Suffering Economic Colonialism

Business

With over 70% of African Countries today are badly donor driven; carrying dependency burdens of over 100%. Can we really say we are independent? There might be some 365 days in the year, but in actual fact there are really just three that we most times worry about, and that is yesterday, today and tomorrow. The Preacher Man will tell you that yesterday is already gone and we do not know what tomorrow will bring. So in actual fact, it is really today that we should be worried about. This idea of not worrying about the future resonates in many sections of the Bible. Well for us in Sierra Leone at any rate, many people live on a day-by-day basis. They call it ‘Hand-to-mot’ literally meaning, living on what one earns on a daily basis. Oh how sweet it is when one is up in the social wrung. Sometimes life is so torturous when climbing up that once on top some people fight hard to stay there. For them, most times it does not really matter how you get up. Why are we crying all over the place that we have had bad deals especially relating to our Extractives? It is simply because the people that are uprooted hardly get anything from their God-given bounty. What is most painful is that, the pain they are feeling, the frustration they are faced with is being brought to them through their very compatriots, their very sons of the soil, who enter into negotiations on their behalf and come up with those bad deals that repugnant against their own people. The great Civil Rights Leader, Martin Luther King Jr. once said that the ultimate measure of a man is not by where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands in times of challenges and controversies. If you’re used to listening to Roy, you would have heard him provocatively telling somebody at Hyde Park who was trying to challenge his wit: If you tell me what you lie down for, I will tell you what you stand for. It is like saying that, show me your friend and I will tell you who you are. Talking about friendship, there is so much difference between collegial relationships and that of friendship. The latter never really works at the work place. No real friend actually would like to betray another. This is where the moment I hear somebody saying, that guy is a close friend of that Minister or Parliamentarian, I get a bit uncomfortable. Some guys establish friendships with people in higher positions in society in order to Lord it over other people. Well as our musicians sing, If dem yai nor boss, dem go see am. This is exactly the relationship we have with the so-called International Community. Tell me who will go into business to lose? Some years ago, there was talk of Trade as opposed to Aid. But how can we do trade when we do not have electricity to produce. Times ago, I wrote about guys around the leadership. I have consistently gone against what the majority of Sierra Leoneans think; that normally it is the guys around the leadership that really suck and make things happen for the leadership. Although there is some truth in that postulation, in actual fact I know that our governance dispensation makes it clear that many civil servants keep are in their jobs at the pleasure of their so- called superiors. You know that some guys are sometimes so powerful that they continue putting their dirty fingers into every political pie and they go scot-free. When critics of governance, including my humble self keep hammering the issue that no one is above the law, there are a chosen few who actually those sit on the law and do whatever they feel like doing with it! You see, let us don’t run away from the fact of life that there are many things we cannot explain. There are so many things in life that are not fair but just stay like they are. Sometimes actually, whether we like it or not, like someone says in a Nigerian movie, there are those who own the town and there are those who own those who own the town. While we try to compare ourselves with other countries, we still remain in the main part what we are, and that is how it’s going to be, my brother…no sweat! Just look around the world today. You’ll hear all sorts of strange things. Take the Darfur pornographic stuff that was all around the place for example! Right now we are all gearing up for the 2017/18 elections and already we are doing strange things all over the place. Can we ever get it right? Do not just dismiss me as a pessimist. Think hard about it. For all you care the politician’s agenda may never be the same with other sectors of society. Of course at the beginning, every Jack and Jill, whether they are in politics or development, they claim to be in it to improve the lives of poor people. In actual fact, many, especially the politicians end up in impoverishing the poor even more. Can we really get it right? We seem to be stuck with systems, processes, procedures, rules, regulations and policies that are in effect robustly becoming part of our core problems and nobody cares to dig deeper to find out the root causes. In life we have to consider the cause and effect factor in almost everything. Life is not to be considered as simplistic as some people think. We need to go beyond ‘tokenistic’ solutions to our problems. You know what I mean? Take the case of the drugs and trucks for the free health care that are stuck at the quay for very minor reasons. When we consider the importance of keeping our children alive, then you can see the blatant daylight robbery some of our compatriots get prone to. What still baffles me is how people systematically and deliberately try to have their way with things and we still as a nation pretend that all is well. All this becomes that painful, for the fact that we have made tremendous progress, but we seem willing to let all that go in vain. But do we have to be satisfied with mediocrity? Look how well our darling Leone Stars are performed l this time round. Who ever thought we could go this far? Let us forget about fatalism. We should stand strong and emerge larger than life and take maximum advantage of the many blessings poured on us by God and nature. You see, it is unfortunate but definitely a lot of us Sierra Leoneans behave like the proverbial ostrich which buries its head in the sand thinking it is hiding but then leaving its backside fully exposed to danger. You might want to ask, what makes a government popular. My brothers and sisters, in the African context, it is quite difficult to put your finger on it. Years of depravity, hunger and poverty has narrowed down the analytical ability of most of our compatriots and this is where assessing political success becomes difficult. Most times our thinking becomes skewed, albeit understandably, to the bread and butter business. Yes people want tackled the immediate emergencies that directly threaten their lives. Can you blame them? When we move from that, then we start getting it right, if we ever can! Part of our slow pace in getting things right is the many intrigues and manipulations within our political parties. Just check them out. If you take a close look at the current parties, you do not see the kind of organizational stature befitting them. Visit their offices and you can see what I mean. There is no way a party can perform better in national governance if the tenets of good governance are not part of the party in the first place. One important area of our democratic growth is decentralization. Let us don’t pretend that we do not know how the partisan nature of our local councils is a recipe for the backwardness of some of them. One thing we should realize is that a ruling party winning elections in any particular council does not in any way guaranty developmental success for that particular council. Just take a look around the country and you will see what I mean that is of course if you do not take your party card to be more important than your very life! To really achieve what we never achieved before means that we have to do what we never did before. Of course this does not imply any negativism. You can definitely not export what you do not have. Doing it right is gradually been stressed by the international community. But for a start let us be sincere in what we do. There is no alternative to doing things right. One area Sierra Leone is dismally doing poorly is our statistics that are not up to date and therefore not accurate. We are still using data we got in 2004 or so. There is no way we can cater to our growing population when we cannot put our finger on the vital statistics. Funnily enough in these days of international diplomacy, there are political statistics, economic statistics and of course aid statistics all referring to the same issues but different data. You are left in doubt as to who is manipulation what and for what! We will keep digging deeper and also think outside the box. We have hit rock bottom and our only alternative left is to bounce back. By Ben Cambayma

Fill the forms below to register

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.