We shouldn’t be doing such at this stage of our Public Financial Management In my note yesterday, I squarely mentioned that corruption and the lack of political will to act remain major challenges of this government. Until this government can start to realize this, most likely all of her many achievements will lost in thin air. My attention has been drawn to the government of Liberia contracting an International Auditing Firm to manage the various ebola donations. I really don’t know who may have advised the President like this, but I can surely say that this decision is an absolute sign and symptom of incompetency at the highest level on the part of this government. Additionally, by awarding this contract signals to me the below listed conclusions: •That all of the foot soldiers appointed by the President to enhance the Public Financial Management System of the government are very incompetent and inexperienced •That most likely corruption and other mismanagement could penetrate the governance of these donations when your foot soldiers are given the opportunity to manage them •That the Executive Branch of government has one way or the other agree with the National Legislature that the first USD$5Million was squarely mismanaged and cannot be accounted for at any point in time of our nations history •That those Financial Management foot soldiers appointed by the president are irresponsible and reckless when it comes to the concept of Financial Management •That Liberia does not have individuals within its borders that can distinguishingly manage these donations. On this one, I strongly disagree. There are many competent and experienced individuals with morals that can ably perform such function in an appropriate manner. Realistically, I feel hurt and underrated by this decision as a holder of MBA in Finance. I know there are many other MBA’s that will either openly or secretly agree with me on this issue. Ironically, after this government has provided for us the platform to obtain Western and solid African education, she is yet to trust our competencies. I hope the reason is not because a group of foot soldiers have failed to be responsible and accountable means that there aren’t people with the relevant integrity, competency and experience that can perform such function. The missing links here are integrity and objectivity. If the current foot soldiers don’t have these things, trust me, there are other Liberians within the borders of Liberia that have them sincerely. Organizations and Institutions outsource some of their functions for many reasons. The major of these reasons is an organization lack of capacity. I want to believe that we lack capacity in other areas, but not Public Financial Management. I can say for free that Liberia still have able financial managers that can perform better despite the failure of the current financial management foot soldiers appointed by the President. Liberia has some of the best Public Financial Laws, Rules and Regulations on the continent of Africa. The major problem has been the full implementation of these laws, rules and regulation; not lack of capacity. Additionally, the head of the government has failed to institute appropriate measures whenever these laws, rules and regulations are broken by her foot soldiers. I am a Certified Fraud Examiner. In the study of Fraud and Corruption, three conditions must exist before Fraud or Corruption occurs. These three conditions are refer to as the Fraud Triangle. They are as follow: •Opportunity- occurs when an individual is given the change to manage money •Pressure- occurs when an individual is under mostly likely unnecessary constraints ( for example, buying new cars for girlfriends, going to night clubs and buying the highest amount of beer, sending girlfriends on holidays, etc, etc,) and •Rationalization- occurs when an individual thinks and feels that nothing will happen to him/her when he/she commits a fraudulent act. My interest of these three is Rationalization. The mean reason why corruption and other fraudulent acts occur in Liberia is because of Rationalization. Something like “if I do it, nothing will happen to me” (Lack of political will to act). Again, this is the real problem, not the lack of capacity to manage few millions. Finally, if we can start to take serious actions that will build confidence in the Public Financial Management Sector, we will start to believe and ably manage whatever amount of millions that will come in as donation. Good day folks.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 09:54:33 +0000
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