By: Musa M. Kamara
The exact whereabouts of one of the most influential youth leaders of the main opposition All People’s Congress – APC party’s Eastern region chapter – Kenema, Kailahun and Kono remain uncertain.
Reports are that Theophilus Alusine Foday, popularly known as the Liberator and Alusine Deen Sesay who was also the APC party Youth Chairman Kenema District, fled their homes in Tongo Field and in a nearby village in the outcast of Kenema, Kenema district, in the east of Sierra Leone, on different dates in February 2021.
Family sources contacted by these investigators indicate that the Liberator fled the country on 10 February 2021, after his Freetown resident was stormed by unknown mobs, following dozens of police raids aimed at arresting him. For Deen Sesay is it unclean when he left the country whiles his exact whereabout remains unknown, as not even his relatives can comfortably give any clue about Alusine Deen Sesay anymore. Others opined that he was killed whiles trying to escape from his village outside Kenema.
Multiple police attempt at arresting the Liberator for allegedly making insulting remarks against the wife of President Julius Maada Bio, First Lady Fatima Bio, incitements of the 2020 protest failed, scores of Theo’s supporters were arrested, detained by police, detained, and later charged to court for allegedly insulting the president’s wife.
Theo’s name is also on police list of wanted persons, for his alleged involvement in the 2019 protest staged at the APC party National Secretariat, on 11A Railway Line Brookfields in Freetown as well as the 2021 failed peaceful protest.
With these hanging over his head, and for fears of police arrest and detention, Theo – the Liberator rushed to his hometown Tongo Field, in the east of the country, where he had wanted to take cover but also encountered similar intimidation experience in the hands of the ruling SLPP party operatives and members of the poro secrete society. They violently pursued the Liberator and tried to kill him, but he ended up fleeing the country.
Since then, Theo reportedly went into hiding having narrowly escaped series assassinations attempts including and the deadly 10 February 2021 incident caused by mysterious throngs from which he ran away for his life.
Reports confirmed that when Liberator’s home was attacked on that faithful day in February 2021 by members of the poro society and ruling party operatives, the victim spent over two weeks in an unfamiliar dense forest, not until when he was later noticed to have fled the country to a safe location.
Reasons for chasing him are that the opposition APC party influential youth leader stands accused of having a direct link and involvements in so many incitements of irate youth in capital, Freetown, against government in the ruling party support bases in the south and east among other places in the country by the police.
Police, ruling SLPP party members and traditional leaders have alleged that Theo – the Liberator incited several violent anti-government protests in Freetown and in his hometown Tongo Field, Kenema district eastern province of Sierra Leone, that was why he had wanted to find a hiding place in his home district but was unable to seek refugee there. Instead, the Liberator was however declared wanted by the authorities, which rendered him insecure to stay and live in Sierra Leone anymore.
For Theo like many others who had long fled the community and the country in the wake of increasing fears for their lives, the Liberator’s hometown – Tongo Field and even the city of Freetown are no longer safe places for him, due to alarming intimidations he can be directly vulnerable to in an attempt to return to stay in Sierra Leone.
It is therefore based on the existing threatening circumstances that precipitated the escape of Theophilus Alusine Foday the Liberator into hiding, an anonymous family member told this investigator.
Amid heightening fears for his life, Foday’s family who are still in deep reservations, hardly to talk to members of the public, including the media about the exact whereabouts of their son and loved one.
Fears of further unleashing of threatening remarks and intimidating invectives against Theo’s family in Tongo Field and in Freetown continue to keep so many of people away from communities within the region if not in the country.
Sierra Leone is therefore certainly not a haven anymore for youth in support of the APC party and their former eastern region youth leader, Foday.
Meanwhile, Theophilus Alusine Foday who stands accused by the police and the ruling SLPP party of mobilizing youth and inciting anti-government protests, is also on the run for his complete denial to forceful initiation into the poro secrete society.
