President Julius Wonie Maada Bio has made it categorically clear to Sierra Leoneans that he cannot be able to change the country the way it is expected of him. He came to power on a platform of change which was dubbed by his Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) as “The New Direction” but six years on of his Presidency, he has decided to be truthful with his conscience and depart from the deceit he and his henchmen (Paopaists) have held looming over the heads of Sierra Leoneans to say, he really cannot as his supporters had made themselves believe.
This is a statement of fact. It is definitive statement of failure, inability and incompetence, but unfortunately, he is only realizing it now with every aspect of the country’s governance system plummeting and drifting away like a ship captained by a drunken sailor.
“Because of the Democratic principles of the country and the time I have, I won’t be able to change this country,” President Bio confessed, adding: “but I will inspire so many people that even when I go, that inspiration will take us forward,” President Julius Wonie Maada Bio stated.
The President reportedly made this defeatist statement while ironically congratulating his wife, Madam Fatima Jabbie-Bio on her election as President of the Organization of African First Ladies for Development (OAFLAD) at the recently concluded 29th General Assembly of the African Union Summit held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She will serve a two-year mandate, following a closely contested election against her counterpart, Madam Oluremi Tinubu, First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
This statement by President Bio brought back sad memories of former President Joseph Saidu Momoh of the All Peoples Congress (APC) party who in similar vein, admitted to Sierra Leoneans way back in the late 1980s that he failed Sierra Leone and Sierra Leoneans.
Former President Momoh’s administration, like this government of President Bio; and they are both Soldiers, was marred by corruption, mismanagement, economic melt-down, incessant blackout, galloping inflation, indiscipline and a weakening of the center of power by surrogates who were calling the shots from the right, left and center resulting in the gross misuse of power, a broken judiciary and a loose security sector. The state of Sierra Leone under President Brigadier-General Bio is no different from what existed and compelled Major-General Momoh to admit haven failed the people.
But this is not surprising! Perhaps, it is just shocking because of the choice of event in which he nade the declarative statement; congratulating a wife who appears to have excelled more than him. However, it could be recalled that at a Cabinet Retreat in Bo City, Kakua Chiefdom sometime about in 2018 during his first inning, President Bio did made similar confessionary statement that his government and his team have not met the expectations of the people of Sierra Leone since he took over governance a year earlier.
“Our performance over the past year has not met expectations,” he had stated, adding: “We can really get together and have a shared understanding of what it is and what it means to be able to deliver. With this mindset, I want to register my sincere concern over our performance over the last one year. We have not been truly inspiring as we ought to be. We have to be at our optimum,” he had noted.
But six years since that worrying concern expressed by President Bio, he has not been able to even inspire people of his team, people he has given jobs with fat salaries. What he may have succeeded in inspiring his team, even with the new initiates, is that, they be as careless as he has been, and perhaps, inculcate the habit of fending money to keep them up and running after power would have left them. This is so because, six years on, President Bio still believes that he “will inspire so many people that even when I go, that inspiration will take us forward.” Nobody wishes his kind of inspiration to have any influence on any Sierra Leonean in the Mighty Name of God!
President Bio is sure to leave the Presidency with Sierra Leone still grappling with electricity challenge, rising poverty and poor conditions of life, economic deterioration, dilapidated and crumbling infrastructure, rising unemployment, a deepened state of hunger, a crumbling healthcare and a haphazard education system, among several other socioeconomic developmental challenges.
But even with this his public admittance of failure and deceitful rule, he did not state that he will resign out of morality; rather, he continues to vaguely assure Sierra Leoneans of a hope they are not even seeing on the horizon.