‘Ogoogoo dae dans na bigman palar’

Wonders will never cease; we have an integrity club that has no integrity. The very basic practices known as equal opportunities practice for employment is not followed by our all powerful Anti Corruption boss. All employment should be advertised, short listed and interviews conducted to select successful candidates. Since Mr. Tejan-Cole left that office, all employment at the ACC has been done at the whim of the commissioner, bypassing all known procedure for same.

Even internal appointments have to be advertised in house for all staff to be able to access the opportunities presented, but it is not uncommon now for the commissioner to simply move a secretary to a management position by the stroke of a pen.

You would think that this is a singular lapse, but look closely into the prosecution division of the commission and ask how anybody got appointed to the position he or she is holding, starting from the Director of Prosecution down to the new recruits.

I wonder how we can talk about probity, when those who are supposed to be seen to be practicing same have thrown procedure to the wind and they are following their personal egos. The movement of a secretary to management has to be justified by a fully fledged interview panel and the competence of the appointee should be vouched for by all in the panel by appending their signatures to the interview form.

Well may be our commissioner is simply blessing other people as he was blessed by moving from a lowly placed Para-legal in Washington DC, a position usually reserved for high school graduates, to the position of Prosecutor at the Special Court of Sierra Leone (God Bless David Craine) to the now very enviable position of commissioner of the Anti-Corruption Commission.

We have asked these questions before in other pieces but to date we have not got any reasonable answers. Who is investigating the investigator? Who determines that our head of the anti-graft commission is above board?

The commission is financed from the consolidated fund but for the last two years that our present commissioner has held down that position, we are yet to see audited accounts of the commission.

Again maybe the audit is for “your eyes only” and the public that the commission is supposed to be serving does not deserve to know.

Somebody please give us answers, when we challenge the commissioner on per diem, we get told off and reminded that not a single cent from the consolidated fund was used on the frivolous trips overseas. This is fallacious as the consolidated fund still provides funds for the salary of the commissioner even when he is away having a good time in Maryland USA. Can anybody truly working in such a non-transparent set-up really demand that other people account for their conduct in the public sphere?

It is easy for people in the commission to call other people names when there are so many skeletons in their own cupboards. Mr. Spin Doctor, tell us are we mere paid ghost writers with an axe to grind, or are we really the ones who want probity for everybody, including our “great” commissioner.

We can only prosecute the commissioner in the court of public opinion, presenting our case as best as we know it and letting the public judge. We will ask questions and follow through on our investigations until we get answers for the public. We are not going to indict our commissioner without evidence – no we are not that type of paper. Notwithstanding we will still ask questions who has ever seen the declaration of assets of the almighty commissioner? Probity has no shadows what is good for the goose should be good for the gander.

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