December 16, 2021
Albert Baron Ansu
There is a global concern in land concession about how multinational companies in cahoots with some state apparatus have manipulated local authorities and stakeholders to their own advantage. The effect of this bewitchment of the mines is pervasive poverty of those potentially mineral endowed communities. It is a mental slavery where the people are not allowed to have their voices in mining concession deals and it became an issue for deliberation in Mano River Union CSO conference in 2018 at Makeni, under the project of Green Advocate International with support from Global Witness.
I am actually speaking to what is playing out in the corridors of NMA and Ministry of Mines as mind game, manipulating the people into fools so that they cannot think for themselves to give the undiluted local prior consent to concession agreements as best practice dictates. So the throw at us press releases that cannot speak sense and worded in cryptic forms to dull reasoning.
You can take this to the bank as a certainty. Sierra Leone is about to be dragged to the miserable end by officials of the National Mineral Authority, (NMA) and Ministry of Mines. What we are witnessing at this point in time is the fractionalization of Port Loko by NMA Director Julius Malthia and Mines Minister Timothy Kabba.
Recently, we published a letter from Port Loko stakeholders’ addressed letter to President Julius Maada Bio that they are supportive of Sierramin Bauxite Limited. Before the President could digest the letter, the NMA and Mines sent in their officials Satti Bambay Kamara and one Sandy with money, bribes to get local voices counteract the letter to the President. Media reports states that the divide and rule tactics was even extended to Sierramin workers inciting them against management. This can be within the ambit of regulatory arm of government- sowing the seed of conflagration.
The Guardian Post published a story ‘Economic Saboteurs in Bio Government’ with allegation that bribe was paid to some section of the community to damn Sierramin that had obtained three exploration license in 2014 and converted one into a mining license in 2016. Sierramin Bauxite Limited had explored and is the only company that has an authentic data about the Lunsar Bauxite.
Many connections can be made in the actions of NMA and Mines when the returned from Lunsar bribe paying spree and sent out what has been described ad lazy press release suggesting that Sierramin has compliance issues and for which reason their license has been cancelled. The press release did not tell us that Sierramin had done exploration, developed hauling road to the port, installed plant and brought in British investors twice this year who were snubbed by NMA and Mines for the obvious reason that they want a preferred company that flew them out of the country sometimes in September.
What can this suggest to sane minds? That there is something fishy in this license cancellation that media report indicates will land this government into another embarrassing arbitration issue. In that circumstance there is going to be moratorium on the bauxite mine in Lunsar. The indigenes would become victimized in the cyclical game of self-centered deception of Mines and NMA, depriving Sierra Leone of much needed foreign exchange. Because what is playing out is tussle between British and Russian nationals the diplomatic fallout is bound to be a bitter after taste for those that are twisting the rule to favor those that have supposedly paid the bribe as enhanced by the circumstance evidence of Julius Malthia and Timothy Kabba flight to Russian.
The chips are going to come down, unless the sagely advice and caution of the Parliamentary Committee chairman Saa Emmerson Lamina succeeds to drive home common sense and fairness so that the syndrome of ‘Monkey Woke Baboon eat’ must not be entertained in the Port Loko bauxite mines. We are of the conviction that this is patently a bully of Sierramin Bauxite Limited and can be never be convincing a non- compliance issue. The company has proofs of compliance, sad that this is now going to be presented in court where the country is expected to loss face. We know that there are bulk mining companies in this country without doing anything to the extent of what Sierramin Bauxite Limited has done. Why hav the licenses of these dormant companies not been cancelled?
President Bio must call his two men Timothy Kabba and Julius Malthia to book in the face of their self-created looming diplomatic and economic entanglement. This is a simple matter of putting an end to pinning down the People of Port Loko in penury because of few official vested interests. Let justice be dispensed in the Port Loko Bauxite brouhaha once and for all and not by the quick fix of a deceptive sleight of hands and shoddy press release.