DECEIVING THE PRINCIPAL…
WHY FINANCE MINISTER MUST BE SACKED
President Julius Maada Bio’s decisive termination of the Mineral Wealth Fund Sierra Leone Limited (MWFSL) is not merely a policy correction—it is a damning institutional verdict. At its core, the collapse of the so-called Mineral Wealth Fund exposes a grave failure of judgment, credibility, and truthfulness at the Ministry of Finance, raising unavoidable questions about why the Minister responsible remains in office.
For months, the Finance Minister marketed the Mineral Wealth Fund to his principal as a transformative fiscal vehicle—one that would allegedly safeguard Sierra Leone’s mineral future, attract investment, and anchor long-term national prosperity. That narrative has now unraveled. The President’s action to wind up the MWFSL confirms what critics warned all along: the arrangement was fictitious in substance, weak in law, opaque in governance, and fundamentally misaligned with the national interest.
State House has gone out of its way to frame the decision as a “change of vehicle, not a change of vision.” But that framing cannot obscure the central truth: the President was sold a structure that did not work, could not work, and should never have been presented as viable public policy. In any serious government, misleading the Head of State on a matter involving finite national assets is a sackable offence.
The facts are stark. The MWFSL lacked a clear legislative foundation, sat uncomfortably outside the public financial management framework, and operated through management service agreements that blurred accountability and sovereignty. It is telling that the Attorney-General has now been instructed to terminate those agreements entirely. Governments do not dismantle sound institutions this abruptly; they dismantle failures—and failures have authors.
This episode cannot be isolated from the Finance Minister’s growing catalogue of controversies. The unresolved Kasafoni Land saga, in which serious questions persist about land ownership, state interest, and transparency, continues to cast a long shadow over his credibility. Similarly, the Mount View Company affair—dogged by allegations of conflict of interest and blurred lines between private benefit and public office—has never been satisfactorily explained to the public.
Taken together, these issues reveal a disturbing pattern: opaque arrangements, poor disclosure, and governance decisions that repeatedly embarrass the state and force presidential intervention. When a minister becomes a recurring source of institutional damage control, the problem is no longer political noise—it is leadership failure.
The restructuring of the Tonkolili North Iron Ore project further underlines this point. All engagements under the previous framework, including agreements with China Overseas Engineering Company (COVEC), have been terminated. A new special-purpose vehicle (SPV), chaired by the Minister of Mines—not Finance—will now oversee the asset. This is not accidental. It is a clear vote of no confidence in the financial architecture previously sold to the President.
Even more revealing is the government’s plan to establish a Sierra Leone Sovereign Wealth Fund (SLSWF)—a legally grounded, transparent, and professionally governed institution embedded within the public finance system. In effect, the state is admitting that the Finance Minister’s Mineral Wealth Fund experiment was the wrong model altogether.
The irony is painful. While citizens were told that mineral revenues were being secured for future generations, the reality was a paper structure that delivered neither transparency nor protection. At a time of economic hardship, rising debt, and public sacrifice, Sierra Leone was sold a fiscal mirage.
This is why the issue is no longer about policy differences or technical missteps. It is about trust. A Finance Minister who deceives his principal—whether by omission, exaggeration, or misrepresentation—undermines the very foundation of executive governance. When that deception involves non-renewable national resources, the breach becomes unforgivable.
Sierra Leone’s minerals are finite. Once extracted, they are gone forever. Managing them requires honesty, competence, and unimpeachable integrity. The President has acted to save the policy. The next logical step is to address the political responsibility.
In democracies governed by consequence, ministers are dismissed not only for proven crimes but for catastrophic judgment and loss of confidence. By that standard, the case is already made.
The Mineral Wealth Fund is dead.
The credibility deficit at the Ministry of Finance remains.
And the question now confronting State House is simple: how many more institutional failures must occur before accountability finally reaches the top?