Bio: Stop the Politicization of the HUNGER of our Poverty-stricken Masses
“My government has successfully completed the preparation of Sierra Leone’s Medium-Term Development Plan (2019 to 2023). We consulted at least two million people directly , both locally and internationally over a period of seven months. We got unprecedented participation from our development partners, government institutions… local communities…trade unions..all political parties ..academia… Parliament. The Plan captures the aspirations of a broad spectrum of Sierra Leoneans at home and abroad…”: President Maada Bio in the Forward of the National Development Plan, February 24, 2019.
The National Medium-Term Development Plan boasts that “the plan was drafted with the most intensive and extensive consultations in the history of Sierra Leone’s development planning … This involved consultations through Townhall Meetings, focus group discussions, public engagements in learning institutions, and consultations with civil servants, local councillors, district and municipal administrators….”. I expect the monkeys and ants were also consulted. The result? A plummetting economy; rising prices of all commodities, especially edibles; political instability; bloated government; foreign travels by the President on average twice monthly; more excuses for worsening poverty.
Ernest Bai Koroma’s 2011 “Consultation”
Those who have good memories in the public sector, and the media, would not have forgotten the 2011 one week conference at the Miatta Conference Center of the Sierra Leone Conference on Development and Transformation in 2011, organized by the APC government of former President Ernest Bai Koroma. Everyone who was in leadership position in every chiefdom, city, town…in every sector..was invited to Freetown. For one week, they talked.. talked… The result? The price of the staple food of rice almost doubled during the eleven years of the Koroma presidency, in spite of its hype on the Smallholder Commercialization Programme (SCP), with ubiquitous Agriculture Business Center (s) in nearly all chiefdoms, the aim of dramatically transforming rural subsistence farmers into market-oriented farmers earning income remained a sad joke. The APC government of former President Ernest Bai ended its second term with rising prices for food and greater hunger . The SLPP in opposition took advantage of the massive hunger of the masses to score political points. To taunt the SLPP government today, APC partisans keep on publishing that evocative video of green-clad SLPP partisans dancing on the streets during the 2018 electioneering period, chanting “Tolongbo nor go siddom ya, hangri boku O “. The price of the staple food of rice was about Le250,000 (old Leones a bag) in 2018; in 2024, the price of a bag of rice is about Le1,000,000 (old Leones). What is the problem with Sierra Leoneans? You can understand why I am contemptuous when I read the following release.
“Hon Dr. Kandeh K. Yumkella, Chairman, Presidential Initiative on Climate Change, Renewable Energy and Food Security (PI-CREF) joined Ministers Mr. Tamba Lamin, Local Government, and Kenyeh Barlay, Economic Development to present HE Bio’s vision of Human Capital Development to the Council of Paramount Chiefs and stakeholders of the Southern Region….Each speaker emphasized on the critical importance of capacity building and skills development in their respective sectors and within the Big Five Agendas of the President… Arriving in the Moyamba township and warmly welcomed by the stakeholder, Hon. KKY took time to break bread with Paramount Chiefs. His humility and fraternity was greatly welcomed by the PCs, who also took the opportunity to discuss pressing development challenges in their chiefdoms to the Chairman of PI-CREF….”.
The following words were my response to that release hailing KKY as a transformational leader even as hunger has worsened for the masses..
Stop the Feed Salone Propaganda!!
Mr Mark @+232-77-307-972: Thanks in millions for posting that release on Kandeh Yumkella talking on agriculture with the Council of Paramount Chief (s)..in PROGRESSIVES 4 SL Whatsapp forum.
I have written on this before, and I state again: the Bio presidency should rein itself from engaging in propaganda as regards its Feed Salone programme.
What the government needs to do is to regularly get credible scientists, credible media professionals, credible civil society activists, credible religious and educational and youth leaders to scrutinize everything being done in the Feed Salone programme, and to regularly report on its successes and problems, to get the majority of people in the country engaged in the Feed Salone programme, in the mode of Development Communications.
Six years of Food Security propaganda by the Bio Administration has not made greater food production, or, cheaper food for the final consumer – it has been the reverse, with food prices going off the roof. It is unlikely that another four years of Food Propaganda by the same bureaucratic elite is going to make a significant difference – except more excuses in four years time; excuses like how the Torma Bum rice fields were flooded by salty ocean waves flooding the riverine areas of Bonthe District during the Rainy Season (s) and prevented the Feed Salone programme from reaching its targets. STOP 🛑 STOP
President Maada Bio is not going for a third term in 2028. He should now be the tough military-trained professional he is; and imaginative to address knotty national problems; harness really knowledgeable and experienced professionals, and honest citizens like Amadu Brima, retired Deputy Director of Finance in the National Revenue Authority (NRA) especially in Food Security; and to bring in the Ben Kaifala-led Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) to monitor all phases of the chain of production. There are solutions, but the solutions can only be forged by Sierra Leoneans capable of doing the interconnections between problems and solutions.
Another Secret Political Deal?
Of course, President Bio can ignore my appeal here and give greater credence to the rumour that he has reached a secret pact with Samura Kamara, the 2018 and 2023 APC presidential candidate, the frontrunner to be APC presidential candidate in 2028, to rig the governance systems so the ground can be watered for the APC to win the 2028 presidential election – just as it was rumoured former President Ernest Bai Koroma made a deal with then SLPP presidential candidate, Retired Brigadier Maada Bio, in 2012, and rigged the electoral process to elect an APC presidential candidate in 2017 by allowing 28 aspirants to contest, thus choosing the non-political, least-prepared aspirant, Samura Kamara, as presidential candidate of the APC. Don’t tell me APC and SLPP partisans are not fools. Or, worse…
As from post-civil war era the SLPP and APC swing the pendulum of state capture between their largely insensitive predatory elite, the hungry and angry masses could have their eyes opened soon, and one cannot predict what children and youth who comprise over 80% of the population would do as hunger gnaws their empty stomachs.
