Kabs Kanu: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 8 September: 2023:
The Audit Services of Sierra Leone has named and shamed eight very important institutions that failed to submit financial statements for auditing. In short, the institutions refused to be audited as provided for by Section 119 (2) of the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone.
This is lawlessness, unaccountability and lack of transparency to the highest degree. But nobody who has followed the pattern of governance of the SLPP Maada Bio government will be surprised. Lack of transparency and accountability are the stock-in-trade of the SLPP government under Maada Bio.
PRESIDENT BIO – MOST CORRUPT HEAD OF STATE SINCE INDEPENDENCE
Transparency, integrity, and accountability are very essential for sociopolitical and economic institutions in any country because they are very strong prerequisites of a civilized society and a democracy where the rule of law is a sine qua non.
It is only when our institutions are transparent and accountable that they are perceived to have integrity and credibility and only then will citizens build trust in these institutions. Then and only then also will international donor agencies and stakeholders trust putting their monies in these institutions .
But when you have a government where the President , the First Lady and institutional heads and their cronies do not want to be audited as provided by law, you know the kind of government you are dealing with. It is a government that wants to spend the country’s monies like drunken sailors and not be held accountable.
This Maada Bio government is lawlessly corrupt and does not want to be held accountable for the way it conducts itself or spends the nation’s finances and resources.
The public statement from the Audit Services , after quoting the necessary laws in the Sierra Leone constitution that make it mandatory on institutions to be audited, rightly concluded : “Having failed to submit their financial statements for auditing, the above listed institutions should therefore collectively account for huge amounts of monies generated or received as budgetary allocations/ subventions from the Government of Sierra Leone. ”
But the Audit Services itself is too optimistic to think that these institutions will account for monies they have received or generated. It is a known fact that this SLPP Maada Bio government is the most corrupt in the history of our country. Officials of these institutions have probably shared the monies among themselves, which is why they refused to submit to auditing.
Widespread and unchecked corruption in this SLPP Bio government have exacerbated poverty, economic collapse, instability, donor fatigue and insecurity in the nation. No wonder the economy is on the brink of collapse. No wonder the government can no longer control prices of fuel and basic commodities and prices are going through the roof.
The Global Security organization reports that “Foreign investors and the public alike see corruption as endemic throughout Sierra Leone, despite some improvements in recent years. … Measures to combat corruption have been largely ineffective. For businesses, corruption exists in government procurement, the award of licenses and concessions, regulatory enforcement, customs clearance, and dispute resolution. ”
Because of the criminal cartels this SLPP government has created in ministries, departments and agencies, that is why it is afraid of being audited . President Bio’s government even had the audacity to remove the Auditor General , Mrs. Lara Taylor -Pearce because her bombshell Audit reports were stripping the government naked before the eyes of the world. What a disgraceful display of impunity.
It is a shame that a government that came to power loudly proclaiming from the rooftops its determination to be more transparent and accountable than the previous APC Government has turned out to be the most corrupt and fearful of auditing since Independence in 1961.
Without effective auditing, the SLPP government can only wax worse in corruption and destruction of the Sierra Leone economy.
What a shame for President Bio and his Paopa SLPP junta government.
