|
Part 1: A history of secrecy,
public deception and pipedreams |
|
FACTS
about the occurrence of deposits of black gold – oil – in Sierra Leone are
hard to come by. The story has been
shrouded in mystery ever since the country gained its independence from
Britain in April 1961. Nevertheless,
despite the institutional secrecy surrounding this potential source of wealth
creation for our country, it is now beyond all dispute and doubt that there is
oil in Sierra Leone. However, the
location, extent, and quality of the find have remained a subject of
uninformed speculation, intense curiosity, and often-wild conjecture. It is a state of affairs to which both
official secrecy and the lack of transparency in the conduct of public
affairs in Sierra Leone have largely contributed. On 25 May 1963, the expatriate chief inspector of mines, Mr W C Fairbairn, who remained in his post two years after independence, presented his annual report to the Sierra Leone Government. He made the following disclosures in three key paragraphs of his report:
(See: Report of the Mines Division of the
Ministry of Land, Mines and Labour, 1962; submitted to Government on 25
May 1963) Frank
statements like that above, by the chief inspector of mines, were the norm in
government right up to, and immediately after, independence in 1961. It had been hoped then that such standards
of accountability and transparency would be maintained and become the order
of the day under the new dispensation, once Sierra Leone’s own class of
indigenous civil servants took over the reins from their colonial
masters. Instead, as we have come to
experience, many who ran our national affairs afterwards did not seem to care
much about the public or national interest.
Secrecy and autocratic rule replaced openness and the free supply of
information. Contrast,
for example, Mr Fairbairn’s precise and unambiguous statements about his
department’s transactions, with the shambolic and contemptible way in which
the Kabbah government has recently conducted arrangements relating to the
exploitation of Sierra Leone’s rumoured oil discovery. In particular, the award of a contract in
August 2000 to a man whose antecedents they did not take care to check. Because of the lack of openness of the
present transactions, Focus has yet
to lay hands on a copy of this so-called contract, although as most visitors
to this site know, we managed to secure a copy of a memorandum of
understanding, which is a sort of annex to that contract. It has not been for want of trying! The plea of commercial confidentiality is
unavailing, because Kabbah and his minister for mineral resources have never
told the country that they wish to undertake prospecting for oil. That’s why Mr Fairbairn’s example is important. This point will be discussed further in a
follow-up article. As far
back as the early sixties and, possibly, long before that, the hunt for oil
had been conducted in earnest. In the
1969 edition of the book Sierra Leone In Maps edited by
J I Clarke, former Professor of Geography at Fourah Bay College, K Swindell,
also a former Geography lecturer at FBC commented that “recent prospection
for petroleum along the coastal and offshore areas of the Southern Province
was unsuccessful”. There is no reason
to believe that since that time the quest for oil had diminished, slackened,
or been abandoned, as subsequent governments wanted people to believe. The
records show that the Margai (SLPP) governments between 1961 and 1967 were
interested more in the exploitation of diamonds, bauxite, rutile, and iron
ore. Iron ore production ceased in
1975 because of dwindling ore reserves and the non-viability of the remaining
deposits for profitable commercial exploitation. The Margais - Sirs
Milton and Albert - were most probably aware of the country’s oil potential
as a new means of wealth creation, but they might have been put off by the
huge capital investments required, compared with the relative ease and
instantaneous benefits deriving from diamond, especially alluvial,
mining. We do not know the nature and
extent of the information that was available to them. We can
safely assume that when he came to power in 1967, Prime Minister (later
President) Siaka Stevens already had solid information about the extent and
content of Sierra Leone’s potential mineral wealth, informally as well as
formally:
With his
insider knowledge of the country’s mineral resources, Stevens was able to
resurrect interest in Sierra Leone’s oil prospects. However, true to his well-known tendencies, he was careful to
keep it under wraps, away from public discussion or scrutiny in any shape or
form. In June
1979, when this editor produced the pamphlet Sierra Leone Report in opposition to Stevens’ and his APC
government’s kleptocracy and misrule, he reported an incident concerning a
corrupt oil transaction as follows:
What is
common to developments since 1967 is the secrecy in which they have been
conducted and the attendant whispers of shady deals. Stevens dealt with the matter as a
personal business adventure. Limited
information about it was available only to a tiny circle of his closest
aides. He treated it as a trade
secret, and refused to let it be raised as a matter that the Sierra Leone
public should have an interest in, or even know about. The issue then as now never once came up
in parliamentary discussions or debates. In
comparison with the two Margai governments before him, Stevens had the better
chance of materialising any oil discovery.
During his term, and ever since then, prospecting and drilling
technology had become relatively cheaper and was improving all the time, with
a sophistication that included satellite imagery. Comparatively speaking also, these facilities were easier to
access, hire, and deploy. In 1980
Stevens invited a British company, BP we are told, again secretly, to
investigate the possibility of oil deposits in Sierra Leone. On and off offshore prospecting was
carried out between 1980 and 1982.
The first results suggested the presence of oil deposits but that
further explorations, with more sophisticated equipment, were needed to
pinpoint the areas in which they occurred, and to identify the quantity and
quality of the find. What was discovered
was said to be uneconomical to exploit. Stevens’
desire to become an oil sheikh received a boost from this mere suggestion
that there might be occurrences of the black stuff in Sierra Leone’s
geophysical structures. Therefore, by
the middle of 1982, he gave the go-ahead for further prospecting. This took place inland along the southwest
coast of the country, and offshore under the territorial sea. According to one source, these activities
identified encouraging viable deposits, with three areas in the Southern
Province of the country proving to be of special interest to the
prospectors. One was the Bonthe
Sherbro Island, a short distance from the mainland, which was rumoured to be
“virtually sitting” on a pool of oil.
Further down were the Sherbro straits and the coastal inlets off the
mainland running southwards into Turners Peninsula. The third covered coastal areas and inlets around Sulima in the
Pujehun District, the southernmost tip of Sierra Leone with its lagoon-like
swamplands. (See Prospected
areas, taken from Sierra Leone in Maps by J I Clarke) This
time round, news of these activities managed to get out to some members of
the public. They began to see
structures being erected on their landscape in isolated areas, accompanied by
periodic drilling activities.
Premature rumours of an oil discovery began to circulate, but there
was no official comment to confirm or dispel them. Two
major setbacks confronted both the prospectors and Stevens:
Afterwards,
all whispers and rumours about oil in Sierra Leone suddenly died out. Stevens and his closest allies kept hidden
the company’s report, which included an assessment of the prospects for
further exploration work. Thus, the possibility
that the country might be on the verge of a momentous oil discovery in the
future, and the story of what had gone on, was never officially or informally
disclosed. It remained so when
Stevens left office and handed over to President Joseph Momoh in 1985. We do not know whether or not the latter
ever saw, or was given, this report.
As far as it can be ascertained, no “oil prospecting activities” were
officially or unofficially undertaken by or under the Momoh regime, which
ended with the NPRC coup in 1992. During
our research, two Sierra Leoneans were mentioned to us who might throw light
on President Stevens’ and, by implication, Sierra Leone’s frustrated search
for oil in the 1980s:
Both
were allegedly paid a stipend of about $1,000 per month. No formal, official statement has ever been made to the citizens of
Sierra Leone since 1967, about the oil situation, contrary to a recent
reported claim by President Kabbah that he is the first to ‘declare’ that
Sierra Leone has oil. How dare
he! If he has, then he is by no means
the first to do so. Mr Fairbairn in
1962 thought there might be and said so.
This editor had long stated that fact way back in June 1979, and only
recently in September 2000 (see part 2). The facts have always been there, hidden away from
the public. The information which Kabbah now claims to have been the first to
declare, had to be drummed out of his government only when they were caught,
with their pants down, concluding a deal behind the back of Sierra Leoneans,
using the same tactics of deception and secrecy to keep the public in the
dark. © FSL 27/08/01 |
