Mineral Wealth Fund: A State Capture

For the past two weeks, the print media in Sierra Leone has been replete with report of a Mineral Wealth Fund with little or no detail about it other than support on the one side and opposition on the other side of a proposed candidate to head the Mineral Wealth Fund.
Even President Julius Maada Bio at the Town Hall Meeting in Freetown proved that he has shallow knowledge on the Mineral Wealth Fund when he was asked about it.
For the President to give his people details about such an important fund, he just mentioned that Sierra Leone has the right to benefit from its resources which is and has never been in contention.
The fact that the President of Sierra Leone cannot talk much on the Mineral Wealth Fund showed the reason why Sierra Leone is and has been at the top 5 of Global Poverty Index for the Past 50yrs because in Sierra Leone anyone can easily convince decision makers about something they saw in their sleep.
It could be recalled that between the 1970s and 1980s, Sierra Leone used to have a Lebanese Business Man Jamil Sahid who wielded so much power and captured the President, the Ministers and Lined Agencies to the point that he benefitted a lot from every sector while the country remained poor.
This is a similar situation with a mining wealth fund for which the government is about to create a company that will enter into partnership with private companies and will begin to control the resources of the state.
This company is under the Ministry of Finance and according to the Minister, Ahmed Fantamadi Bangura the company Sierra Leone Mines and Mineral Development Corporation has already been created for which they have bought GEOPHYSICAL data from the National Mineral Agency to look into areas where the government can partner with others to invest.
Minister Bangura noted that they have already identified Tonkolili North and have a preliminary arrangement with a Chinese Company which to so many people seemed fishy.
From research, it has been proven that no serious mining company will invest a dollar on geophysical surveys in any country as geophysical surveys just show indication of mineral while it takes time and resources to the tune of billions of dollars for companies to prove the worth of any mineral in a country.
Thus, if the Minister is claiming that government will receive moneys or partnership on just geophysical survey in the mining sector, it indicates the Minister of Finance must confine himself to ensuring that Sierra Leone has a better economy.
It should also be noted that creating parallel structure will undermine the already legal and technical structures that are existing which will eventually lead to chaos and a failed state.
Also, in the creation of an institution that will play a major role in the mining sector, the government has also not done broad consultations especially with the mining companies that are existing in the country rather the Minister of Finance in a Press Conference referred to them as low-class mining companies.
The way the Minister of Finance was emotional in that Press Conference, one will wonder what is at stake for him because there is already existing corporations of the state that are in comatose which the Ministry cannot rescue, not to talk about a government corporation in a capital-intensive sector not least on geophysical survey.
From all indications, the Minister of Finance and other people seem to be deceiving the President about a government company in the mining sector. President Bio must ensure that he tapped into the knowledge of Sierra Leoneans or else he will be blamed in the future.
More on this in subsequent editions.