Ibrahim B. Koroma: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 18 December 2024:
Rebranding is a marketing strategy that involves changing a company’s identity to create a new brand image. For example, developing a new name, logo or symbol. Rebranding a country is the process of re-developing and marketing a place to give it a new image.
The goal is to attract visitors and investors by changing negative imagery and making the place more attractive. Rebranding of countries happens for many reasons. Culture, politics and emotional sentiments stand as the major factors.
In 2018, Maada Bio promised Sierra Leone that he was ready to rebrand Sierra Leone from a dirty stain on its international image – being a nation of civil war, Ebola Virus Disease and corruption of egregious scale.
Targeting Bad Laws
It’s a fact as we know it today that H.E. Bio has repealed the once notorious Part V of the Public Order Act of 1965 which criminalised libel and replaced it with a far more repressive law referred to as the Cyber Security and Crime Act of 2021.
The Act has been widely criticised for infringing on data privacy as it empowers the state to force mobile operators to record your voice calls and SMS in real-time and give to the state.
Since then, citizens have seen increased detention of politically exposed persons and individuals from civil society groups opposed to the government.
The government, since 2018, has made strong efforts to limit free speech and public opinion by constantly inviting dissenters to the Criminal Investigations Department.
Also, arbitrary application of the law to suit the whims and caprices of those in power has marginalised individuals and organisations to the extent that both locals and international partners don’t trust our judicial system anymore. What a REBRANDING!
Targeting Corruption
In November 2021, the well-known corruption crusader against the main opposition party officials, H.E Maada Bio, suspended the country’s Auditor-General and her Deputy after a damming corruption report (the 2020 Auditor-General Report) implicating him (President Bio) and his wife of egregious corruption in the tune of a whopping $11 million cash losses to the State (i.e. from hotel documents scam to procurement irregularities).
After two years of suspension, the President ordered the sacking of the Auditor General and her Deputy – a move that sparked widespread national and international condemnation. What a REBRANDING!
Targeting Lawlessness
With regard lawlessness, Sierra Leone is now taking the lead on a variety of violent fronts in West Africa. For example, recent trends have shown that Sierra Leone is now the regional champion of Tramadol and Kush to the extent of exporting such menace into neighbouring States of Guinea and Liberia.
Sierra Leone is on record for fatal violence in the forms of police using firearms at demonstrators or revenging demonstrators using lethal means like stones and petrol bombs, rampant acts of rape here and there leading to too many deaths of even minors, and increased prostitution leading to life-threatening sex-related disease. What a REBRANDING?
It is important to know that rebranding a country goes with real commitment to the course. A commitment that requires the President to be willing to go against the BIG interest of the First Family when a potential arrest and trial of the President’s niece needs to be made for allegedly importing deadly drugs such as Kush. It should be a commitment to peace without allowing the bullying of one group over another. It is a commitment to first set an example of zero tolerance to embezzlement of the national resources like Magufuli of Tanzania.
Once you abstain from corruption others will be afraid to be corrupt. And it’s a commitment to allow yourself strict adherence to our national laws without putting pressure on the judiciary, the police and other state institutions that ought to promote good governance
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