NO ACCOUNTABILITY AT NRA
…Amidst Missing Trillions
By Ibrahim Alusine Kamara (Kamalo)
If the 2024 Auditor-General’s Report proves anything, it is that Sierra Leone does not lack evidence of revenue abuse. What it lacks is consequences. Year after year, audit findings expose losses, system failures, and violations of the law at the National Revenue Authority (NRA). Yet sanctions remain rare, prosecutions almost nonexistent, and accountability largely absent.
The scale of the losses identified in 2024—exceeding NLe1.1 billion—should have triggered urgent internal investigations, suspensions, and referrals for prosecution. Instead, the report landed quietly, absorbed into the routine of official silence. No senior official was publicly disciplined. No enforcement reforms were immediately announced. Business continued as usual.
This culture of impunity explains why non-filing taxpayers face little pressure, why unpaid taxes accumulate without recovery, and why duty waivers are granted without documentation. When officials know that violations carry no real consequences, compliance collapses.
The audit highlights repeated breaches of existing laws, including the Tax and Duty Exemption Act 2023 and Public Financial Management Regulations 2018. These are not vague guidelines; they are binding laws. Yet their violation appears to attract neither administrative sanctions nor criminal scrutiny. The message is clear: rules exist on paper, not in practice.
Internal controls within the NRA are either weak or deliberately ignored. Systems remain broken despite years of warnings. The failure to integrate ITAS with ASYCUDA World was known, yet left unresolved long enough to enable false GST claims and data manipulation. This is not mere oversight—it is tolerated risk.
Equally troubling is the silence surrounding missing funds. Revenue collected through transit banks but not traced to the Consolidated Fund represents a direct breach of financial controls. In any serious jurisdiction, this would trigger forensic audits and possible criminal investigation. In Sierra Leone, the issue remains largely unexplained.
The absence of accountability also distorts morale within the NRA itself. Honest officers who attempt to enforce the law face resistance, while those who bend rules often go unchallenged. Over time, integrity becomes a liability, and compliance becomes optional.
Parliament, too, bears responsibility. Audit reports are debated, noted, and shelved, with limited follow-up. Recommendations are recycled year after year, while the same failures reappear in new figures. Oversight without enforcement becomes ritual, not reform.
As debt servicing consumes nearly one-third of domestic revenue, the cost of this inaction grows heavier. Each unpunished violation compounds the fiscal crisis, forcing the state to borrow more while revenue continues to leak.
The Auditor-General has done its job by exposing the rot. The question now is whether the institutions mandated to act—the NRA Board, the Ministry of Finance, Parliament, and law enforcement—will continue to look away.
In Part Five, we will examine what real reform at the NRA would look like, and whether Sierra Leone has the political will to fix a system that appears broken by design.