As we inch closer to the 2023 elections, the popularity rating of President Julius Maada Bio keeps soaring especially in areas he is seemingly not very strong. The tacit way President Bio has endeared people to him and woven his way into their hearts is admirable. He is fast becoming the consummate politician of his generation and the most embracing and inclusive president Sierra Leone has ever seen.
In the most recent political history of our beloved Sierra Leone, we have seen projects skewed to areas of strongest support for the ruling party. The people saw road projects concentrated to one region considered to be the stronghold of the then ruling party. Even electricity projects were tilted towards one region. The rest of the regions not considered to be aligned with the then ruling party, were given tokens to create a semblance of national spread.
President Bio’s radical departure from this awkward order and the introduction of inclusive programs has put him head and shoulders above any politician in the country at the moment. The Free Quality Education which he boldly launched in August 2018, few months after his election as president, is being implemented with astonishing rapidity, has kept defying the odds and leaving even his most vicious critics dumbfounded. The beneficiaries of the FQE are spread all across the country and not confined to areas that largely voted for him. The expansion of the FQE School Feeding program to pupils in food insecure chiefdoms covers areas of a national spread and not a selected particular region as we know some would have done. The School Feeding program is both an attraction and retention policy and has contributed to the subscription of over 2.4 million children to the FQE. Think also of the burden, the government of President Bio has taken off parents who used to scrounge to pay school fees for their children or wards. That is enough relief for those parents and the cash is now diverted to food on the table for them.
The mercurial and meticulous President Julius Maada Bio has also embarked on an electrification project of the country that has lit villages and towns that had not seen light for centuries. Mambolo, Mange Bureh, Masiaka and several other towns and villages have benefitted from the project in spite of the voting pattern in 2018. Freetown has also not been left behind in the president’s electrification programs which are ongoing with steady pace and finality. These days when you see pictures of a well-lit and glowing Freetown, you become proud of your city. The TRANSCO CLSG commissioning on the eve of Christmas which has electrified Bo and Kenema is just the icing on the cake that has stabilized the SLPP base.
To add to the gloss of President Bio’s government, he pumped money into sports and football in particular which has energized and united the entire country. When in 2019, government poured over Le2.5 billion into the resuscitation of the local league some questioned the rationale for it, ignoring the long term benefits of it. Now this once criticized spending has produced the man of the match for the country and also given us the first goal scorer for the country at the AfCON 2021. Since the country’s qualification for the AfCON, it has been high rating and warmth for the first gentleman of the country.
In a society where winners are venerated and losers pilloried, it is hard to fathom how the opposition would challenge a man who has transformed lives and impacted people positively. These days it is all Maaaaaadaaa Biooooooooooo!!!!! Maaaadaaaaa Bioooooo aaaaayyyyyyy!!!!