During the state opening of parliament on Friday 23 rd June 2006, President Tejan Kabbah of Sierra Leone bade farewell to the nation. “I shall be addressing you again no doubt.  This time I am only going to say “Au Revoir” since I shall take my final leave of you sometime next year,” he said.

Kabbah's speech has received mixed reactions from Sierra Leoneans across the political spectrum. Presidential spokesman Kanji Daramy hailed it as the best speech ever, while APC Secretary General Victor Foe said it is a big disaster because the president did not give a progress report on his earlier promise to build a bridge to Lungi or bring back the railway.

While I would not want to be caught in the fray of the ensuing political mudslinging, I would like to state that Kabbah's reign, while indeed it could have some successes, has not been what many Sierra Leoneans expected. Despite the talk of statistical progress, what is life like for the ordinary Sierra Leonean? The prices of goods have indeed soared under Kabbah, salaries are not sufficient to meet the daily needs of families, there is no supply of electricity, no good water supply (it was ironic that while the president was speaking, people actually had to go buying packet water because the government's water supply system ran dry after supplying infested water to city residents), and Freetown became the dirtiest capital in the world under Kabbah.

I am also concerned about the president laying too much emphasis on his government having been able to end the war, while the facts state that indeed the war could have ended much earlier if the government was committed to peace. The 1996 Abidjan Peace Accord would have been the instrument through which the war would have ended, had Kabbah not misused the opportunity. For while the RUF showed genuine interest in the accord by sending representatives (Philip Palmer, Fayia Musa, Agnes Dean Jalloh etc) to work with the Commission for the Consolidation of Peace (CCP) in Freetown, the government embarked on the hidden agenda of convincing them to abandon the peace plan and turn against their own organization. In the end, things became terribly wrong to the extent that there were no more channels for negotiation, since the government had connived with Sanni Abacha to arrest RUF leader Foday Sankoh on false pretences.

I am not a rebel sympathizer, nor a supporter of the RUF, but it is clear that the subsequent Lome Peace Accord that saw Foday Sankoh being given the position of vice president should have come earlier – meaning that the 1999 January 6 invasion and all the mutilation and destruction that occurred would have certainly been avoided. And it was tragic that the DDR programme that the president now trumpets as his government's success only came at a price of paying the perpetrators of horrendous crimes at the expense of limbless victims.

Invariably, President Kabbah said he has made more progress on border security than all his predecessors. This is unacceptable in the light of a whole section of Sierra Leonean territory, Yenga, being occupied by Guinean forces for well over four years now and the president has practically done nothing to do this. This is a tragic failure to maintain and defend the territorial integrity of Sierra Leone.

The era of queuing is not ended just yet in Sierra Leone as the president said in his speech. Just a couple of weeks ago, drivers were queuing for petrol in stations across the country. And if he is implying that rice queuing has ended, I would want to remind the president that it ended under the NPRC – except if he wants to take NPRC successes on board since he was indeed the Chairman of the Advisory Council of that military junta.

On international relations, Kabbah said he and his government are in the good books of the international community. But we are hardly convinced by this statement. The question is, if that is so why has Sierra Leone not benefited from the debt-cancellation exercise by the world powers? Meaning, in the eyes of the world, Sierra Leone is still corruption-ridden and unqualified for any such largesse.

On the press, the president tried to put on a brave face by implying that things have never been better. Hear him: “Since 1996, the number of daily newspapers has increased from 14 to 49. All of these except one are privately owned. And the public media gives equal access to all political parties. In fact out of 39 radio stations, 7 are publicly owned while 32 are privately owned…” On the surface this is true; but in reality it is not. On his assumption of office in 1996, one of his first state addresses had very uncomplimentary statements about the press exploiting the weaknesses of the judiciary, at a time when journalists were basically championing democratic principles. This statement unleashed a flurry of media attacks and libel suits against journalists which apparently made members of the judiciary to take the cue from the president's statement and impose heavy-handed, sometimes arbitrary, sentences and/or fines on pressmen.

While not wishing to sound personal, this newspaper is today being published from another country because of the heavy-handedness of the Kabbah government. Under his regime, a greater number of colleagues have died, have been imprisoned, have gone into exile and have been generally harassed more than previous governments combined. If Kabbah wants to be seen as a champion of press freedom, why has he rejected pleas from reputable organizations like Reporters Without Borders to repeal the draconian press laws and the Public Order Act that hang like Damocles' sword over the heads of journalists? The killing of journalist Harry Yansaneh by thugs of a ruling party MP and the jailing of Paul Kamara of For Di People following a publication regarding the president's past are still fresh on our minds. But the president cannot remember this.

I would however not say that Kabbah has done nothing good for Sierra Leone. If indeed he agrees to step down next year without putting a fight or trying to hand-pick a successor, that in itself would be a success for democracy and for him. Bravo to the Kabbah government for creating fire stations in the provincial towns of Bo, Kenema and Makeni. The Sababu education programme that makes primary education free, and the government's onerous responsibility to pay all public exam fees from NPSE to WASSCE is laudable. But the question still remains: how many ordinary people and/or their children are benefiting from this? Life is still hard – very, very hard – in Sierra Leone. I would like to end with words from UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking at King's College in London two days after Kabbah gave his speech: “ There's no point in providing health care if there's no clean water. People with an education also want skilled jobs. There's no point having oil if it only fuels corruption.”

Unemployment, wu-teh-teh in Sierra Leone!