June 2, 2021
By: Dadson A. Musa
Every president comes to office with abundant goodwill. The strategy, tools and caliber of people he employs make him or her good or bad leader. The president is just a figure- head but his manner of motivating his henchmen makes them work along, relax, or rebel.
Former President of United States, George W. Bush was not good at leadership as a person but he succeeded by surrounding himself with efficient and experienced people. Those people helped him to win not only the second term but control of both houses of congress which was a great feat for his tenure as President. Although sometimes it is the attitude of the governed that determine the direction that the leadership goes. Hard work and discipline are ingredients for success anywhere.
But coming down to Sierra Leone, there is a systemic lack of these ingredients in our institutions. May be due to the pervading poor conditions of service or remuneration that is creating this attitude in people of this country. It might be the reason people are not taking work seriously or it is just an attitudinal problem in our country. Attitude to work generally is not good in our country as evidenced in the manner in which people behave during official hours. There are pervasive lateness, absenteeism, lukewarm attitude to work and generally poor delivery in most of our institutions across the country. It has kept our country backward as we cannot compete with other countries. We are not doing justice to this country by being lazy. Even the bible states that ‘laziness is sin’ and the bible further states that a man should be diligent in his ways. The president realizes that Sierra Leoneans are generally lazy so in one of his public speeches he told the gathering crowd that ‘…we have to drop this laziness attitude…’ Yes there is high rate of unemployment , yes the resources are limited and yes we are coming from war but those having the limited jobs are not taking them seriously as it should be and are not making the much needed difference. Those who send us donor money are able to do so because they work hard and pay taxes and from those tax monies they can afford to send us something. We should start to honour and respect those few people amongst us who are strict, hardworking and honest and not to bring them down or portray them in bad light. The president has led by example in that direction by showing that he is hard-working. During the campaign he covered so many grounds far more than his opponents. He has shown that he is not an armchair leader who sits in his office and directs affairs but can be on-the-spot and in the mix of things. His military background might be helping him in that direction.
Maybe the former regime had a good idea about attitudinal change but the manner in which they went about it was just wrong.
There is a need for a change of attitude to work in this country which I think will help curb this corruption thing in our country. Donor money cannot turn things around if we are not hard-working. Politics without hard work will mean nothing and come to think of it, no foreigner is going to build Sierra Leone.
We are going to build it ourselves with our sweat and blood, nothing more and nothing less. We should stop hiding laziness behind tribalism.
The president has shown he is hardworking we must follow suit as citizens and not be laid back in our approach.