SLPP government’s blame on Corona outbreak for Sierra Leone’s economic mess is never an excuse. The nation like other African countries was never struck badly at the beginning of the virus.
This was because whilst China, Europe and United States were badly affected by the pandemic, Sierra Leone and all African countries were never being severely affected.
The fact that White people were at high risks to easily catch the corona virus; the Blacks were more resistance to the virus.
This made many African countries not to be bothered more about the disease not until when it started spreading vastly in other countries. The spread in the transmission was largely due to people’s movement around the world. While the virus was killing thousands of Italians, Americans, Chinese and British, Africans maintained little number of deaths resulting from corona virus.
But since WHO, World Health Organization, had declared Covid-19 as a pandemic, it warned all countries to rapt out measures to further preventing the ‘deadly’ disease from spreading. Thus, travelling restrictions were imposed globally with most countries in Africa chose to lock their borders and airports lately.
For example, Rwanda, Uganda, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia never attempted to close down their airports and borders since those countries aware of the economic collapse the closing down of airports would cause on their economics.
Tanzania never locked down her international airports and never mounted up stiff restrictions like curfews and lockdowns. Other countries like Guinea, Ghana, and Nigeria did not spell out harsh preventive measures that would have affected people or weakened businesses.
The right leadership provided by presidents in those countries has enabled the economies of most African countries to keep growing other than slowing down.
Unlike Sierra Leone, president Julius Maada Bio never hesitated to impose hard restrictions on people’s movements within and outside the country. He was the first to close down her airport stopping international travelling, a factor which accounted for Sierra Leone’s revenue loss.
The president also announced stringent measures early than expected on foreigners and Sierra Leoneans’ movements.
To attract covid-19 global emergency relief fund, president Bio after he had long closed the airport, went on air declaring the first case of the virus.
Instead of encouraging farmers to plant crops, several curfews and inter-districts lockdowns were declared lasting for months. SLPP’s government also declared one year state of emergency thereby suppressing people’s freedom of expression and association.
The declaration attracted wider condemnation nationally and internationally. It is safe to say that Sierra Leone imposed more ‘stiff’ corona preventive measures than even Italy, USA and Britain which recorded high number of covid-19 affected cases and deaths.
SLPP’s blame on Sierra Leone’s economic mess then and now is a white lie that is always told by government as campaign propaganda to influence public opinion.
There are lots of instances to point at which showcase SLPP’s government’s failures to properly handle the economy.
When elected, president Bio since 2018, business companies such as Coco-cola, Capitol Food, saw a crackdown as heavy taxes were imposed on them, forcing many others to flee to neighboring Guinea.
Sierra Leonean business people have been paying heavy taxes on goods sold in the capital Freetown.
SLPP also failed to chart the way for the opening of Guinean border with Sierra Leone, a situation which caused businesses to crumple up as traders were paying huge sum of money to Guinean authorities to secure goods bought in Conakry.
The government was later exposed on the high rate of affected cases of corona virus when a British travel ban was announced by London.
Sierra Leone was included with other African countries on Britain Red List of countries with high risk of the pandemic. Just after that travel ban, affected cases of corona virus peaked down rapidly, something Sierra Leoneans thought government was not ‘truly realistic’ with its Covid health report.
Since there have never been more deaths reported of coronavirus in Sierra Leone and Africa as a whole, Sierra Leoneans questioned whether their government, in fact, needed to have put the country under siege as travel bans, curfews and inter-districts, sit-at home days unnecessary imposed to justify SLPP’s government naked excuses from performing on the economy.