President Bio and his SLPP should pay much attention to the energy sector.
A word for the wise is quite sufficient.