The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation is one of the senior Ministries of any country. This Ministry by extension is part of the Presidency. It’s in charge of all State matters dealing with the outside world. The current Minister is Professor David J. Francis and the Director General is Ambassador Dr. Victoria Suleiman (Mrs.).
Prof. Francis took over from Mrs. Nabeela F. Tunis in May, 2021 immediately after the 60th lndependence anniversary celebrations.
Madam Nabeela had a cordial relationship with staff of the Ministry. When she was heading the Ministry, every staff was lovely. But lo! When the learned Professor took over, the Ministry has been on constant life support.
The only hope for the Foreign Service Officers is overseas postings. Officers are posted on a routine basis, and each is supposed to serve two years with extension of two years.
However, since Professor David Francis took over, there has been only one general posting which took place on 11th November, 2021. In November 2022, exactly one year after the postings, the Hon. Minister held a Directors’ meeting where he informed officers that the next postings will take place in March 2023.
While waiting, the Hon. Minister has allegedly directed the Director General to post an officer who’s not a serving Foreign Service Officer, but was transferred to the Ministry as Procurement Officer. This has sparked an uneasy calm in the Ministry. It has not only stopped there, but onto the hierarchy of the Civil Service. The Secretary to the President and Secretary to Cabinet and Head of the Civil Service are absolutely mad about this illegal posting.
But this is not the first time the Senior Management of the Ministry has posted officers who are not Foreign Service Officers. During the last postings, the former Director General, Mr. Prince Cole, posted two officers who were not Foreign Service Officers; Mrs. Konah Kamara and Mr. Alpha Gotor. Mrs. Kamara was posted to the Ministry as Human Resource Officer while Mr. Gotor was posted in the Ministry as Records Officer respectively.
Normally, if an officer should be desired for such a favour, that officer has to re-designate. But in the case of these three officials, they never re-designated. Eye brows were raised by the actual officers who were due for postings but were left out as a result of favoritism and cronyism.
Besides this, the Management keeps on cross-posting officers from one duty station to the other without recourse to officers who are due for postings at HQ. The worst of all, there are officers who have returned from postings since 2019 and they are still at HQ, and the Director General keeps on posting officers who returned from postings in less than a year. What an injustice!
The question now been asked by the general public is; why now? Because, according to reliable sources, Mrs. Konah Kamara and Alpha Gotor were posted, and no one questioned the legality of the said postings.
But the public is curious to know why such a bitter reaction from the Secretary to the President and also the Secretary to Cabinet and Head of the Civil Service about Mr. Junisa’s posting?
As a stern warning to the leadership of the Ministry, the Secretary to the President has written a Memo to the Director General to reverse the postings with immediate effect though Mr. Junisa has already left for our New York mission.
That Memo, according to reliable sources, is demeaning, disrespectful, humiliating, and clearly indicates that, the Director General in the Foreign Ministry ought to know better. The Director General is hardly ever in her office. She always travels with the Foreign Minister. As head of administration, the Director General is expected to be in her office at least every working day. But she is always traveling with the Foreign Ministry to any part of the world leaving important work in her office undone. This has affected the effective management of the Ministry. Morale in the Ministry is at its lowest ebb.
The public is therefore calling on His Excellency the President, Brig. (Rtd) Dr. Julius Maada Bio as Fountain of Honour, to pay attention to that Ministry, otherwise such wicked acts by the Hon. Minister and his file-carrier Director General will collapse that very important Ministry.
Officers have been due for postings but the Leadership of the Ministry has kept sealed lips about it, but instead, they continue to post those who’re not supposed to, and those that they favored.
Investigations continue.
