Maada Bio’s free education and healthcare for children rattle Ernest Koroma’s APC

Since the start of the campaign a couple of weeks ago, the two leading Presidential candidates have been embarked on two different styles of campaign. On the one hand, we have seen the Presidential Candidate of the APC going around the country kicking and throwing footballs in the air. You wonder whether there was even need for the APC to have written a manifesto because the message of the president has been “VOTE FOR ME BECAUSE I AM THE WORLD BEST”. Well, we know if the people wanted a footballer as President they would have turned to Leone Stars for candidates. Just imagine for one minute in the recent US elections, President Obama had been going around from state to state kicking and throwing footballs when the American voters were more concern about shrinking family budgets, jobs, education, healthcare and the economy. The American voters would have been OUTRAGED. It seems the APC made the deliberate decision that if the President would not defend his records in a presidential debate they thought they should distract the people with footballs.  (Photo: SLPP Presidential aspirant, Rt. Brigadier Julius Maada Bio)

On the other hand, we have seen the more serious and focused Presidential Candidate of the SLPP, Rt. Brigadier Julius Maada Bio who has been explaining to voters about his new vision for free and compulsory education at pre-primary, primary and secondary school levels; free education for girls and those pursuing science courses and training in the medical disciplines in tertiary institutions and universities; and expand the free healthcare to include children under 18 years. Even my moderate APC friend said to me yesterday that “I may not be SLPP but your manifesto has more substance and clearer vision than us”. Well, few days before the elections  even the President knows that the voters are more interested to talk about policies than football so the APC are now desperate, very late in the game, to tell the people that SLPP is just making “wild Promises”. So, in this article, I will explain why our children need free education and free healthcare and why our country has the potential resources in addition to bilateral and multilateral aids we receive to fund these policies.

Let’s start with education. For a country which was once the “Athens of West Africa”, only 2 out of every 5 Sierra Leonean can read and write. According to a UNICEF survey titled “The out-of-school children of Sierra Leone”, it estimates that under President Koroma there are 300,000 children who are out of school. Whatever our political persuasion – SLPP, APC, PMDC, NDA etc – this situation is shameful for our country. Yet, for the past five years our country has received one of the highest direct bilateral and multilateral aid contributions to our educational sector. According to Anna Haas, Independent consultant for UNICEF in her report published in July 2012 titled “Evaluation of UNICEF’s Role As Lead Partner in the Education Sector in Sierra Leone” she catalogues that from 2007 – 2011, 13 bilateral countries gave direct aid disbursements to our educational sector – Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States. At the same time during 2007 – 2011, President Koroma’s government received direct aid disbursement from multilateral donors such as AfDB, BADEA, EC, FDA, IDA, IDB, Save the Children, UNDP, UNFPA, UNHCR, UNICEF, World Bank and WFP. In total, the direct bilateral and multilateral aid contributions President Koroma received was a whopping $109, 570,000 (One hundred and nine million, five hundred and seventy thousand dollars).  And Anna Haas stated that even with this amount not all aids to the education sector was being recorded in the database which meant that the President may have receive more donor aids.

Also, it is important to note that almost all of  these bilateral and multilateral donors support the International Initiative, Education For All, which is geared towards bringing the benefits of education to “every citizen in every society”. So when Rt. Brigadier Julius Maada Bio talks about a free education policy, it is about making education a right for every child. Therefore, with a constructive engagement with our donor community,  keeping in mind their international commitment to attaining, “Education for All” then they will be more than likely to support the would-be incoming President to deliver his manifesto promise.  However, providing free primary and secondary education is not a strange thing.  Take country like Uganda which has a population of 34 million people with 56% of the population below 18 yrs. For the past years, Uganda through effective utilisation of  bilateral and multilateral aids and revenues from agricultural sector and mineral resources, it has been able to provide free primary and secondary education for at least 15 million children  and young people. The literacy rate in Uganda is about 73.21%. In essence, the more children and young people have access to education, the more literate the society and the more economically productive the population. But compare Uganda to Sierra Leone, our population is just 6 million and according to Street Children International 52% of our population is below 19 years. Guest what is our literacy rate – 38% and more worrying the literacy rate among female youth ages 15 – 24 is 37.23%. Therefore, we have a population five times smaller than Uganda but more mineral resources than them, so if Uganda can provide free education for its children and young people through donor aids and revenues from agricultural sector and mineral resources why not Sierra Leone?

The other policy of Rt. Brigadier Julius Maada Bio which has rattled the APC is the expansion of the free healthcare for children under 18. You would have thought President Koroma who launched the free healthcare for children under five should have supported Rt. Brigadier Julius Maada Bio’s policy because a president who believes that a child who suffers from malaria at age 4 should not die because his father could not afford to buy drugs MUST equally believe that that same child who suffers from pneumonia at age 6 should not die because his father could not afford to buy drugs. As such whether it is free healthcare for a child under 5 or 18, it is about saving the lives of our children. But, maybe the President has been more worried about the latest UNICEF REPORT 2012 “Committing to Child Survival – A Promised Renewed” which reveals that Sierra Leone has the highest under five mortality rate of 185 deaths per 1,000 live births. More worryingly, under the President the number of deaths have been rising. In 2008, the under five mortality rate was 140 deaths per 1,000, in 2010 it rose to 174 deaths per 1,000 live births and now in 2011 the number of deaths has risen to 180 per 1,000 live births. Like in the education sector, the health sector under President Koroma has received huge donor supports from DFID, AfDB, World Bank, Medicine San Frontiers, Global Funds totalling more than $100 million for the past five years but with very little to show for it. In fact,  how can APC tell us they are serious about free healthcare and then according to a BBC Report last year they could not account for a quarter of the drugs given to the country by foreign donors?

As I mentioned in a previous article, in Ghana the late President Atta Mills left his legacy of free healthcare for children under 18 and today Ghana has one of the lowest infant and under five mortality rates with six million of its children under 18 enjoying free healthcare in their National Health Insurance Scheme. The late President Mills was able to expand the free healthcare to Ghanaian Children under 18 because he was able to effectively utilise donor funds and revenues from their mineral resources. If Ghana can do it for their children, why not Sierra Leone which has a smaller number of children?

Therefore, the children and young people have been born into a country that may be poor but resource rich – IMF (2010) estimates that our iron ore revenues from royalties alone could increase to $116 million annually by 2015 and Anadarko Petroleum (2010) discovered oil reserves off the coast of Sierra Leone estimated at 450 million barrels and the Association of Journalists on Mining Extractives estimates that oil revenues could be as much as $100 million (equivalent to projected iron ore revenues) if and when exports commence. For the past five years President Koroma’s APC has been more interested in tax concessions, tax holidays and unpatriotic contracts for mining companies amounting to tens of millions of dollars for themselves. Therefore, a vote for Rt. Julius Maada Bio on 17 November will ensure that donor resources and revenues generated from a reformed mining sector are used to provide free primary and secondary education to children and free healthcare to children under 18. YES HE CAN!

By: Yusuf Keketoma Sandi

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