Ernest must end the ‘Age of Toffee-ists’
It was 1998, just after the Nigerian-led ECOMOG forces had routed the AFRC/RUF regime of Major Johnny Paul Koroma from Freetown, when the concept of ‘Toffee-ist’…. then popped into my mind. It emanated from the toothpaste-advertisement-smiling fresh-from-university 25 year old ebullient Osman Lahai. The academically-brilliant Osman, almost always clad in flowery shirts and tight-fitting trousers, sporting a Victor Foh high-barb, was like me, a regular columnist in THE DEMOCRAT newspaper, risking life and limb to write against the AFRC/RUF junta when we all were crammed in the Freetown peninsular. Osman (who in 1998 was a science teacher in Prince of Wales secondary school in Freetown, and in 2010 a high-level United Nations staff) had explained to me who a ‘Toffee-ist’ is: a flatterer!!! The Toffee-ist peddles that cheap flattery that is recognized in Freetown as the ‘U borbor dae ya, O!’ syndrome.
You may be tempted to dismiss this piece as light stuff. Don’t!! Pore on this absolutist statement from me: ‘Toffee-ists’ have infected our social and political space with one of the most virulent diseases in Sierra Leone. President Ernest Bai Koroma said recently that in a couple of years our country would be a dramatically improved one; a dream echoed by the APC Spokesman (communications/broadcasting minister), Alhaji I.B. Kargbo. His vision flipped opened in my mind’s eye a picture of “Singapore”. Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, was the first and longest serving Prime Minister of his country; and it was his leadership that brought Third World Singapore morphing into a thriving metropolitan city in a stunning three decades – racing from a per capita income of about $600 sixty years ago to a per capita income of $28,000 today. I daresay that President Koroma’s vision of dramatic surge forward for our country would never be transformed into concrete reality as long as Toffee-ists hold sway in the thought processes of the governing elite.
In Sierra Leone today, Toffee-ists swamp the public sector which employs over 80% of formal workers. It can go like this. Aiah Fefegula wants to be given supervisory rights in a government agency for field workers; a work outsourced. He approaches the Managing Director, and showers him with praises: “A…Pa…Your tie match your shirt, matches your shoe…even matches your skin….’Pa…u sabi suit up, O!!”. The Pa smiles, pleased. The Toffee-ists rubs it in: “Pa…it looks as if you have been exercising, O!! Your body look trim; quite ready to whack those little girls….” The Pa feigns anger, and orders Aiah out of his office, but, bends over backwards, convulsing in sheer delight. “Pa…Memuna was here…I have fixed the hotel for you for the weekend. Pa…after all the hard work in this place, you deserve to rest. You are the best MD ever in the history of Sierra Leone…”…
Some of these Toffee-ists most often than not would shift their tactics towards the diabolical. They would finger for “Di Pa”…or, rarely, “Di Mamie”, those who are against him; or, those who are against ‘our party’. They would speak the same language as ‘the Pa’ – playing the ethnic card. Don’t laugh. If you work in, or, associate with those working in, government ministries, agencies, and departments (MDAs), you know that what I write here is the truth. In nearly all MDAs, reward – of promotion; of foreign travel; of perks – is by a ratio of 95% NOT as a result of hard work, or innovation. Reward for staff hinges largely on the whims and caprices of bosses, and ‘Udat di pa lek’. Thus, in government, those who start off working hard, stretching themselves backward to help the system, soon give up – and relapse into doing just enough work so as not to be completely idle.
In most MDAs, the human resources management departments exist almost entirely to process health and leave forms – not to guide productivity, and certainly not to take punitive measures against the flagrantly lazy. In too many MDAs, the first two hours of the day would be spent discussing English Premier League football, or, some bizarre witchcraft eruption, or the latest Christian crusade, or politics. With an average of two hours work a day, staff would often relapse into watching Nollywood films; or, playing that ‘card game’ on computer; some, even watching pornographic films. Supervisors have long since given up in controlling such brazen display of idleness. If they take the matter up with CEOs, the supervisors could get embarrassed, as their subordinates would be reprieved – because their staff are expert ‘Toffee-ists’, or, because they belong to ‘the party’; or, are of the same tribe as the CEO. President Koroma ought to know that the decadence of the public sector he has known for almost forty years now has changed very little, in spite of the abstractions of management institutions set up to ensure productivity. President Koroma ought to take a leaf from the book of the greatest leaders of all time, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew.
One of Lee’s most obvious qualities is that he was a no nonsense person and he would say things as they were, while he was Prime Minister of Singapore. He was not afraid to be blunt about certain truths and he often got on the nerves of even his closest aides, and the few ministers who risked falling below set standards. However, because of his approach, he managed to get things done. The Singapore that Lee built was (still is) a model of modern efficiency – trains and airplanes run on time; there are almost no potholes on the roads, as the slightest dent in the road is promptly fixed overnight; doctors and nurses work their designed hours, and offer flawless and efficient service. No one dares to drop even a sweet peeling on the road in Singapore. No motorist dares to disobey a ‘Stop’ traffic sign. Singapore universities are among the best in the world, spawning some of the most qualitative graduates in the world. Singapore ranks among the top one percent in the quality and cost effectiveness of industries in the world.
To follow the good examples of Singapore, President Koroma has to say things like they are, and ignore those who put on the defense of ethnicity and party affiliation to rationalize their inefficiency, and general lassitude. Electoral certainty among a Sierra Leonean populace that is growing increasingly savvy, hardened by our recent brutal civil war, could depend largely on President Koroma imitating Lee.
Now retired Lee, whose party won every free and fair elections over a 33 year period, now a legal ‘Mentor’ of the current PM advises: “When you’re Singapore and your existence depends on performance – extraordinary performance, better than your competitors – when that performance disappears because the system on which it’s been based becomes eroded, then you’ve lost everything… I try to tell the younger generation that and they say the old man is playing the same record, we’ve heard it all before. I happen to know how we got here and I know how we can unscramble it.” (Straits Times, 26 April 2008)
How Singapore got there… can be a lesson to President Koroma on ‘how Sierra Leone can get there’. Singapore got its independence from the British in 1963 – Sierra Leone in 1961. Singapore was (still is) a tiny barren land that had (has) to import nearly all its material resources – including food and water. Singapore opted to fuse itself with resource-rich Malaysia. Singapore became a part of Malaysia in 1963. Only two years later, the merger ended in a crash. Singapore was back on its own. It was a gigantic failure for the ruling Peoples Party and for its leader Lee Kuan Yew.
Developing Singapore with an extremely limited resource base was an extremely complex and demanding task. The small team with Lee as the front figure were very goal-driven and pragmatic. They tried different ideas and stuck to what worked.
“Singapore started to be governed and managed like a corporation and business. With a clear overall mission, ‘Make the life better for the Singaporeans’, and a strong control over its operations”, says Henrik Bresman, a political science professor in Singapore. The pronouncement of President Koroma of running Sierra Leone like a business is similar to the ethos of Lee when he was PM of Singapore. But, it may be necessary for President Koroma to widen his scope to embrace the “Mano River Union”, if not ECOWAS, given the pathetically small market of Sierra Leone.
Singapore – along with Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan Province of China – have become famous as the “Four Tigers” because of their powerful and intimidating economic performance. The Tigers have had annual growth rates of output per person well in excess of 6 percent. These growth rates, sustained over a 30-year period, are simply amazing. While the average resident of a non-Asian country in 1990 was 72 percent richer than his parents were in 1960, the corresponding figure for the average Korean and Singaporean is no less than 638 percent.
Can Ernest lead Sierra Leone into a similar Singapore scenario? Sierra Leone has a disproportionate advantage over Singapore ‘when they started growing rapidly sixty years ago’: Sierra Leone is laden with highly marketable resources – gold, the biggest iron ore deposits in Africa; the best grade of rutile; the best jewelry diamonds in the world; some of the best shrimp grounds in our territorial waters; one of the five most idyllic beaches – whilst Singapore had only ‘brain power’ to start with. Success will depend on how President Koroma can neutralize the power of the Toffee-ists. Let me repeat that lesson which I had publicly offered Ernest and the governing elite.
When the Toffee-ist approach you oozing with flattery, hold you breath, and say in your mind, “Criticism or praise, honor or dishonor, they are all the same…”. Or, you chant in your mind some similar phrase from the Bible or the Quran. This way, you listen to the logic of what would be presented to you, and your emotions would not cloud your rational thinking. Whatever it is, because of the near omnipotence of the Presidency in our country, the standard has to be set by the President. One way Ernest can keep tab on performance is to do random checks on MDAs at different levels, not only at the CEO level. If a middle level manager is suddenly asked to show what he has done with time and resources at his command, and he can show nothing much, and action is taken on him/her, and a serious public reprimand on the CEO, it would get all of the CEOs sitting up. No one in the public sector would want to be embarrassed by the all-powerful President. That way, CEOs who must perform would learn that encouraging Toffee-ists could do them incalculable damage, and they would more likely begin to encourage the high performers.
Oswald Hanciles, Freetown
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