Verbatim transcription of recent remarks by Aleu Ayeny Aleu, former Warrap state Governor, on corruption in President KiiRiek’s South Sudan
Military Governor Gen. Aleu Ayieny Aleu
Transcripted By Kono Dimo Ukumo, Juba, South Sudan
Tuesday, 15 August 2023 (PW) — The other one of the third point is the speech of the minister of finance. Very excellent speech, in addition to some of the good speeches by people like Professor Akech the vice chancellor of Juba University. And the reaction to the speech – where people are very happy about it.
A lot of people belief that the problem in the ministry of finance is that people who have been put there have been always people who had no experience. To the the person who has been appointed now and the way he is hailed by the Apuk community, such people think that now the right person for the ministry of finance has (now) come and he is now going to put things right. What I want to tell the people with such attitudes is, speeches are usually different from practicalities.
Nobody can afford to come and work alone to effect changes without people working with him. And as a minister of finance, this guy is not new in South Sudan. He worked at the state level and has been transferred to the office of the president as financial officer and also did all his studies and obtained all the higher certificates and because of his academic excellence he was taken by the University of Juba where he has been teaching finance and economy.
Theoreticians and those who can practice the theory are not the same. I am one of the people who believe that there was never a bad Minister of finance who has ever held that ministry, starting from Arthur Akuein to Kuol Athian to Deng Athorbei to that `dor` man Agrey Tissa Sabuni to that Nuer call Changson who is currently in charge of higher education all along to Athian who is now in the Revenue Authority to this Dier Tong and to Bak. I know all these guys and I feel none of them committed a mistake.
There is something that professor Akech said. He said he is the leader of Apuk community here, and that people went to him and told him “ministry of finance has now come back to Apuk and we are going to celebrate because our son has been made a minister and we are going to make some tradition rituals and thanks-giving (to the gods).” The good thing that professor Akech said is “you the Apuk, the ministerial position given is not for you the Apuk. And if the guy appointed is your son, then why don’t you just tell him to hold that position for at least one year during which if you performed well then we shall celebrate and appreciate you.”
That was a very good spirit. It is not just about talking. Let him have one year, and if he changed the face of the economy in the South in one year then it will not be Apuk alone to celebrate, but the whole South Sudan will do a big festival to celebrate.
Professor Akech told the new minister that for the (table of the) economy of South Sudan to be strong it must stand strong on all its five (5) legs. And he listed all the five legs in which number one is civil service, and I want to underline it here. How ever much you may learn, even if you become Adam Smith who is known to have written the best books in economy, or you become Karl Marx who wrote about capitalism, even if you know all those theories of yours and now come to actual work but without managers backing you up, my brother … people who can implement your policies, you will never succeed. So this small boy has studied his thing, but to start from undersecretary, then to directors of finance and their accountants to planners in the budget department, controllers of account, etc.
Signatories who sign a document in the ministry of finance for approved money are more than thirty (30) people, including the minister. You can spend over a month following up approved money. These signatories are all difficult people whereby if one of them refuses to sign, you will not get the money. So what ever challenge has faced all the previous minister, this child (new minister) will also encounter it.
The challenge that has face all the former ministers is the useless civil service that we have here in South Sudan. And it is not that they do not know the work, but it is just malice, mere malice. (They belief) that work should be done while people must also eat. It is a practice that people have gotten deep into and normalized it. When you come following up money as a minister, or when I used to come to follow up money that has been fully approved and it is in the budget and it is my right and I say I want it from the finance even after the minister has commented and fully endorsed it, I will have to bribe and bribe until when the cheque is out. This is what all the ten governors do.
If you do not bribe them those guys in finance, your money will not come out. Lot of pulls and push until the money goes into another thing they call `system` after which the money goes into the budget department, then from the budget department to the accountants where it stops. Then when they give you the cheque they will say there is no money in the account. But is not that there is no money, but the issue is that if you are coming to claim say ten million or 50 million, 20 million will remain in the finance. This is what kills people. It is what kills every minister.
All those in the ministry of finance … if the president does not support this minister … if they want change those in the ministry of finance should be all dismissed even if it means hiring foreigners to come and run the ministry of finance. Or the staff of the ministry are to be put back under new contract and put all the national security guys there. Or else pull down all those building structures and let all the ministry staff sit in one room so that whatever everybody is doing is seen.
Because even if you finish all the process of following your money, one of them would just distance himself and you look for him for two days, three days, five days or a whole month, and just because one signatory is not there you will not get your money. That is what kills people in the ministry of finance here.
Among the five things (pillars) that professor Akech said, there is lack of credible civil service that is ready to help this country to develop. And it is not that they do not know, but it is just malice because it is a matter of eating, not doing work, when some money comes.
Budgeting is a diligent work, and it has its accompanying documents all clearly delineated. What is a budget? Budget is all the money that you collect this year, both oil and none oil revenues and grand in aid and external support added. These are then distributed to anticipated expenditures per the ministries. Chapter one is for salaries, chapter two are services, that is the money given to the ministries so that they can function, the rest of the money is chapter 3 for development.
After allocating these expenditures, expecting all the anticipated revenues to be collected through estimation or projection that this year this is the amount that is going to be collected and the oil revenue is this. This is what makes an annual budget for a year, these projections.
After that then we have the financial paper where everything is explained. And then an appropriation bill is another document that accompanies a budget. They are three, financial bill, appropriation bill and the budget itself. Appropriation bill is a law that says this is the budget and what is contained in the budget must be spent exactly as it is in the budget. No money should be moved from this chapter to that chapter. No money to be moved from this item to that. You cannot take from salary to go and do operations with it or take from operations to go and do developmental activities or capital to buy vehicles or construct schools – these are chapter three. Buying guns is also chapter three.
There is something else in the resource envelope where there are some money put aside for the presidency with all the five vice presidents and all the institutions under it. Their budget estimate is made and included in the budget. The ministry of finance which is the distributing authority and the presidency, the two have the highest budget. The presidency has the bigger budget followed by the ministry of finance. Even the army which is said to have the biggest budget, it is just their numbers but they do not get much money.
But since the formation of the government in South Sudan, there has been always over expenditure in the presidency, always over expenditure, ten or fifteen times over expenditure. Even the ministry of finance over spent whatever is allocated to it, ten, fifteen, twenty times the approved budget. This is something that cannot explain itself well. What are these two institutions (presidency and the ministry of finance) doing that they are always overspending every year?
Whose mistake, is it? It is a mistake of two people. It is the mistake of the minister of finance, and it is the mistake of the parliament, because it is the minister of finance that overspends and the parliament does not monitor, check and question the minister of finance why they are overspending. And when new budget of a new year is being worked, they even openly write it that they have overspend but no one hold them accountable for that.
When you ask, what are they doing with all these greens of over expenditure, they will say, you know these are presidential obligations. What are the presidential obligations? These are what has been promised such as travels and promises of things to be done. All the bosses and big guys visiting the president need cars, bishops visiting the president need cars, all the sick people go to the presidency for assistant. Every ministry has its own medical treatment budget.
But they have stopped going to their respective ministries and instead go to the presidency. Everybody is going to the presidency, so and so is sick so and so is this and that, why is so and so abandoned? They are then given money to go abroad. And I think no one goes abroad with less than thirty thousand USD. That is the challenge that face every minister of finance.
The worse factor of all these, which professor Akech did not mention yesterday, are our businessmen. These are gluttons beyond everybody else and they are the guys eating up South Sudan alive. Starting from the richest Jieng one such as Bol Mel through Makiir Gai and through our Dinka Ngok man called eh eh … who has his company called Amok or what … eh Kur Ajiing through Bak Majak through all the many Jieng Businessmen. They have refused true business, business where they work in their companies or open cloth shops. They only want to do business with the government.
One say, let me be given this number of cars so that I bring them, he does not bring them and he takes the money, somebody say let me be given this number of roads to make, Bol Mel is given all the roads in the South but nothing is moving. Given Cargo to go and sell, he sells it, at what price no one ask him and whatever he sold no one taxes it. These are the problems of South Sudan, businessmen. They have now even grown stronger and they have ascended to the political bureau these guys and they have become advisors, very senior advisors to the president. And the guy is a businessman in the market and he is actually milking the cow alone.
Facts have to be said. By the way, regarding the Dura saga that is said to have happened sometime back … there are people who are still getting Dura saga money up to now. Somebody comes with bill of dura saga of grains that he did not deliver to the state. One goes to the market and forges any number of bags of grain and he goes and get signature of the store keeper and that of the governor and come with a very clean document and takes the money.
Businessmen and South Sudanese have refused the clean business, they left it to the Eritreans and Ethiopians and people from East Africa and Lebanese. The Darfurian have taken over all the open space market of cloth and perfumes and whatever. You will never get a Jieng man owning a shop. A jieng man only wants what is looted from the government, only.
Now that this guy called Dier Tong is sacked, yet Dier is a highly trained financial individual. I got Dier when I was a minister of state for interior. I got him in Ireland. I was with Muhammad Haruun who is now said to be sought by the International Criminal Court (ICC). He was a minister (possibly referring to Muhammad Haruun). Dier was told that there is a minister who came who is a Jieng and he is accompanied by Arabs. Dier made for us lunch at his home.
We asked him what he was doing there in Ireland. Dier Tong was then a senior banker in the Irish bank. And Ireland is a member of European Union. For an African to be accepted to work in the Irish bank and a bank which is a bank of European Union means he (Dier) is not an easy person but a person with very high qualification. We asked the Irish government that how is this man (Dier) and they said this man is a genius. Dier is a financial scientist, and it was me who came and reported to the bany (the president) here that we have our people outside there but no one is bringing them home.
When the bank got messed up here by then, I decided to tell the president. Nobody was controlling money here when it (the dollar) moved away from two point eight and was jumping to fifteen, that is when Dier was fetched from Ireland and he was given hard currency to control them. He did his best and he progressed until he became the person (boss) of the bank. Story of the bank is a separate story my people. I will come to it.
Who is bullying who now? Is it South Sudan bank or it is the minister of finance that has these problems. All of them are equally responsible for our woes. Fact must be said, Dier since he came, he surpassed the guys who were working earlier there a bit. Because since he came, all those brokers who were carrying papers around in the ministry of finance and the generals who used to take bills from business men to go and claim them on behave of business men in the ministry of finance have stopped. He brought order which if Bak also follows then South Sudan may improve.
Dier actually has cleared the salary arrears that used to be up to eight or nine months to only two months. There was a time he cleared them to completely then other many things came in specially revenue collection which the other foreigner from East Africa mismanaged, such that only very little revenue was collected. That is where Athian the former minister of finance was put. So these two Apuk guys, Athian and Bak were faced with a very big challenge.
If they can work very well and pick from where Dier had reached, it would be great. Because actually what sacked Dier is not that he committed a mistake but it is the business men who sacked him. All the businessmen united their voice and made noise against him because since he came no one cashed any bill of those nonsense in the ministry of finance. All the businessmen were crying that they have been denied whatever.
If you listen to the speech of the businessman Makiir Gai the other day, he narrated a story where he said a lion provoked an elephant. The elephant started chasing the lion until the end of the forest to open space then to homesteads where there was a marriage ceremony in a luak. The running lion entered the luak and went straight and sat on somebody`s laps among those who were discussing the marriage matters. When the elephant chasing the lion arrived it removed the luak whole roofing structure and threw it away and the people remained in an open roofless wall space. The elephant then picked the lion and went and killed it.
The person on whose lapse the lion had sat remain seated with closed eyes where he had sat. He was told to open his eyes and get up because the lion is now no more but he couldn`t respond. He was carried to his home with is eyes closed and laps curled. His wife was told what happened. The wife then slowly and thoroughly inspected her comatose husband. When she reached the area and structure between his legs she got her manhood organ completely gone, swallowed up by fear into his body. The wife cried out aloud that this is no longer a man. The lion has eaten him up completely, to the end. She shouted/lamented desperately.
The meaning of that story is that they (the businessmen) are the guys on whose laps the lion had sat. So now they are saying although the lion has been taken away, we the businessmen have remained with nothing (our “manhood” is gone). I asked them about the meaning of the story and they said they are the ones on whose laps the lion had sat.
And so, these businessmen if they don`t change their hearts … and what the minister said that day that those guys who change pound to dollars to support their children in East Africa or to go abroad for medical treatment … if they do not change then the pound will never be strong here. He is right. Because … do the businessmen take their dollars to the banks? They don’t. They keep their dollars in boxes in their rooms. They do not take it to banks.
All these rich guys if you check their accounts, they have very little money in their accounts in banks. They say if you take your money to Bank of South Sudan, it will borrow it and you will not get your money back again. Among the five pillars that were mentioned by professor Akech, he left out the businessmen, yet these are the gods here. The cash that goes to them is greater than that which goes to services.
That day when we remove out the businessmen`s sackers from the government`s flesh and they become a productive force to be manufacturing guns like in America, then the government will be stronger and buying from them. But not giving them the money to go and buy things from other countries. This is what is now happening here. Even cloths.
Now when you want police uniform, the businessman is given money and he goes to China to go and look for the cloths instead of making the manufacturing plan here. They want to buy those items from outside with dollars. But if they are manufactured here then they will be bought with our own many. As the new minister said, this country will never prosper unless we change our attitude, we the Southerners.
The way we have made our hearts, unless we change that, progress will remain hard and elusive. Everybody has his heart pegged into the other person`s property and wishing to get free money without doing any work and without wiping the sweat of their brow. If we don`t change that we shall never progress. A businessman is supposed to be adding wealth. It has nothing to do with dollar gone up or down. And when dollar comes down, prices would often remain up there.
Musuak (loca/traditional tooth brushing stick) is now 500 SSP here in Juba. I asked a boy why he added the price of musuak to SSP 500 yet it was even 1 SSP. The boy told me the dollar has gone up. I told the boy this musuak which is brought by the Mundari here. What is its relationship with the dollar? The boy lough and told me something strange. He said I sell this musuak and what I am going to buy is imported using dollar. He is right. Sugar is imported with dollar, cloth is imported with dollar, so the boy cannot be left behind and make losses. Therefore, if things go up let them go up all.
No one at all is controlling the market and the businessmen. Chamber of commerce has become so powerful, no one can dare to face them. They can just increase whatever they want. So, this guy (the new minister) … it is just three months, if he does not give the businessmen their money, they will chase him away … soon.
The presidency … so far no one is telling us how much is given to them including everyone of the five vice president … for upkeep and office renting. There are rumors that they are given dollars and when you ask no one tells you. If the president and the five vice presidents who all behave like presidents themselves each … where if any of them think of a travel, he just send his guys to the minister of finance ordering the minister to report to him now and he states any figure of the amount of money he wants. If the minister does not pay that money then they all collude against the him and go to Kiir and tell him that this guy is not working with us. And if you give anyone of the vice presidents then you must give all the five of them. The same thing with the governors.
So … our culture (is problematic) and unless we embrace the so called country building culture and the culture of sacrifices into our hearts (we will go nowhere) because everybody … … (sentence not completed). It is the Apuk themselves who will be the first to sack this boy soon … where everybody will be coming that he needs money … they will be the ones to de-campaign him soon … because everyone of them will say the thing has now come home.
Now the people of Tong are quarreling. They are saying why is it (ministry of finance) always passing over our heads going up to Yirol and back up to Mading Awiel passing over our heads. It came from Ngok and now landed in Apuk. Wouldn`t it for once land in Tonj? That is what they are saying now here in Tonj.
It is not a position that will give you anything beneficial. Unless you want to destroy yourself – then go to finance. Because even if you go there, you will never change anything, unless the guys we mentioned change their attitude, the civil servants, and the businessmen. Unless they stop syphoning money out of the government, nothing will change.
Bank of South Sudan is also responsible for failure of every minister, because this bank of South Sudan is the one who started black market of the dollar. When the dollar was 2.8 and three million was made available every month into the commercial banks so that those who need dollar to go and buy goods can do so. The bank staff are the ones who started opening forex with all their children and all the Directors including office messengers of the bank started having forexes. These forexes are supposed to add something little to the exchange rate of the central bank`s rate, say from 2.8 to 3.1 or 3.2
But these money are instead not given to the commercial banks. Instead, the bank staff take it to their forexes. That is why you hear back then that those women used to overnight at forex doors. That was the business.
So, instead the dollar ends up taken to the umbrellas (in black market). If the dollar come with the rate of 2.8 from the central bank, then in the commercial bank it is 3.2 and in the private forex it becomes 7 and when it reaches the umbrella it is 15 per dollar. So a difference of 13 pounds for every dollar. This money is then distributed back up wards to the guys who facilitated the issuing of dollars from the bank.
That is why when you go to the market here now you will get a child holding bundles of new notes. Who is giving them all that? It is those guys in the bank … to go and sell them to buy dollars and then bring them back. It is the guy in the bank who gives the dollars to be sold. Unless this bank of South Sudan of yours is closed and new people are brought, then they have a challenge.
And this is what happened before with the letter of credit where everybody was eating. Others became rich out of letter of credit which was all nonsense. So please, regarding the speech of the new minister of finance, lets wait and listen to the advice of professor Akech. After one year is when we may appreciate Bak (the new minister). After one year is when we can evaluate who ever is appointed to see whether s/he has done the job well or not. Even me … (inaudible)
So please, specialist who studied the theory are not necessarily the ones to do the best work. Theory and practice are not necessarily one thing. How many years did we have since we came? Haven`t we so far known who are the thieves? And haven`t we known the straightforward people who do not eat public resources. Even anyone who is not learned or who did not study finance but is honest and straight forward … put him in charge of finance. Get somebody who has been given sour milk during childhood.
We used to be given sour milk so that we throw up glutton. It was done to us and we threw-up glutton. Guys who are feed with sour milk threw up glutton. That cultural practice has now re-surfaced. That is what our mothers did to us. I personally … I can be accused of many other things but no one can accuse/insult me of having stollen money in any of all the positions that I held.
What I am saying is that, who else doesn`t Kiir know now? Even if a mere soldier, may be brought and told to take charge of the ministry of finance … by orders … and nothing should go out for nonsense … it may help.
Other guys said if it (ministry of finance) has defeated men like this then why can`t we give women. Women know how to distribute food. She can fairly distribute to the satisfaction of everybody even a small food. But our South Sudanese have not yet accepted to try women. We will see with this new guy if he also fails then even Magangdit can be called to become minister of finance and we see how they will fair in the distribution. I think this is what I can add about the new minister that you asked me. Wa al salam alaikum.
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