Elitist Deception

By: Ibrahim Jalloh - (Jallomy) akempi@yahoo.com

Ignorance is a major barrier to the self-realization and growth of a nation. In a country deeply saddled by chronic and seemingly unredeemable poverty, education and the position of educated elites to mobilize the citizenry and open corridors of conscientization and mass sensitization are of absolute necessity. 

In a most aggressive form of ironical situations, the educated elites are extremely out of tune with contemporary happenings and basic processes of state governance. 

Regrettably, those educated elites who understand the processes of governance and can interpret and provide the required and appropriate civic education to the masses are in a chronic mode of self-deception.

A case in point is the issue of the recently released 2018 Audit Report by the Auditor General of the Republic of Sierra Leone. 

The mass awakening to the audit report and the corresponding high interest and debate around the audit report are solid indicators of growing citizens’ awareness and an overwhelming show of concern for the utilization of state resources. 

Regrettably, the intentions and motives were supplanted and negated by mostly educated elites, principally to deflate the essence and relevance of the audit and make political capital through hopelessly hopeless political propaganda.  

In the process, we lost the essence of the audit report and ruptured the confidence of the citizens in the ability of government for follow up action.

When educated elites distort the reality of state governance and the absolute necessity for citizens to engage and support the government is a worrying state and this is not done by default but by design and the objective is to discredit the system and create disaffection between the people and their government. Besides being uncivilized, this is a filthy civic culture that will weaken the fabric of the state and poison all efforts at national cohesion. We must guard against this. Perhaps one way of doing this is to separate governance and politics. Our educated elites must not continue to be deceptive.