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Sierra Leone: Kono MP says new Kono University “corrects an injustice”

  • A cross section of Kono MPs just after the ratification

By Saio Marah

Parliament yesterday approved a $32 million loan agreement with ECOWAS for the establishment of the University of Science and Technology in Kono District.

Deputy Minister of Finance, Patricia Lavaley told the House that the project would cost $34 million. She said the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development would provide the $32 million, while the Government of Sierra Leone would counterpart-fund the remaining $ 2 million.

She said the loan would be repaid over a 25-year period on a 1.7% interest basis, the first five of which would be a grace period.

The agreement states that the Government of Sierra Leone would have “to bear any and all cost exceeding the estimated cost of the project”.

Mrs Lavaley said the specialist university would admit 200 students every year and would train people in the sciences, gemology and information technology.

The Leader of the predominantly Kono-based Coalition for Change (C4C) party said the establishment of the university in Kono was “correcting a historical injustice”. Saa Emerson Lamina, MP, said it was a travesty that a district which for more than 90 years (when diamond was first discovered there) had contributed significantly to the nation’s kitty was getting a university only now. He said one mining company alone had for several years been contributing $35 million every year to the country’s treasury.

He expressed excitement that the university had finally been actualised. He said that with the new university, Kono would be “mining minds” and not just mining minerals.

He said the district’s young people would eventually “no longer be in the artisanal mine but in the classroom”, adding that 418 acres of land had already been handed over towards the project by Paramount Chief Sahr Fengai Kamachainde of Gbense chiefdom.

Lamina thanked President Julius Maada Bio for actualising “what we had dreamed about for ages”. This, he went on, would “close the doors of the prisons” in Kono because, he told Politico, many of the young people in the district were being imprisoned because they had resorted to criminality as a result of the lack of higher education. “The university will bring about education and the dropout rate will reduce,” he said.

“We are looking at you [the people of Kono] and saying ‘sorry’”, said Abdul Karim Koroma of the main opposition APC party. “We let you down for too long” he said.

He however said that the government should have paid for the establishment of the university instead of taking a loan, considering what the district had contributed to the country’s revenue stream through its minerals. He said the idea had long been conceived even before the coming into power of President Bio and encouraged the establishment of university campuses in other districts for easy access to higher education by the children of those who could not afford sending their children to the cities for such.

Another C4C lawmaker, Rebecca Kamara said “we expected this university even before the war [in the 1990s]. Now that it is here, I would like to use this opportunity to thank this government for making it happen”.

She continued: “I am concerned about today and the fact that this loan agreement has only bene ratified today”.

She also thanked the ECOWAS Vice Chairperson, Finda Koroma – a native of Kono – for all her efforts in collaborating with the government to pull it off.

Paul Saa Sam, another C4C parliamentarian, said the “spirit responsible for the setback of Kono has been decapitated” with the establishment of the university. He said he was excited that “the hidden treasure of [higher] education has now been taken to Kono”.

The leader of Government Business, Sahr Martin Nyuma said “we have failed Kono as a nation” but that it was not too late to remedy it such as it was now being done.

Construction work is expected to start soon.

Copyright © 2021 Politico Online

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