The 2004 Local Government Act was passed in Sierra Leone principally to promote locally-led development initiatives – in ways that would enhance transparent and accountable governance machinery – in a post-conflict country that desperately needed to undo the country’s unproductive development architecture. It was also part of a genuine effort to shed the outdated, pre-war top-bottom development paradigm for a bottom-top approach that would create a genuine space for ordinary people to take leadership in designing the blueprint for community development programmes. I have often argued that part of the reason for the plethora of failed development policies in Sierra Leone is that the people have been perpetually squeezed into the wrong position of the development vehicle – the back seat. The time for people to take the driving seat is long overdue, but there is a new opportunity that needs to be seized. Until the people are empowered and given the space to freely contribute and take leadership of development, Sierra Leone’s development debacle will be a recurring chapter.
Eight years after the Local Government Act was passed, Local Councils are still struggling to bring about one of its intended effects, which is to give local citizens ownership over development programmes in their communities. Local councils and the Ministry of Local Government have generally failed to meet their unconditional obligations under Articles 107 and 108 of the LGA to ensure transparency and public participation in the administration of the councils. However, if citizens are given platforms and opportunities to directly engage Local Council officials, they have the ability to spur greater transparency from the councils and give their input into the community development agenda In truth, each of the 19 Local Councils in the country has had some chance in the last eight years to demonstrate a good measure of commitment to the values of inclusive development: participation and transparency. Unfortunately, most of them have disappointed.
In 2010, the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) provided funds to a coalition of civil society organizations, including the Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law (CARL), to help close the implementation gap in Sections 107 and 108 of the Local Government Act. By the end of 2012, the project was able to achieve some practical results, including the construction of some notice boards by various councils. The coalition also succeeded in generating passionate discussion at community level about the level of commitment or lack of it by council officials to implementing key provisions of the Local Government Act 2004. In fact, many communities were surprised to have learnt that councils were under an unconditional obligation to erect notice boards and update them on regular basis. In communities where Ward Development Committees were not meeting regularly or had never held any meetings, some remarkable changes were noticed. Thanks in part to the massive awareness and intense public debate about the councils commitment to transparent and accountable leadership or lack of it, some incumbent candidates for mayoral, chairman and councillorship positions were voted out during the primaries for the 2013 general elections.
Those modest achievements were inspiring, but the work is by no means finished yet. On the flipside, during the coalition’s monitoring activities last year in the Western Area, Northern, Southern, and Eastern regions of the country, monitors received inordinate amount of complaints from local residents about continued lack of transparency in the Local Councils’ activities and budgets. Many community members said they did not know that a law existed that obligates councils to inform them about its activities. We also found out that councilors and Ward Committees hardly organised meetings in their wards to get community members’ input into community development plans. Many community members did not even know their councilors or Ward Committee members.
Thanks to additional funds from OSIWA, the Centre for Accountability and its partners (including CDHR, Kenema, CampVO, Bo), will continue working on initiatives aimed promoting transparency and citizens participation in six districts across the country. This year’s project essentially seeks to increase local government transparency and citizens’ participation in the administration of Local Councils by developing mechanisms of permanent and regular communication between Local Councilors and their citizens. It also seeks to ensure that citizens can have accountability mechanisms to which they can turn if Local Councils mismanage community resources or fail to implement development plans that reflect citizen input and community needs.
The 2011 Auditor-General has been published, and it portrays an embarrassing picture of the level of mismanagement and lack of accountability in the public sector, including local councils. While the government grapples with a befitting response to the stomach-turning findings in that report, it is time for local council officials to begin afresh by demonstrating commitment to transparent leadership as well as create the platform for the participation of all. Public participation helps minimize corruption in the public sector, perhaps the biggest threat to Sierra Leone’s economic development aspirations. The World Bank estimates that developing countries of the world lose no less than $40 billion annually to the scourge called corruption”. Part of the reason for the rising incidence of corruption is the lack of safeguards against corruption in revenue generation and utilization mechanisms, limited public participation in budget development, and hardly any commitment to public access to information. This has been pretty much the story of Sierra Leone, and of many councils. The ‘new’ councils have an opportunity to take lead – to right the wrongs of the past – and to put the people firmly in the driving seat of development. That way, Sierra Leone can easily begin to crawl its way out of the enormous development challenges that confront the nation into a truly buoyant and prosperous democracy.
