Concord Times (Freetown)
Ibrahim Seibure and Tanu Jalloh
25 August 2008
interview
Concord Times' Ibrahim Seibure and Tanu Jalloh recently called on former president Alhaji Dr Ahmed Tejan Kabbah at his Juba Hill residence in Freetown to talk on a couple of things.
The interview session was largely confined to his life after active politics and some of his achievements while he was still president. From peace building to infrastructural development to his relationship with his party to his favourite past time the meeting also looked at his international commitment in recent times.
Q: Dr. Kabbah since you left power what have you been doing?
Ans: I have been preoccupied with reorganizing my life because during my tenure I gave almost all my time in running the affairs of the state. Since the election I turned my attention to my family and my personal affairs. And also, I have been responding to various requests internationally for me to share my experience with other countries in resolving either some of their problems or planning strategies for future development of their countries.
Q: you took two consecutive terms as President what were the most memorable times you had?
Ans: Well in the first place I should let people know that I was very reluctant to get involved in active politics. After 22 years in the United Nations system, I came home to retire and my wife followed about a year later. So, our intention was to concentrate on the affairs I have mentioned already. But there was a lot of pressure on me to accept the leadership of my party in a pending election.
I have to accommodate a lot of talking even to the point that my late wife reminded me of some discussions that took place in New York between myself, herself and a very good friend of mine, the former secretary general of UN Kofi Annan and a British colleague. We all agreed that we will not involve in politics after our retirement.
But with the pressure I considered very seriously that I owe something to my country and that my country through the important people who had approached me to vie for the leadership of my party. I decided that if my country needs me I should go along. I remember very clearly discussing this with my late wife, when I got to that stage, on the phone from New York. She laughed about it and I assumed she had agreed for me to go ahead. And two weeks after she arrived, she saw a lot of political activists here packed with people and then she said to me I thought we had agreed to stay out of politics. And I said I thought we discussed it and agreed so she responded positively.
And then she said alright don't disappoint your people. She said you carry on with your politicking I shall pack up my things and move out of the house, when you finished with your politicking I will come back home.
Well, one of the people that really finally pushed me into getting involved is a schoolmate of mine, Arch Bishop Ganda. So, I went to him and said Jose you were one of those who encouraged me to go ahead with this and I have given a nod, but I don't have a wife any more. He laughed and of course his family relation with my wife's family relations was good and strong and also my wife was a Catholic so he was able to clear that problem for me.
When my wife decided to come onboard, she came fully with all the imagination, experience and energy sew could muster. She was a real help for me. For the rest of the things in my campaign message to the people of Sierra Leone at that time when I was endorsed as chairman of the party. Really, the promise I made to the people was that I will do everything to end the war; I will create the opportunity for people of Sierra Leone realize their potential. Because I noticed the massive poverty and I felt that this perhaps was the root cause of the war at that time. It was a very difficult time in terms of security of the country.
So, I campaigned on that ticket and I won the elections. In fact in the first few weeks of my becoming president I flew from here to Abidjan to talk to the rebels there. We went and we were able to sign an agreement and the RUF reneged on it to the extent that we even lost some help that was to come from the UN by way of UN observers. But I didn't give up. I continued until we signed the Lome Peace Agreement. And even after that it was not easy to get the rebels to comply with all the provisions of that agreement.
So in the area of the type of destruction that the country had gone through, the war, our infrastructure was completely damage. Major bridges destroyed; highways destroyed; hospital burnt down even religious institutions like churches. You don't have to go too far opposite Annie Walsh School and by Bombay Street junction. What happened to those two churches? But that was what happened throughout our country. So, the financial position of the country...oh oh oh we were minus.
In every country you have to keep a proportion of your earnings. In convertible currencies so that you can import things at that time we were minus at about 16% we had no money we work hard and we built up a decent economy where we were able to pay salaries at the end of the month we started building up infrastructure we built so many schools, so many hospital even Connaught Hospital in Freetown and the PCMH hospital. We arranged a colossal amount of money to be spent rehabilitate those ones.
In the area of education we found out that the girl child in both the north and the east of the country...their education was not a priority. What the parents were concerned about was that their children should grow up and do some street trading and then get married. We tried to create opportunities for them to go to school and to be able to manage the economy in such a way that particularly in those two areas - the north and the east. We paid their school fees, bought uniforms, books all these were paid for including their examinations fees.
We extended this to the tertiary institutions. You see there are times when people start off their tertiary education they get only to the Bachelors level, diploma level and they don't have enough money because they don't go overseas for further education. So, we tried to create institutions so that people in the major areas of this country would have access to higher education. We decided to set up a second university since Njala was a university college. It became a full university. There are the Eastern and Northern Polytechnics and there is another institution in Bo. In fact for the very first time a university convocation took place in Bo because of the facilities that have been created in those areas. I can go on and on and on.
Q: With all what you have said people accused your government of been corrupt and that was why people voted against your party; what do you have to say about that?
Ans: In the first place the question of corruption was endemic in this country. To mention the word corruption was a taboo. You mention somebody is corrupt they will lock you up or dispose of you. That is what it was here and I was able to beg the British, they didn't want to get involved but I begged them so that we can set up the Anti Corruption Commission. Now, it was being managed by people who didn't see anything wrong with corruption here. And therefore some of them made mistakes. Even the British that were really helping us with this some of the things they were doing were not quite in the interest of the country. Take for example they made a public pronouncement that one stage that they were going to give us money to buy one fixed wing aircraft and three helicopters. They announced it but we never received them. We kept writing reminding them but people were expecting to see that we had those assets. That never happened.
Well politics got dragged into this whole thing, the ACC thing that people will push for certain people to be prosecuted. Others had a field-day but the whole thing about really fighting corruption was not just to arrest somebody and lock up in jail or sack people. One way to avoid it, and that's what these developed countries did, was to create the opportunities in the country for people to reflect and say no corruption is not good. Take for example, to be in a situation where people work for the whole month and then they have to wait for two or three months to takes their salaries and they have families to take care of, you can imagine what happens in that situation. For somebody to spend all his life in the government service, may be even at the senior level, occupying government quarters and they were given two weeks to vacate it because you've either reached the retirement age or you have fired for one reason or the other.
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