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 veteran 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.
For a man who serves as adviser to the President and Vice President and 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.
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?