“As the President, Ernest Bai Koroma struggles to find a suitable replacement for Tejan Cole, the erstwhile Anti graft Commissioner for the country’s Anti Corruption Commission, ACC, cases are piling up for the courts. This is dwindling trust and confidence in the institution”, says a senior British citizen whose country, UK, is instrumental in funding the ACC.
According the ACC Act 2008 (as amended), the chief commissioner would have to have a legal back ground. An inside source has told The Punch that this has affected officials at the Commission as it stops them from charging many big cases to court.
“We have nothing less than eight completed big cases to be forwarded to the courts for prosecutions to commence but how can we?” she asked. Many Sierra Leoneans are beginning to think that it might be a clear and tactful signal from government that they might have been scared of the speed of the ACC dragging very many senior government functionaries to court; hence the delay in the appointment of a head for the ACC will help slow down things. This was however countered by a senior government official who opined that the President is rather thinking of bringing in a foreigner as chief commissioner to the ACC from one of the commonwealth countries such as Uganda or Zimbabwe. “Many contacts have been made already”, he told Punch.
Meanwhile, the country’s planning and lands minister, PMDC’s Dr. Denis Sandy, was last Monday allowed to spend some four hours of uncomfortable questioning at the hands of fierce and methodical ACC investigators as he attempted to sway off questions bothering on sales of retrieved state lands by ministry workers. Two other senior Lands ministry workers are making statements at the ACC in connection with what Denis Sandy has told investigators already. Under Dr. Denis Sandy, hitherto a very poor lecturer, the Lands and country planning ministry is viewed as one of the most corrupt, inept and ill motivated government sectors in the country. A senior citizen is alleged to have told the President that “if not checked, the grumblings, corruption and maladministration at the Lands Ministry under Denis Sandy, is capable of distabilising the Western and Urban areas of the country”.
Dr. Denis Sandy, since his invitation to the ACC, has been very unusually quiet. It could be recalled that Dr. Denis Sandy was previously slammed a four-count charge comprising libel, threatening remarks, endangering of personal lives of peaceful citizens and damage to private property. After boasting that he will not appear in any court before any judge, the case was nullified by the office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Justice, using appropriate sections of the constitutional powers of that office. Dr. Denis Sandy, an economics lecturer at the Fourah bay College uses the official state vehicle assigned to him to trek the mount aureole hills every week. A senior legal mind in the country has said that if he is being paid for his work at FBC, he should not use state vehicle to do that job. It is because we don’t have standards in this country, otherwise, this is not done” the lawyer said.
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