By Kabs Kanu
President Maada Bio and his wife, Fatima Bio, are getting away with everything in Sierra Leone. The couple and the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party ( SLPP) are tottering on the ropes, bloodied and paralyzed by a spectacular array of international scandals that could have brought their reign to the brink of collapse.
But this is the saddest interregnum of governance the country has experienced since Independence 64 years ago. The country does not have an opposition party to bring the SLPP to account. It lacks a civil society , the media is very weak, with only a very, very few newspapers fighting the good fight to make the SLPP pay for its rubbish and criminal governance; the judiciary, Parliament ,professional bodies , the intelligentsia and even the religious council are all compromised. President Bio and his wife have stuffed them in their deep pockets.
The SLPP’s back is almost fatally bent under the weight of the heavy load of scandals that have hit them lately: A Convicted international drug lord living in plain sight in Sierra Leone and said to be married to the President’s daughter; Guinea embassy cocaine shame, which saw drugs being caught in the Sierra Leone Embassy van and the Guinean authority shamefully putting our ambassador under house arrest ; the annexation of Yenga by Guinea, who have even built a military barracks there and now this big corruption disgrace exploding around the President’s wife, exposed by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project , a global network of investigative journalists, who released the bombshell about the million dollars of exquisite villas and mansions, as well as a hotel that Fatima Bio has built in her home country, the Gambia. The foreign media, including the well- respected British newspaper, The Times, have reported the scandal extensively, putting Sierra Leone to international infamy and mockery.
While President Bio, his wife and the SLPP are wiping eggs off their faces for these scandals, Sierra Leone has been virtually crippled by blackouts, hunger, inflation and the menacing Mpox . By now, Bio should have been choking for survival, but the shameless President and wife continue their macabre showboating, while sycophants and bootlickers fight over the scraps and crumbs from the corrupt government’s tables.
This is what happens in a shameful country where there is no opposition party, civil society, vibrant Watchdog media, intelligentsia, Parliament, Judiciary and accountability institutions. The Bios have bought the loyalties of all these institutions.
Posterity will never forgive the APC and other opposition political parties as well as the media, the rotten religious council, the castrated intelligentsia and other accountablity establishments for going missing in action at a most nicene time when the nation needs them most.
Bio and his wife have committed the most egregious crimes ever perpetrated in the country by a presidential couple since they came to power in 2018, again thanks to the APC, who allegedly propelled them to State House. Bio and Fatima and some members of their family are the Sierra Leone version of the U.S Gambino crime family .
What a shame and the thought that they are getting away with it because of an impotent opposition and media, especially, has created very angry Sierra Leoneans on social media, responsible for the daily outbursts of putrid language and profanities in audios and videos.
Shame, Sierra Leone, shame on you.
