In a moment that has stunned taxpayers and reignited debate over elite accountability in Sierra Leone, Chief Minister Dr. David Moinina Sengeh, the third most powerful figure in President Julius Maada Bio’s government, has publicly declared he does not know how much he earns.
The admission came during a live interview on AYV’s State of the Nation program with journalist Umaru Fofana, when asked a simple, direct question that every public servant should be able to answer: How much is your salary?
His answer: He did not know.
Let that sink in.
For a man who serves as adviser to the President and Vice President, who coordinates ministries, departments and agencies to deliver on the government’s agenda, and who recently pledged that his job is to support President Bio, the People, and the Government, the inability, or unwillingness, to disclose his own pay is a damning indictment.
Dr. Sengeh wants to lead, but he does not want to be accountable to the people whose money pays him.
This is not a trivial lapse of memory. This is the Chief Minister who introduced the National Monitoring and Evaluation Agency Act 2024, telling Parliament it was aimed at bolstering accountability and transparency. This is the same official who has lectured local councils on digital tax payments and annual self-evaluations as examples of accountability, and who declared, “This is what we mean when we say we will govern with an open book.”
How can a government claim to govern with an open book when its Chief Minister keeps his own payslip closed?
The arrogance of that answer becomes obscene when placed against the reality of ordinary Sierra Leoneans.
As exposed in the public outcry following the interview, the President of the Sierra Leone Teachers Union has confirmed that the government provides only NLe10 per child, per term as a school subsidy. That is roughly 40 US cents for an entire term.
The official price of one litre of petrol as of September 8 is NLe40. That means three terms of subsidy for one child, NLe30 for a whole academic year, cannot even buy one litre of fuel.
Yet the Chief Minister, whose ministry once championed Free Quality Education, cannot tell the parents of those children how much of their taxes he takes home each month. He coordinates the delivery of a government that cannot find more than NLe10 for a child, but can afford to pay a Chief Minister so much, or so little, that he does not even bother to know.
Leadership is not a TED Talk. It is not a title, a Harvard degree, or a Forbes list. Leadership is accountability. In a presidential system where the Office of the Chief Minister operates directly under the President’s authority with cabinet-level power to coordinate flagship initiatives, accountability is not optional. It is the price of power.
What Dr. Sengeh demonstrated on national television is elite detachment at its purest. When a public servant can look into the camera and say he does not know his salary, he is telling the market woman, the okada rider, the teacher in Koinadugu, and the parent in Bonthe: Your money is not important enough for me to count.
If the Chief Minister does not know his salary, does he know the price of rice? Does he know the cost of NLe10? Does he know what it means for a mother to stretch NLe30 across a school year while his office spends more than that on bottled water for a single meeting?
The question of salary is not voyeurism. It is the foundation of public trust. In a country where the wage bill consumes a huge portion of domestic revenue, where teachers queue for months for remote area allowances, where nurses buy their own gloves, and where university graduates ride okada because there are no jobs, every Leone paid to a political appointee must be justified.
Sierra Leone’s Constitution is clear. Public office is a public trust. Section after section of our laws demands declaration, probity, and transparency. The Anti-Corruption Commission has prosecuted junior civil servants for less. But what example is set when the man at the apex of coordination, the man who is supposed to monitor and evaluate everyone else, cannot evaluate his own compensation?
We have seen this playbook before. Technocrats wrapped in innovation jargon who believe accountability is for others. They speak of delivery, of data, of transformation, but when asked the most basic data point about themselves, they plead ignorance. It is a convenient ignorance. It shields excess while preaching austerity. It allows a government to tell local councils to collect more taxes digitally, to tell citizens to be patient, while those at the top float above the very system they created.
Dr. Sengeh is not a junior officer. He is not new to government. He served as Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, then as Chief Innovation Officer, and now as Chief Minister. He has been in cabinet for years. He knows how payroll works. He knows how allowances, fuel, per diems, medical, and overseas travel top up the base salary into a package that dwarfs what most Sierra Leoneans will earn in a lifetime. To claim not to know is either gross incompetence or calculated contempt.
And that contempt is costly. It erodes faith REALITY whole SLPP promise of a New Direction and now of consolidating gains. You cannot consolidate gains on a foundation of secrecy. You cannot claim to be for the people when you cannot tell the people what you cost them.
President Bio must answer for this culture. A government that tolerates this level of opacity at the top cannot credibly demand transparency at the bottom. You cannot preach accountability to local councils while your Chief Minister practices evasion on live television. You cannot fight corruption with closed books.
We call on the Office of the Chief Minister to immediately publish, in full, the salary, allowances and benefits of the Chief Minister. Not a summary. Not a range. The full package. We call on Parliament to demand it. The Public Accounts Committee and the Transparency and Accountability Committee must summon the Secretary to the President and the Accountant General and put the figures on Hansard. And we call on State House to remind its officials that in a democracy, public office is public trust, and public trust begins with a payslip you are not ashamed to show.
Sierra Leoneans have a right to know: How much does the man who manages their government cost them? How much in salary, allowances, per diems, fuel, and foreign travel? If he does not know, who does? And if he does know and refuses to say, what does that say about the transparency he preaches?
Until those numbers are published, every lecture on accountability from this government will ring hollow. Until then, every parent who receives NLe10 per child will know exactly what their government thinks of their child. And until then, Dr. Sengeh’s forgotten salary will remain the most expensive reminder of how far this government has drifted from the people it claims to serve.