Once again we have been prevailed upon by a loaded comment by the wife of the president for which explaining we entreat: what’s in a word?

At an event that benefitted arable young minds we hope will become future captains of industries, the private citizen that is notorious for her politically incorrect statements at events where she speaks in her public role and capacity as First Lady of Sierra Leone (the office of the first lady is a sub-vented office for which Fatima Bio receives monthly pay as a government employee), Fatima Bio assured her audience that ‘Bio will go five years’.

As a public servant in the employ of her husband’s party government of Sierra Leone, Fatima Bio made a policy statement that almost went unnoticed, even ignored were it not for the current problems in the country that border on the very issue of how long will Mr Julius Maada Bio continue at State House in this his heavily resisted second term regime as head of state. Fatima has posited that her husband will do another five years as long as electoral commissioner Mohamed K. Konneh has announced the results and her husband sworn in.

Fatima’s statement should not be treated lightly as she was speaking as a government employee that had front row seats during all the party’s engagements on a way forward to Bio completing the five years of his second term, despite the public protest against his victory.

Despite all the hope that the main opposition All Peoples Congress (APC) has concerning resolving the 24th June, 2023 elections result problem that has left the economy on the ropes, we can see that the bottom line of any and everything that Bio and the SLPP are doing concerning solving this issue is that: “Bio will go five years”. This is their agenda.

This leaves us with the question; if after the dialogues organised by local and international stakeholders in our electoral and peace processes, it is expected that we either have a rerun of the elections or have president Bio exit Fort Thornton without the loss of lives and properties, then what are we to make of Fatima’s utterance that he husband will do his five years? Dialogue or not, Bio plans on going full term; then what is the APC hoping to accomplish with all these dialogues if not to prevent the very same thing Fatima has already publically divulged?

It must be here noted that Lady Fatima made the statement based on what her husband and the party hope to accomplish at the end of all these dialogues and peace conferences that have been held and proposed to resolve this issue.

We are constrained to note that if president Bio is confident of doing his five years, either by hook or crook, this hope will form part of the agenda of all the dialogues. Bio has already resolved this issue, the dialogues are meant to give this charade the public attention it craves. And in case they were clueless of what president Bio and the SLPP government of Sierra Leone hope to accomplish after the dialogue, then Fatima Bio has given the members of the dialogue a clear indication. You are not coming here to help resolve this issue; you will be here to be used as pawns in getting Bio to accomplish his second term ambition.

It then follows that the SLPP and president Bio only have one agenda in mind: to complete the president’s second term, paopa. This dialogue is not dialogue for peace but for Julius Maada Bio to do his second term, regardless of who suffers or dies.

While the APC is blindly going into this affair in the hope that Bio will be prevented from hoodwinking the entire nation and our international partners and friends into seeing things his way that he ‘won’ the elections, we can see that president Bio is still caught up in his strategies trying to do five years against the backdrop of running dialogues aimed at preventing such an eventuality.

But what if Fatima Bio was just talking, posturing in line with her husband’s style and way of doing things and didn’t really mean for her words to be taken as official SLPP policy on Bio’s chances of completing his second term despite the huge BUT that’s in their way.

If there is anyone that is serious and should be taken very seriously in the SLPP, it is Lady Fatima Bio. As the president’s wife and right hand person, Fatima is privy to information the president’s closest advisers may not even know.

While party people will have to wait to be told or informed about the president or his plans and actions, Fatima gets her info directly from her husband, whose lips, eyes and ears are all hers in the privacy of their home.

The people of Sierra Leone should be worried about this statement by Fatima Bio that her husband will complete his second term as president of Sierra Leone because she does have a knack for making predictions, like Adebayor, that we know came from the horse’s mouth, or from those closest to him.

After receiving a colossal per diem for attending the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II for which the High Commissioner should have been the one to attend, Fatima Bio was in the US where she made a public statement that her husband is “a doctor of coups”.

In an apt display of how true Fatima’s statement about her husband is, and based on the refusal of the APC and our international friends, donors and financial and other supporters of our government to accept the announced elections results, many people have accused her husband and the paopa regime of orchestrating an “institutional coup”. President Bio is accused of capturing the other arms of government, but critically so the police, army, judiciary, and the nation’s elections management bodies.

It follows then that after orchestrating what has amounted to his third coup against the state (they overthrew Momoh as the NPRC and Bio overthrew his boss Strasser in a bloodless palace coup after) all this talk of dialogue to resolve the rigging of the 24 June election is aimed at presenting an image or impression to the rest of the world that we are working things out while our government of Sierra Leone is still operating.

This makes Bio and the SLPP look good, while the APC would have been used as the pawn in getting Bio to finish his second term, no matter how he ‘won’ it.

The most dangerous aspect of why we should take Fatima Bio’s statement seriously is that should her husband insists on seeing the rest of his second term off, then the Sierra Leone Police and RSLAF should be prepared for running street protests from December 2023 until the issue is amicably resolved. This is not far off from where the APC promised the nation would be in six months after the elections results were pronounced if the issue is still unresolved.

We all know what has happened at scenes of protest actions against Maada Bio’s government since 2018. Lonta!

Credit: JSK