Dear Mohamed:
I generally do not read articles about Sierra Leone and the solutions to her economic, social and political problems because they are either generally unobjective, lacking in structure and politically skewed or based on uninformed ideas. I must very highly commend you for preparing such a high quality article based on real information and on the realities of our problems rather than on the semblances of the reality. Most amazing is how closely your opinions on Sierra Leone’s problems matches those I have recently expressed in a letter I intend to send to Tony Blair.
Sierra Leoneans have spent the last five decades dismantling functional colonial legacies replacing them with functionless nothing, bastardizing governance, banalizing our social and cultural heritages, running competent and capable administrators and technocrats out of the country and replacing them with gross ineptitude and incompetence, indebting our nation with IMF and World Bank loans serviced at merciless rates, allowing our frail and meager infrastructure to ungracefully age and dilapidate, turning the majority of our people into illiterates and dishonest citizens, impoverishing one of the richest nations in the world through lack of goodwill on the part of our leaders and international assistance development agencies that focus more on exploiting the nation than on assisting us to emancipate from progressively retrogressing economic, social and political malaise. I can go on and on, but of utmost significance and importance to our recovery from our current problems is the need to change not only our own attitudes, perspectives and methods of operation but also the partners from whom we we seek assistance. If fifty years of effort has yielded only persistent failures, then something must not be right with both the donor of aid as well as the recepient. Donors who provide aid without a national master plan that defines what and how the money will be spent must have ulterior motives. If donor agencies are accountable to their governments for the aid they give, why should recepient countries not be accountable to donors?
We must debride ourselves of tribalism, eradicate rampant institutional corruption, develop a national master plan, seek assistance in reorganizing our civil service, judiciary, law enforcement, revenue collection, abandon our old partnerships and seek new ones, develop school and adult education programs that provide public health, hygiene and national pride information. These are just some of the ideas I have expressed in my letter.
Keep up the good work and cheers.
Dr. David T. Akibo-Betts
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