Sierra Leone Telegraph: 26 April 2024:
Dr Kanja Sesay, Sierra Leone’s energy minister has this afternoon tendered his resignation, after failing to address the country’s perennial electricity blackouts that have in the last few months sent the entire capital Freetown into darkness, not only putting lives at risk but has led to the death of a baby at the Cottage Maternity Hospital – PCMH.
Sources at State House told the Sierra Leone Telegraph that Dr Sesay was forced to resign by the President, after failing to take responsibility for the deplorable state of the county’s electricity supply.
Dr Sesay has presided over the failed energy ministry since 2018. The question many are asking is why he waited until a child had died in hospital because of lack of electricity before resigning.
In 2021, SELI Hydropower – a company owned by Joule Africa, signed an agreement valued at hundreds of millions of dollars with Dr Kanja Sesay on behalf of the Bio-led government for the development, construction, management and subsequent operation and maintenance of the 143 MW Bumbuna II Hydropower Project. Three years on Sierra Leone is still in darkness.
Sesay was the minister responsible for the direction, performance, and contract negotiation on behalf of the energy ministry, including the repaymeny of a $48 million debt owed to the Turkinsh electricity supplier – Karpowership.
If Dr Sesay did not have the support of the president, why did he not resign much earlier instead of enjoying the trappings of office, as well as acting as one of the presidents most loyal lieutenants.
A statement published this afternoon by the ministry of finance says that the government yesterday paid the sum of $17 million to Karpowership, in order to reduce the $48 million owed to the company for the supply of electricity in Freetown.
Whether this is sufficient to allow Karpowership to resume the supply of electricity to Freetown remains to be seen.
Editor of Freetown Stories, Amadu Lamrana Bah, said on Twitter this afternoon: “The reasons for his (Kanja Sesay’s) resignation haven’t been made public but a family source told me that Mr. Sesay believes that he is being undermined by the Ministry of Finance over the payment of the over US$40 million debt to the Turkish Karpowership.”
State House sources told the Sierra Leone Telegraph that President Bio may now be looking up to a fresh pair of hands, such as the chairman of his energy and climate change commission, former Presidential candidate of the National Grand Coalition (NGC) Party – Dr Kandeh Yumkella to take over as minister of energy. (Photo above: Kanjah Sesay – left, and Dr Yumkella – on right).
Kanja Sesay’s (Photo) resignation comes as local journalist Amadu Lamrana Bah of Freetown Stories published this open letter to the President, the vice president, the chief minister, and the health minister yesterday:
“Dear President Bio, Vice President Jalloh, Chief Minister David Sengeh, and Health Minister Austin Demby, a child died yesterday at the Princess Christian Maternity Hospital because your government couldn’t provide electricity to the hospital.
Like the many stories of how things are bad, we all read how Dr. Jeredine George, a Specialist Obstetrician Gynaecologist, and her colleagues had to use phone torches to examine patients. How some babies couldn’t get oxygen, and those who needed oxygen while in their mother’s wombs couldn’t get it either, and a baby had to die immediately after surgery.
At a time when our ruling class and politicians spend the weekend between New York and Europe and fly out to lecture at Harvard, sit and flaunt in expensive SUVs we as a country cannot provide twenty-four hours electricity to our health facilities.
For once, imagine your wife in labour, and there’s no light. Your child couldn’t survive due to a power outage. Dr. George wasn’t writing a script for a Sollywood movie on Netflix. She experienced this on Monday, 22nd April 2024, at the Princess Christian Maternity Hospital (PCMH), popularly known as Cottage.
In other places, this will cause outrage, but as Resilient as we are, we reading and moving on as if everything is normal. Those who promised us better health care don’t take their kids to PCMH or any public hospital. Some even have medical insurance overseas.
At a time when a critical infrastructure like one of the main referral hospitals in the city goes without electricity, I am not sure the Presidential Lodge or the residence of the Vice President has gone without electricity throughout this crisis.
Like Dr. George, we are all not asking for anything extraordinary or something that can’t be done. Just give us the basic things you are also enjoying, like 24 hours of electricity. We are all humans, and the only thing you have that we don’t have is political leadership after you were elected.
Sadly, even when the rest of us like that innocent child are left on our own we are quick to defend politicians who enjoy social services.
Dear Dr. George, our thoughts are with you and your colleagues. We appreciate all your sacrifices to save lives. May you continue to have the courage and strength to continue to serve humanity.
To all of us, tonight, think about what will happen if you’re sick and taken to a public hospital with no electricity. Think about your wife and children. Your relatives and friends who cannot afford private hospitals. This could have been any of us or our relatives. And they are now telling us to pray as if we didn’t even before they came to power. This E Mona Gbain Gbain…”
DR KANDEH KOLLEH YUMKELLA WILL BE A BIG FOOL TO ACCEPT THE POSITION OF ENERGY MINISTER UNDER THE BIO PAOPA REGIM. We recall a similar situation under the NPRC, when KANDEH YUMKELLA TOOK OVER THE MINISTRY OF TRADE, INDUSTRIES AND ENTERPRISE AFTER DR KARIMU HAD SHUNTED TO BE MINISTER OF FINANCE WHILST NEGOTIATING TO SAVE AND UPHOLD THE OIL REFINERY. UNDER KANDEH KOLLEH YUMKELLA’s TENOR, THE OIL REFINERY WAS SOLD TO A NIGERIAN BIDDER KANDEH. HE LATER WAS SACKED BY NPRC AND SIERRA LOST ITS OIL REFINERY. Yumkella is NOT FIT to be Energy Minister in today’s climate of DARKNESS , ENERGY DEBT, AND DREADFUL DISGRACE WITHIN THE ENERGY SECTOR IN SIERRA LEONE! HE KANDEH WILL BE A BIG FOOL, TO ACCEPT TGE MINISTERIAL POSITION IF OFFERED AND THAT WILL BE THE LAST NAIL, IN HIS POLITICAL COFFIN!
Maada Bio seems to be overcoming a drunken stupor with a sharp axe . He recently sank his speaker (Abass Bundu) into the shadows where he is now wrestling with demons he created over decades while in the grips of megalomania.
Now the axe has fallen on the neck of the Energy Minister. He too will now sink into oblivion, having not measured up to expectations. The question is, did he not see the writing on the wall for over five years? If he didn’t then he is extremely slow in the head. Good thing he didn’t have to work for his PhD.
Bio may be on the rampage in a last ditch effort to salvage his presidency which is in tatters, completely devoid of meaningful friends both at home and overseas – the horse has bolted into the darkness because the barn was left open for far too long.
Had Bio not found himself in the bad book of the international community he could have scrambled into the air to find willing, empathetic and sympathetic financiers all over the globe willing to help the country with its energy problems. Or he could have used the MCC funds to throw the pressure under which he is off balance. Why doesn’t he use his intellectual colossus (Prince Harding) to help him contrive something ?
Who’s neck is next on the chopping block?