Could Dr. Martin Elia Lomuro will be Shown Exit Door?

Could Martin Elia Lomuro be a dead man walking? Is it a matter of time that the longest serving minister will be shown exit door?

Law makers are no longer only SPLMs, even though they are, times are different, the staunchest supporters of the party are the very ones now angry at why they are not paid wages.

Grilled by MPs the whereabouts of the 10 million dollars meant for peace implementation, Lomuro arrogantly told the MPs he was authorized by the head of government and that he couldn’t resist his boss.

The next two days, he called the press to deny the previous statements.

Whether he was revealing the ways not known to the public or he meant to intimidate the law makers, is known to him only.

The question is, will he survive this blonder?

Here are five officials who said bye to their jobs for telling the truth.

Agak Achuil-former minister of finance and planning.

In a press conference attended by the then governor of the central Bank Makur Deng Manguak, Achuil talked in black and white revealing that the country was too broke to pay civil servants as non-oil revenue is normally used to meet other priorities of the government and that civil servants were only paid with borrowed money.

He said his predecessors had pre-sold the oil up to 2027 and that if he wanted to pay the year in front of him, he would have to borrow 2028 crude oil. The following day, Mr. Achuil retracted his statement in what appeared like a summon by the big man and claimed that he was taken out of context as what he meant was the spread sheet.

A few weeks later (4 Aug 2022), He was fired together with his counterpart, the governor of the bank who appeared grinning on that fateful press conference day, implying that he was in agreement with what Achuil said.

Mou Ambrose Thiik. Former deputy minister of finance and planning 2017.

Thiik was cornered when asked what the fate would be given the high depreciation of the local currency and delay in paying government employees, he retorted by saying that the country had no reserves in hard currency in the central bank admitting that it would be hard to pay civil servants. Thiik further questioned the rationale behind the interior ministry continuing to pay a German company $500,000 to produce passports and IDs instead of buying the software to own it.

A few weeks later (2 Dec 2017), he was fired and made to return to doing business in his building next to KCB Buluk.

Toby Lanzer- UN Resident relief coordinator and deputy UN envoy 2015.

Lanzer was the first to ring the bell that South Sudan’s central bank had ran out of USD currency reserves at the time the country began to experience the impact of the aftermath of the country’s most brutal civil war.

The humanitarian coordinator was asked to leave the country, in what Banki Moon condemned asking the government to reverse its decision but to no avail. Was it a lie!

Koang Danhier- Former minister of roads and bridges 2014.

Danhier was asked by a journalist the details of the Bhar El Ghazal highway construction agreet and the loans with the Chinese Exim bank, He said he was never informed about the details and that only the minister in the office of the president had full knowledge. The minister in the president’s office at the time was Awan Goal Riak.

Goal the next morning lashed out at the Journalist accusing him and his community-Bor of always trying to betray the government of Salva Kiir.

A few months later, President Kiir made the reshuffle and Danhier was thrown into the dustbin.

Gen. Aleu Ayieny Aleu- former minister of interior and governor of Warrap state 2007.

Gen. Aleu was interviewed at the weu hours of the night when he was only left as a talking-head. He spilled out what was whispered when people were only in twos, but Gen. Aleu said the dead of Dr. Garang was in the hands of those Garang thought were his friends.
The rest is history.

By Mr. Mathiang Jalap Dongrin, Senior SPLM Activist and Political think tank.