By Amin Kef Sesay
Over the BBC last week, the editor of the Africanist Press, Chernor Bah, alleged that the Office of the First Lady, Madam Fatima Jabbie Bio, spent more than Le7.89 billion (over US$780,000) of public funds on personal shopping needs and the travel and hotel expenses for foreign guests she invited to Sierra Leone to witness the launch of her flagship program, the ‘Hands Off Our Girls Campaign’, launched in mid-December of 2018.
Chernoh Bah maintained that our finance laws do not authorize the First Lady to receive or use any public funds to undertake a social activity or public campaign.
Replying, the First Lady denied ever receiving funds directly from the Government. She added that her office is an appendage of the Office of the President; and that she was merely the face of the ‘Hands of our Girls’ project which she said is a presidential project.
On procurement, she said that anything her office wants, she writes to the Office of the President who fills the request. Thus, she called on her accuser to make an inquiry in the Office of the President.
She expressed disbelief at the figure quoted by Chernoh Bah by asking her interviewer Umaru Fofanah to look around her office and see if that amount was reflected in the furniture that he saw in her office.
On the allegation of paying for air tickets for colleague First Ladies that attended the launching of her ‘Hands of Our Girls’, she said she only provided them with accommodation. In an earlier reaction, she said whatever public funds allocated to her organization were used for “the intended purpose”.
Whilst the jury is still out on the truth of the allegations made by Africanist Press against the First Lady, the fact remains that just after assuming office in April 2018, President Bio in August 2018 reiterated his New Direction Government’s commitment to transparency and accountability while addressing a delegation from the Open Government Partnership (OGP) at State House when he said that his administration was doing all they could to be open and accountable to the people in order to increase public confidence in governance.
“We are trying to settle down and find our way in a still difficult environment but we are very much committed to accountability. We do not want to hide anything from our people. My Government is people-centered and we know we have a social contract with the people of this country and that contract needs execution. We have started and whatever needs to be done to earn the confidence of the people, we will do it,” he assured.
President Bio reiterated this commitment in September 2020 at the press conference for the formal presentation of the report of the Commissions of Inquiry and the Government White paper. On the Report he said:
“In my inaugural address to this nation, I declared three peaceful democratic wars against indiscipline, poverty, and corruption. The nexus among the three is obvious: indiscipline begets injustice and bad governance; corruption is a product of the former, and it accelerates poverty, and constrains national development.
As I have reiterated, corruption is a threat to our moral timbre as a nation of upstanding citizens, to our national development, and to our national security. Our only option is to confront corruption head on and fight it boldly and resolutely. It is a fight that we must fight; it is a fight that we must win if we must survive as a nation.”
Holding Government accountable forms the bedrock of Sierra Leone’s relationship with its international development partners including the USA, Britain, the World Bank, IMF and the EU.
In which light, in November 2020, the European Union Ambassador to Sierra Leone, Tom Vens, at a public event said: “I have no hesitation to state that strengthening the role of national civil society organizations in democratic processes, and promoting social accountability models based on transparency and sustained trust-building dialogue between State and non-State Institutions have always been at the core of the EU engagement with its partner countries…”
He added: “And along with that, we have reinforced, widened and ‘[be deepened our partnership with civil society organizations (to which the Africanist Press belongs) to become an effective force not just in the fight against COVID19 but for deepening democracy, social cohesion and public accountability.”
