President Maada Bio is Scared of Youth’s & Women’s Movements in Sierra Leone: He Is Crushing them by Eliminating their Leaders?

As the June 2023 date for the Presidential and general elections approaches, President Maada Bio, who will be running for a second term, has become grossly aggressive toward opposition voices, especially youth and women in the country. He is now solidly engaged in a campaing to eliminate his competitors by any means possible.

Alhaji Amadu Bah, a.k.a LAJ, the popular rapper along with his two brothers and nine colleagues, continue to languish in maximum security prison on bogus charges. The only crimes committed by this group is that LAJ criticized President Bio in his songs and the group is in support of the Youth Power Movement, which is construed to be a political party formed by LAJ’s brother who is also imprisoned.

Now that President Bio has imprisoned 12 leaders of the youth group , he has now turned his war on the women of Sierra Leone by trying to crush the one female opposition voice, Dr. Femi Claudius-Cole, the leader for the Unity Party and the Coalition Of Political Parties of Sierra Leone. 

Dr. Claudius-Cole has not only been vocal, but she has also been encouraging women in the country to voice their concerns about the dire hardships they are enduring in the country. In light of expressing their concerns, the women planned a peaceful protest on July 4th, 2022 in the capital Freetown. However, on the eve of the protest, Dr. Claudius-Cole did a FaceBook live in which we could see truck loads with President Bio’s special forces and the Sierra Leone police who had swamped Dr. Claudius Cole’s residence, demanding that she surrender to be arrested. After a few hours of stand-off, the 60+ year old woman gave in and was taken into custody, along with Dr. Denis Bright, the leader of another opposition party, the National Grand Coalition party, whose only crime was to show up and show support to Dr. Claudius-Cole.

Some of the details are in the following social media postings by lawyers and journalists.

It is obvious that President Julius Maada Bio is aware that his chances of success to serve a second term in Sierra Leone are highly dependent on the support of the youth who make up almost 40% of the population, and women, the majority gender of the populaiton.

But instead of engaging the youth and women in meaningful dialog, or better yet, provide good ethical, and progressive governance, President Maada Bio has resorted to brutality, aiming to literally crush the opposition voices of the two potentially powerful segments of the population that could defeat his chances. 

This gives meaning to the phrase, ” eliminate the competition!!”