Sierra Leone’s Press Secretary and Presidential Spokesperson, Yusuf Keketoma Sandi has in an exclusive interview on Radio Democracy’s Good morning Salone program defended the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) Government on the controversial suspension of the Auditor General and her Deputy.

Sandi updated that since the Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL) is an embodiment of accountability, each time there are allegations of misconduct or lack of professional performance, the president, he said has the mandate to make sure that those allegations of misconduct are properly looked into and that the best means which they could be looked into has to go through the due process which is spelt out in the constitution of the land. Therefore, he noted that once those allegations popped up, the president had to delegate his executive authority to the office of the Attorney General to set a tribunal regarding the said allegations.

Sandi further narrated that before the suspension of the Auditor General and her Deputy, the Deputy Minister of Justice wrote a letter to the Chairman of the judicial legal service Commission on the 8th November 2021 in order to seek the attention of the Chairman, Hon. Chief Justice regarding the allegations put forward earlier and for them to trigger section 137(5) which speaks about the process as regards the tribunal and what needs to be done. Having informed the Judicial Legal Service Commission, he stated that it became very clear that Section 137(6) gave the president the absolute authority to suspend the Auditor General and her Deputy based on the allegations put forward against them and that the president made sure that all of the processes required were followed and acted upon.

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When asked about the actual alleged misconduct of the Auditor General and her Deputy, he responded that the tribunal which was set up is yet to start looking at the misconduct since the Judicial Legal Services Commission (JLSC) is seriously following the process required backed by consultations from the president. However, he pointed out that Section 53(3) states that in a situation where in there is need to consult the president, no one has the mandate to enquire into it.

Speaking on the forms of misconduct by Auditor General and her Deputy, Sandi noted that there are various forms of misconduct and that since the issue has to be brought to the tribunal, he stressed that it would be pertinent that he does not comment on some of the said allegations because it has the tendency to prejudice the outcome of the tribunal since according to him the dream of all Sierra Leoneans is to see an Audit Service that is very independent, credible, transparent in the exercise of their functions and that this is not with the objective of witch hunting anybody.

The hardworking Press Secretary lamented that, “when we took over as a government, the Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL) used to have over Twenty-Seven Billion Leones (Le 27,000,000,000) in budgeting allocation. Over the past few years since we took over governance, our government has increased it to a staggering Sixty Billion Leones (Le 60,000,000,000) and that in itself is a clear indication that we are ready to give the Auditor General and her team the needed support to execute their job effectively. In addition to that, we have also overwhelmingly increased the salaries of all staff at the Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL) by 25%.”

Touching on the aspect of whether the office of the Auditor General is no longer credible, he affirmed that they do not want to subject the process to speculations or rumors and that whenever allegations of such misconduct comes up, he believes that President Bio is a committed leader with zest to make corruption unfashionable in the country and also creates the platform for transparency and accountability by making sure that the allegations are properly looked into through the process which he said is guided by the constitution of the land.

Sandi maintained that they are working towards seeing that the tribunal which is to be set up is very independent and meets the qualification, hence stressing that the team is guided by Section 137(5) Paragraph A. of the constitution clearly spells out who are supposed to be part of the tribunal and most importantly he said they would make sure that the people who got themselves involved i.e the Auditor General and her Deputy are given a fair hearing and an opportunity to respond to the allegations.

He ended that the tribunal having gone through all the necessary benchmarks and eventually finds out that the Auditor General and her Deputy are completely not guilty, the constitution he noted stated clearly in section 137(6) what would be the

outcome of the tribunal and that the Auditor General and her Deputy will definitely resume their offices supposed they are found not guilty of all the allegations. Besides, he emphasized that the Auditor General and her team had been working before they took over governance and that had it been that the president has anything against the Auditor General and her team, he would have taken actions against them since the period he was newly elected as head of state but that the Audit Service Sierra Leone has always had the fullest support of this government since 2018 therefore people should not even think about any hidden issue between the government and the Audit Service Sierra Leone.