ACC and its Public Perception
The Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) established by an Act of Parliament in February 2002 amended in 2008 to help fight all forms of corruption in the country should now be thinking of an option to conduct a public perception survey since Sierra Leone happens to be the eighth country in the world to sign and fully ratify the UN Convention against Corruption.
The purpose of the survey should be how the ACC is perceived to be functioning by staff and the general public on generic issues relating to the ACC.
Ten years since it was formed it stands due for the government to conduct survey of such nature to again look into the successes of the Commission before their terms in governance and the successes registered since the amendment in 2008.
The outcome or the finding of the survey will be negative as the general public perception about the commission is in direct conflict with the purpose for which it was created.
Firstly, the general perception of the public is that the commission was set up for the poor not the rich, justification being among those investigated and prosecuted by the ACC in court never face sentences like life imprisonment but rather an amount or fine is levied on the said individual just to fool the general public.
Unlike the poor against the rich document for the poor will get stuck somewhere in the commission’s office, reason being the rich will be using money to slow down the matter.
The Investigation Department has been accused by the general public for the sail space of much investigation. No wonder there are cases that are over a year old still under investigation. Confirming the public perception to be correct documental evidence is available to this medium when a poor teacher by the name of Mohamed .A. Dumbuya of the Sierra Leone Islamic Federation Secondary School Kambia wrote the Commission in a letter dated 20th January 2010 to complain some corrupt activities of the Magistrate Court in Kambia which is until this date still under investigation.
In my own opinion the number of ‘cases investigated but never submitted report’ surpasses the amount of cases the Commission has successfully completed which all points to the question – how corruption free is Anti Corruption?
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