Collective Responsibility of the Over 40s

Those Sierra Leoneans who are over 40 years of age who in the Darkest Years of our ‘rebel war’ between 1991 and 2001 played leadership roles as armed and ‘unarmed combatants’, risking life and limb with patriotic zeal; those who from 1995 onwards were the leaders in civil society resolved to kick the NPRC military boys from power, and in an unprecedented Mahatma Gandhi-type peace protests resisted the brutal AFRC/RUF hold on power in Freetown in 1997/1998; those who provided leadership as our democracy took tottering steps into maturity changing government peacefully in 2007…..; those who have manned the revenue and administrative sectors of government to keep the state chugging along; those who have nurtured what is now a burgeoning indigenous private sector; those who fearlessly fought with their pens against brutal ‘rebel’ murderers armed with machetes and machine guns…..have to take credit for all what is positive in our country today. The over 40s!! Without the leadership of these over-40 citizenry (those that come readily to mind are: Civil Society Movement’s Festus Minah, Mohamed Kalokoh, Hon. Arthur Harvey, Aviama Caulker; Alithur Freeman; Zainab Bangura, Thaima Bangura, H.E. Ernest Bai Koroma, H.E. Tejan Kabbah, Prince Harding; Momoh Pujeh; Hinga Norman; Kanu of Wanpot Enterprises, Sampha Koroma of UTB, Wilfred Sam-King of Taia Resorts, Cornelius Davies, etc….And others who should be put on this pedestal…..) our country could have slid into a Rwanda-like scenario, or worse. We take for granted the peace and relative ‘prosperity’ that we enjoy today. But, the over 40s fought for it – with sweat, blood, and tears!!! Even as those over 40 should take credit for vanquishing some of the most brutal rebel fighters ever in human history so we must take responsibility for all what is flagrantly negative about being Sierra Leonean, about Sierra Leone as a geographical entity. You may wonder: why ‘over 40’?

Over 40 years is the ‘Age of Responsibility’

By the time a man or woman is over 40 years of age, it is expected that he would have reached close to the peak of his intellectual, emotional, and, often, financial prowess – especially for the cream of the tertiary-level educated elite. The norm in Sierra Leone is that such a person would have had about fifteen years of work experience. By age 40, an educated person should have honed his academic credentials with practical experience on the field. He would be above the youth age of 35. It is the age of responsibility. No more should a person at 40 look to others older to do things. He has to do things. If the society is rotten, it is duty of the over 40s to wrestle power from whoever is messing up the system. It should not be a case of passing the buck to only the President, or, ministers, or parliamentarians – every educated person over forty must have a sense of responsibility to improve on his/her society in the microcosm or macrocosm. Generally, have the over 40s lived up to their responsibilities….? No!!!

Our shoddy and scandalous educational systems

With the exception of the oasis of quality of education to be gotten in expensive private schools largely in Freetown, the entire educational system of Sierra Leone today is in…..(fill in the dotted lines with the worst adjectives imaginable). I spoke with a principal of one of our elite private schools this week. The principal showed me an application letter written by a “Bachelor of Science (Honours)” graduate from the Institute of Public Administration and Management (IPAM), University of Sierra Leone. The letter written by this “honours” graduate is much worse than a poor Class 4 pupil in the private school would have written!!! No exaggeration!! Those of the over 40s who are in positions to receive such application letters have disclosed to me the absolute gibberish that pass for English written by most – not some; certainly not all – of our university graduates, some of them with “Masters” degree earned from our tertiary institutions. As much as these over 40s bemoan these poor standards and look with disdain at the generation after them, they fail to realize that the general shoddy education in our system reflects all of us – especially the over 40s.

National Educational Emergency NOW!!!

If we have been a responsible body of over 40s – in our esoteric ‘lodges’; in our ‘bench and bar’ groups; in our medical and dental associations; in our chambers of commerce….in our alumni associations….etc. – we would have long since beaten the ‘war drums for a National Educational Emergency’. I hope our collective consciences would now be stricken and we will catalyze positive action.

It is not a question of being partisan; trying to score political points with every national problem – blaming the APC or SLPP. The malaise in our country has been there for about fifty years. Even the vaunted ‘quality’ education we received in FBC, University of Sierra Leone, some forty years ago, was not as qualitative as half of what our peers would have gotten in Harvard, Oxford, or, even Ibadan University in Nigeria. Education transcends ‘book knowledge’ – the assimilation and regurgitation of facts on paper is merely one component of ‘knowledge’. Knowledge must be applied – in whatever sphere: from philosophy to technology to science. If we have been imbibing quality education, if we have been understanding the very essence of what ‘education’ is , it would have meant upping up our sense of responsibility for the collective good of our society – it would have shown in all spheres of our society: from science, technology, to our winning the Africa Cup of Nations and gold medals in the Olympics.

Sierra Leoneans are generally lazy!!!

Sierra Leoneans are generally lazy. Sierra Leoneans whether in rural or urban settings, work about 20% of their human potential – as against, hypothetically, Germans and Japanese, who work 90% of their human potential; and, Nigerians of the Yoruba and Igbo ethnic group, who work 70% of their human potential. Who is responsible for this? The generally lazy educated class of over 40s who dominate the hierarchy in the public sector have woefully failed to be examples of hard work which the youth should ‘fallamakata’. There are exceptions. Like President Ernest Bai Koroma.

‘Packaging Ernest’ and Marketing our ‘World Best’ for youth to ‘fallamakata’

President Koroma works on average 16 to 18 hours daily. He takes in and digests tonnes of paper work. He meets dozens and dozens of people daily. The first time I met him as President was at the State Lodge in 2008 – at about midnight; after he had come from work; had gone out again for some official party; and returned to his residence at the State Lodge in Freetown. And, I left two other people in his waiting room. In State House, if the President is about to leave his office at 19.30 hrs in the evening, those there would say, ‘A…the Pa dae go home early today, O!…’. In an interview I recently had with the President and published in this Column, he told me how when he gets home DAILY he would continue to meet other groups of people, and address other official matters. And, he still finds time to play daily squash game (Forbes magazine two years ago dubbed squash ‘the healthiest sport in the world’ -because of its holistic exercise embedded in it). One of the ways to help cure the chronic laziness of Sierra Leoneans is to ‘Package Ernest’ – and do aggressive marketing of his work and exercise habits so that we all can learn and ‘fallamakata’ him. An over 40s class energized by a ‘packaged Ernest’ that they would be compelled to ‘fallamakata’ would be more likely to confront the sheer laziness, the frightening unemployment, of our majority youth population.

Scary and Chilling Sierra Leone Youth Unemployment

As I move around Freetown, as I travel to other parts of the country, I get scared, and chilled to the bones , as I see the streets teeming with IDLE youth – especially males. In the area where I used to live on Fort Street, close to State House, I would notice youth who would be on the street idling from 8.00 a.m. to 12midday; and from 4.00 p.m. till midnight. Our youth just engage in idle banter; and ‘monkey playing’. Or, reckless sex!! Whose responsibility is it to address this scary and chilling menace of youth unemployment? Us. The over 40s. There must be a Youth Unemployment Emergency. There must be collective resolve to address this problem, and to defuse a ‘youth time bomb’ before ‘another Foday Sankoh’ emerges to detonate it with demagoguery. But, how can too many (thankfully not all) of the over 40s provide leadership to address these chronic problems when they are themselves afflicted by the national laziness disease?

Performance Contracts for ALL Public Sector Senior Workers

The President has to take the lead on this. The Performance Contract he has asked his cabinet ministers to sign should be fastidiously monitored and regularly appraised. To lend greater credence to it, to thwart those who think belonging to the governing party means a licence to underperform and steal public funds, local and international independent bodies should be brought into monitoring the Performance Contracts. In the context of Sierra Leone, if the President takes action against underperforming ministers of senior civil servants who do not hail from his party’s stronghold, it would be instantly labelled ‘witch hunting’. I again plead for the responsible over 40s to lobby their parliamentarians for a law that would lead to Performance Contracts for all the senior levels of those in the public sector. All! Anyone who has been in government knows that it is nigh impossible for any minister, or managing director, to make dramatic progress if his/her senior staff – civil servants largely – decide to sabotage his/her efforts, or, refuse to work harder than they had been used to. Some of these civil servants, for whatever narrow reasons, could be directly or subtly sabotaging some ministers. And, there is not much a minister can do about this within the context of our public system – since it is almost impossible to sack a senior civil servant; or, to even have him transferred.

It is my hope that the ‘responsible over 40s’ who read this piece will begin to take speedy action on it. For the political class of the governing APC, action on what I write here simply means political survival beyond 2018.

Oswald Hanciles

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