PEN POINT: Attitudinal and Behavioural Change: A Missed Opportunity for Sierra Leone
By Shar Ibrahim Komba
232news –
Sierra Leone has made remarkable progress since the end of the brutal civil war in 2002. The country has maintained constitutional democracy, conducted several competitive elections, rebuilt state institutions, and made significant advances in health, education, gender equality and public-sector reform.
Yet beneath these achievements lies a persistent national challenge that deserves far greater attention: the attitudes, values and behaviours that shape how citizens and institutions function.
It is against this background that the establishment of the Attitudinal and Behavioural Change (ABC) Secretariat under former President Ernest Bai Koroma was, in principle, a significant and potentially transformative initiative.
The idea was simple but profound: national development cannot be achieved through infrastructure, legislation and government programmes alone. A country also needs citizens and institutions that embrace responsibility, integrity, patriotism, respect for the law and the common good.
Unfortunately, what could have evolved into a long-term national movement for civic responsibility and ethical citizenship appears to have lost momentum. The question Sierra Leone should now be asking is not whether the idea of attitudinal and behavioural change was wrong, but whether the country failed to fully institutionalise and develop an idea that was fundamentally important to national development.
The ABC initiative emerged during the early years of the post-war period, when Sierra Leone was still grappling with the consequences of an 11-year civil conflict.
Former President Ernest Bai Koroma came to power in 2007 with attitudinal change as an important component of his political message. His government subsequently gave the idea institutional expression through the Attitudinal and Behavioural Change Secretariat.
Research on the initiative indicates that the Secretariat was inaugurated during Koroma’s administration as part of an effort to address what the government regarded as a national “state of backwardness” and to encourage citizens to become more productive, responsible and optimistic.
The initiative, therefore, was not simply about telling citizens to “behave well.” It was conceived as part of a broader effort to change mindsets and strengthen the social foundations of national development.
President Koroma repeatedly linked attitudinal change to patriotism, public service, education and the fight against corruption. In a 2007 address at Fourah Bay College, he argued that values are formed over time through families, communities, schools, religious institutions and wider society. He also connected attitudinal change to the fight against corruption and the cultivation of a stronger sense of service and national responsibility among young people.
This was an important observation.
The need for such an initiative was not invented by politicians.
Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) made a strong assessment of the country’s historical governance failures. It found that the conflict and the preceding post-independence period reflected serious failures of leadership in government, public life and civil society. More importantly, the Commission identified greed, corruption and nepotism among the factors that contributed to the country’s descent into conflict and poverty.
This means that Sierra Leone’s challenge has never been merely economic.
The country has historically struggled with questions of leadership, accountability, public ethics, institutional integrity, patronage and civic responsibility.
Therefore, rebuilding roads, schools, hospitals and government offices after the war was necessary, but it was never going to be sufficient on its own. Rebuilding a country also requires rebuilding public values.
The former President’s government understood part of this challenge when it linked the ABC agenda with the country’s broader post-war reconstruction and governance programme.
The concept of attitudinal change is also supported by decades of scholarship in social psychology.
Gordon Allport, one of the pioneers of modern social psychology, described attitudes as a central concept in understanding human behaviour. Contemporary social psychology generally understands an attitude as a relatively enduring positive or negative evaluation of a person, object, issue or behaviour.
This distinction is important because attitude is not the same thing as behaviour.
A person may believe that corruption is wrong but still pay a bribe.
A citizen may understand that littering is harmful but still throw rubbish into a drain.
A public official may speak passionately about accountability but fail to declare a conflict of interest.
A young person may express patriotism while believing that public property is nobody’s responsibility.
The gap between what people believe and what they actually do is one of the most important challenges facing any programme designed to change society.
This issue of personal responsibility and moral consciousness was recently highlighted by religious scholar Dr Ibrahim Sallieu Kamara.
Speaking on Truth Media, Dr Kamara called for greater honesty, integrity, faithfulness, patriotism and commitment in society, arguing that these values must be rooted in a strong sense of consciousness and responsibility.
According to him, the more conscious people become of their duties, the more likely they are to become positive role models in society.
He warned that some individuals continue to engage in wrongdoing despite knowing that their actions could negatively affect future generations, stressing that both good and evil deeds can leave lasting legacies.
Dr Kamara also referred to William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, particularly the character of Lady Macbeth, to illustrate the burden of guilt and the power of conscience. He questioned why literary works such as Macbeth, which explore themes of power, greed, morality and guilt, are being removed from some educational settings.
His broader argument was that while a person may sometimes escape legal consequences through connections, influence or power, escaping one’s own conscience is far more difficult.
Citing Lady Macbeth’s famous reflection on guilt, Dr Kamara used the play to emphasise that conscience can serve as an internal moral judge, reminding individuals that their actions have consequences beyond the immediate reach of the law.
This perspective adds an important dimension to the national conversation.
Laws can regulate behaviour from the outside, but conscience can regulate behaviour from within.
A society that relies entirely on fear of punishment may struggle to achieve sustainable behavioural change. A society in which individuals develop a strong internal sense of responsibility is more likely to produce citizens who do the right thing even when no one is watching.
Icek Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour provides another useful framework for understanding this challenge.
Ajzen argues that behaviour is influenced by three major factors: attitudes towards the behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. These factors influence a person’s intention to perform a particular behaviour, while actual control over the situation also affects whether that intention becomes reality.
Applied to Sierra Leone, the theory provides an important lesson.
Suppose the government tells citizens: “Do not litter.”
Information alone may not be enough.
The citizen’s attitude towards cleanliness matters. So does what family members, friends and neighbours consider acceptable. Social norms matter. The availability of waste bins and reliable waste-collection services matters. Enforcement matters. And the citizen’s belief that he or she can contribute to a cleaner community matters.
This demonstrates why a successful national attitudinal-change programme must go beyond posters, radio jingles, speeches and public campaigns.
It must create an environment in which good behaviour is encouraged, rewarded, expected and consistently enforced.
This may be where Sierra Leone’s ABC agenda encountered one of its greatest challenges.
A government cannot successfully tell citizens to reject corruption while corruption is perceived to flourish within public institutions.
It cannot demand respect for the law while powerful individuals appear to operate above it.
It cannot preach patriotism while public resources are treated as personal or political assets.
It cannot ask citizens to respect public property when public institutions themselves fail to maintain public facilities.
Behavioural change requires credible role models and credible institutions.
People learn not only from what leaders say, but also from what leaders do.
For this reason, the ABC agenda should never have been viewed simply as a communication campaign. It should have been integrated into public-sector reform, education, law enforcement, anti-corruption programmes, local governance and national civic education.
One of the clearest examples of why behavioural change matters came during the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak.
The ABC Secretariat became involved in Ebola education and community engagement. Reports from the period indicate that the Secretariat focused on behaviours and practices that contributed to transmission, including resistance to public-health advice and traditional burial practices.
The Ebola experience demonstrated something policymakers should never forget:
Behaviour can determine whether a policy succeeds or fails.
The country could mobilise international experts, medical supplies and treatment facilities, but if communities did not trust health workers, report suspected cases, accept safe burial procedures or follow preventive measures, the national response would be severely weakened.
There is evidence that the ABC Secretariat undertook public sensitisation, community engagement and programmes aimed at influencing attitudes and behaviours. Its activities included work with schools and communities, including initiatives designed to develop young “change agents.”
However, academic research has also questioned the breadth and institutional depth of the initiative. One scholarly study observed that the Secretariat’s mandate remained relatively vague beyond public talks and media sensitisation, while other analysis described the wider attitudinal-change campaign as a major attempt to reshape social ideals in post-war Sierra Leone.
Was the ABC Secretariat given the institutional authority, resources, independence, measurable targets and long-term political commitment required to transform national behaviour?
If the answer is no, then the failure was not necessarily the concept itself.
The failure may have been in its implementation and institutionalisation.
A national behavioural-change agenda requires more than a government office. It requires sustained political commitment, professional expertise, adequate resources, independent evaluation and ownership across successive administrations.
Today, many Sierra Leoneans complain about declining standards of public morality.
Citizens complain about corruption, dishonesty, indiscipline, disrespect for public institutions, political intolerance, destruction of public property, reckless driving, environmental degradation, examination malpractice, drug abuse, violence and the growing tendency to place personal or partisan interests above the national interest.
It would, however, be too simplistic to declare that “Sierra Leoneans have lost their moral consciousness.”
Sierra Leone remains a society with strong traditions of community support, religious commitment, hospitality, respect for elders, volunteerism and civic activism.
The more accurate argument is that positive values are increasingly competing with powerful economic, political and social incentives that can reward negative behaviour.
There is also an important lesson from the history of the ABC initiative.
A national programme designed to change citizens’ attitudes must never become a tool for political propaganda.
Behavioural change is too important to be owned by one political party.
If such a programme is associated exclusively with a particular government, citizens may interpret it through partisan lenses. A future administration may then abandon it simply because it was associated with its predecessor.
The principles of honesty, patriotism, civic responsibility, respect for the law, environmental responsibility and public service belong to Sierra Leone—not to the APC, SLPP or any other political organisation.
Perhaps the greatest lesson from the old ABC initiative is that Sierra Leone did not necessarily have a bad idea.
It may have had an idea that was not sufficiently institutionalised.
The country needs a renewed conversation about who we are as citizens and what kind of country we want to become.
That conversation must move beyond slogans.
Attitudinal and behavioural change should become part of a national development framework connecting education, governance, anti-corruption, public-sector reform, youth development, environmental protection, public health and civic participation.
The government, schools, universities, traditional leaders, religious organisations, civil society, the media and private sector all have roles to play.
The media, in particular, has a responsibility to go beyond reporting corruption and misconduct. It should also promote stories of integrity, public service, community responsibility and citizens who are making positive contributions to society.
The establishment of the Attitudinal and Behavioural Change Secretariat under Ernest Bai Koroma was an ambitious attempt to recognise a fundamental truth: national development is ultimately about people, and people are guided by values, beliefs, incentives, institutions and social norms.
The idea deserved more than political slogans.
It deserved rigorous research, sustained funding, professional behavioural expertise, measurable targets, independent evaluation and cross-government ownership.
More than a decade later, Sierra Leone should not simply ask why the ABC initiative disappeared from the national conversation.
We should ask what happened to the underlying problem it was created to address.
The country has built institutions. It has passed laws. It has developed policies. It has received billions of dollars in development assistance and undertaken numerous reform programmes.
But sustainable development requires something deeper.
It requires citizens who believe that public property belongs to everyone, corruption harms everyone, the law applies to everyone, and national development is everyone’s responsibility.
As Allport’s work reminds us, attitudes are central to understanding how people respond to the world around them. Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour further demonstrates that attitudes interact with social expectations and perceived control in shaping intentions and behaviour.
For Sierra Leone, therefore, the challenge is not merely to change what people say.
It is to create the conditions that enable people to believe differently, expect differently and ultimately behave differently.
The ABC Secretariat may have been a missed opportunity. But the national need for attitudinal and behavioural change has certainly not disappeared. If anything, it has become more urgent.
