Sierra Leone’s free education – Investing in people

Abdulai Mansaray: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 17 August 2018:

One of President Maada Bio’s signature policies, before, during and after the general elections has been the promise and delivery of a free education for all. Many people believe that education is a right and not a privilege.

Many also believe that education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world. For the New Direction to signpost “education as its flagship policy”, can be suggestive of its sense of priority.

For far too long, successive governments, especially in Africa have paid lip service to education. On paper, governments have ranked education as major policy drive in their respective countries. But in practice, little has been done to promote education.

Most governments have done their best to suppress enlightenment, knowing full well that nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. (Martin Luther King, Jr.). Like religion, education or the lack of it has been used as the opium of the masses.


That is exactly one of the reasons the APC party lost the last general elections.

The APC believed that irrespective of how well or badly it had performed in government, all the party had to do was bear gifts to the electorate, and the election was theirs to win.


For far too long, politicians have learnt to ignore the electorate immediately after elections, only to turn up on the eve of polling with lots of promises.

They have always banked on the knowledge that a bag of rice here, cash there or T-shirts, was all it takes to gain the support of the average ignorant and gullible voter. During the last elections, we all saw how the APC party sprayed cash among the disaffected.

Cash and T-shirts were distributed freely to the electorate. There was rumour that every rally attendee was given Le 30,000 (thirty thousand Leones) and a T-Shirt for their support.



A new government comes in and promises to go after those it believes presided over the reign of corruption.



This is swallowed hook, line and sinker. The same people you believe you are fighting for are asked to mobilise against you – for fighting for them? If there is any higher price to pay for ignorance, show me and I will pay cash.






But what does free education mean for our country?




Men are seen as breadwinners. It is this erroneous mentality that has partly contributed to abject poverty and the slow evolution of our communities. The discrimination against women in our societies has gone on for too long and too far.

It is an open secret that many families struggle to educate their children. The number of school dropouts has always been a perennial disease. The advent of the Okada has generated a whole generation of untapped potential. Who can blame them?


Some are given into early marriage out of fear of teenage pregnancy. Others do so because they believe that no matter how educated or wealthy a woman is, marriage is the ultimate outcome; so why wait?



Just to emphasize the discrimination against women, the male culprit in a pregnancy situation gets the chance to continue his education, while the female in the equation is left to stare at the lost chance to be educated, just because they made one bad decision.





The Minister of Finance Jacob Jusu Saffa (Photo) recently remarked that the government has not benefitted from any foreign help to date.






The hope is that more attention would be given to our disadvantaged women folk in this drive, because when you educate a man, you educate an individual, but when you educate a woman, you educate a generation.


There is no doubt that this project will face its own battles. Firstly, it will face cultural resistance. It will face financial huddles. Our institutions would require institutionalised evolution of the mind-set. Parents and families will need to buy into this project.

The project will have to fight off its detractors and those who sadly, would like to see it fail for obvious reasons. The roots of this free education policy will be bitter at times, but we should all aspire to enjoy the sweet fruits in the end.

So, President Bio, as you embark on this seemingly near impossible dream, please don’t trade your authenticity for approval, because by opening a school door, we’ll close a lot of prisons.


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