Decentralization in Sierra Leone - Research for Development

Decentralization in Sierra Leonedevelopment assistance through decentralized planning and service delivery authorities. Sucha strategy could do nothing but assist in the restoration of the Sierra Leonean state’s territorialsovereignty (Cf. Slater, 1989). Indeed, former NPRC leader Julius Maada Bio confirmed inan interview with the present research team that the junta’s plan to decentralize had arisenduring a visit to Ghana, which had originally been intended to yield lessons from theRawlings government’s successful transition from military to civilian rule. According toMaada Bio, the Sierra Leone delegation (which included future President Kabbah) wasimpressed by Rawlings’ decentralization programme, especially as the Sierra Leoneansalready had first-hand experience of popular disengagement from the state and theconsequences of “losing grip over areas that are supposed to be your country”. From theKabbah government’s point of view, reviving district and town councils as developmentagencies did not necessarily impinge on efforts to re-establish political control over thechieftaincy system (for which donor assistance was also sought). Decentralization could alsobe sold, in domestic politics, as the restoration of a vital component of the governmentalsystem the SLLP had presided over in the relatively prosperous 1960s; a component that hadsubsequently been lost in the disastrous centralization drive of Siaka Stevens’ APC.On the other hand, donors tended to view decentralization as providing Sierra Leone with theefficient, transparent and democratic system of local government it had long needed.Chieftaincy had no place in that vision. Indeed, an analysis shared by many donor agencieswhen decentralization began was that chiefdom governance was undergoing a terminal crisisof popular legitimacy and that the rollout of the programme would only serve to hasten itsdemise (Fanthorpe, 2006). In the short term, the priority was to ensure that chiefs were notgiven an opportunity to “capture” the decentralization programme and use it to re-assert theirpower (Jackson, 2007). The IRCBP’s separation, both physically and operationally, from theMinistry of Local Government acquired an extra political salience here since it providedspace for technical rationalities of decentralization to prevail over all other arguments. Forexample, a governance advisor to multilateral donor agency told the Drivers of Change teamin 2005 (Brown et al, 2006) that the possibility of restoring budgetary authority to ChiefdomCouncils (the chiefdom governing bodies recognized in law) had been mooted by nationalpolicy makers during the decentralization planning process. 12 The governance advisor wenton to report that donor technicians had strongly opposed the proposal on the grounds thatadding 149 budgetary authorities to the 19 already planned would make effective financialmonitoring of the decentralization programme impossible. Decentralization, the governanceadvisor pointed out, “establishes a locus of political authority and responsibility in an electeddemocratic manner” and concluded that this principle automatically excludes traditionalauthority. “The chiefdoms might have traditional responsibilities in maintaining law andorder”, the governance advisor went on, “but they have no mandate for service delivery.”Accordingly, the LGA attempted to provide local councils sufficient authority to carry outdevelopment and service delivery functions but left the Chiefdom Councils in place to carryout their original functions. The Act establishes elected local councils as the highest politicalauthorities in their localities and echoes the District Councils Ordinance of 1950 in statingthat they are responsible for “promoting the development of the locality and the welfare ofthe people of the locality with such resources and capacity as it can mobilize from the central12 This authority was removed by the Chiefdom Treasuries (Amendment) Act of 1975, which requiredall revenues collected by the chiefdoms to be paid into the Consolidated Revenue Fund. As a result ofthis legislation, Chiefdom Councils were obliged to apply for operating funds at the office of theCentral Chiefdom Finance Clerk (a central government employee) at district headquarters.Fanthorpe Consultancy Ltd Page 54