Ministers and Their Fake Credentials

With all due respect to our new honorable ministers to- be and who will be appointed into various ministries, this short comment may not directly be referred to their persons. They are yet to be approved or vetted by the Honourable House but as this is yet to happen we fill obliged to sound the alarm bell.

Many political observers noted that for a government to be credible, parliament should ensure that only men and women with integrity and are above aboard are giving the passage to serve as ministers. As a case in point, we can recall that in the last parliament of the All Peoples Congress (APC), it was a free ride for all as ministers were vetted and approved even though they had questionable credentials. The public did follow up the procedures in parliament to ensure that people with dubious characters were not approved to serve as cabinet ministers, let alone people who did not possess the required educational and or professional backgrounds.

But in the case of the then APC Government people were appointed ministers to prove themselves regardless of their qualification. And we saw what happened with some of the ministers, though we cannot narrate everything here.

We agree that it is the President’s right to hire and fire people when he or she deems it fit. Most times, we cannot question the president’s appointments but when such appointments get into the public chamber, which is parliament, we can raise eyebrows, especially when the wrong choice is presented to the people.

President Earnest Bai Koroma’s choice of ministers in his last cabinet did not merit the expectations of his people, to say the least. Some submitted their credentials to parliament that were either faked or substandard. But when these matters were referred back to the former president we are told that the former president simply shrugged at the complicity and asked parliament to just ignore the inadequacies and approve the ministers – with their fake certificates, etc.

We are recalling these issues so that public will be aware of the kinds of ministers President Bio would be appointing, people who may not have even O’ Level certificates and will find their way to cabinet.

But we believe that with Bio’s educational background, it will not lure him into those criminal enterprises. However, we are watching and waiting to see if a repeat of APC’s pattern of governance will be replicated this time around. Hope not.

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