Commentary
By Gbaksondo Kloiloi, Freetown, Sierra Leone
One of the legacies of colonialism in Sierra Leone is salary disparity. There used to be a vast disparity between the salaries of colonial officers from the United Kingdom and their local Sierra Leonean counterparts even if they were educated in the same universities in the UK. A British doctor would get a higher salary than his Sierra Leonean counterpart even if they studied in the same university.
After independence in 1961, the Sierra Leonean elites who replaced the colonialists, made sure they paid themselves well with generous allowances and benefits while the majority of public servants could hardly make ends meet.
This state of affairs has prevailed for decades, not only in Sierra Leone, but in all African countries (including those that later adopted some kind of socialism as state policy).
The current Paopa (By all means necessary) government in Sierra Leone met this ignominious system of salary disparities that causes a lot of disenchantment, anger and hatred among public servants and between public servants and the general public towards the ruling government. It has led to several coups, attempted coups and a civil war in Sierra Leone. Every coup maker has a hardship story to tell.
That is why the current Paopa government has promised to do something about salary disparities in the public service. In fact parliament is working on an instrument to harmonize salaries but ours is a very lazy parliament; it is likely to take some time, except if the president puts some fire underneath them through the Speaker, to push them to do their work.
There is a rumour that our parliamentarians only move very fast on a bill if there is money involved but I don’t want to believe that. I still believe they are honourable men and women.
Meanwhile the Sierra Leonean opposition is busy inciting teachers to to go on strike and indirectly urging soldiers to stage a coup by publishing and comparing their salaries to other public service workers in social media and traditional media as if a coup only affects people in governance. That is far from reality. These politicians should be very careful.
Former President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah did not pay much attention to personal security issues. He was dedicated to ending the civil war that was then raging but did not pay much attention to his own army which he did not trust anyway. He probably thought the Nigerian military contingent that was in the country would protect him from any danger. When the coupists struck, there were no Nigerian soldiers to be seen except for a few that escaped with him to neighbouring Guinea in one of their helicopters. The rest surrendered to the new military rulers.
The whole world is currently facing economic problems because of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Africa is going to face serious economic problems because our traditional donors are themselves suffering in various ways.
In Africa, prices will continue to go up and more and more people are going to go to bed hungry until the pandemic and the war in Ukraine end. This is the kind of environment that can generate coups.
This is therefore a time African governments should pay serious attention to national security issues. Coups, once they happen, are often extremely difficult or impossible to reverse.
May God save Africa.
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