Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone openly rigged the June 24, 2023 elections and was declared President by an equally corrupt electoral commissioner, his tribesman Mohamed Konneh. Since then, Mr. Konneh has ignored calls by domestic and international observers to account for and show transparency and fairness in the June elections processes.
As of this date, the Parliament of Sierra Leone has no opposition political party members; only Maada Bio’s Sierra Leone People’s Party members and a lone opportunist who claimed to be an opposition party member have been sworn in as members of Parliament.
Meanwhile, Maada Bio, holding on to his illegitimate power in the past few days, has built an oversized cabinet mainly of his friends and family members. Mr. Bio claims to have appointed many women as a ploy to garner international attention and approval.
During the past five years, Maada Bio, mainly through his wife, used women extensively as bait for international donor funds and resources. However, women and girls remain marginalized in Sierra Leone society. Nothing has changed in the past five years to improve women’s lives or gender equality.
Likewise, in this second round of his illegitimate grip on power, Mr. Bio is bent on using women, the most deprived population, as a significant bait to gain recognition and legitimacy for his government to attract international funding and favors.
In a recent tweet, Mr. Bio’s favorite nephew, Dr. David Moinina Sengeh bragged about his cabal’s appointing more women and youth, himself included.
However, when we examine these appointments closely, we can see that they are based mainly on nepotism and are not meant to improve the chances of the masses of ordinary women and youth in Sierra Leone.
Dr. Sengeh is the first example of Maada Bio’s nepotistic pattern of appointing women and young people. Sengeh is the overprivileged nephew of Maada Bio–the son of Maada Bio’s political party stalwart, who is Maada Bio’s mentor. Mr. Bio recently elevated his young nephew Dr. Sengeh from minister of basic education to chief minister. He is a young man whose only qualification is an ivy league terminal degree, with no previous work or leadership experience before he became a minister. This position gave him the right and privilege to take the education system of a whole country into further ruin. As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding! The education system of Sierra Leone today is in worst condition than Dr. Sengeh found it five years ago. Experience matters!
Regarding Maada Bio Cabals’s claim of appointing many women in his cabinet, upon close examination, his appointment of women is along the same nepotistic pattern, his relatives and friends, his wife’s friends, wives or girlfriends of his friends, etc. Here is an example.
Mr. Bio appointed Phylis Kapu Deputy Minister of Land, Housing & Country Planning. I featured Ms. Kapu in my book: The Unbecoming Mrs. Maada Bio of Sierra Leone: A Case of First Lady Syndrome. I featured Ms. Kapu because she was one of the people attached to the Office of the First Lady, whose primary job was withdrawing millions of dollars from the Central Bank in the guise of travel expenses as a member of Mrs. Bio’s entourage. Mrs. Bio and her husband made over 500 foreign trips, and each time people like Ms. Kapu would withdraw thousands of dollars in travel expenses from government accounts.
Ms. Kapu is also a Trustee for the Maada and Fatima Bio Foundation, which Mr. and Mrs. Bio have used and continue to use as a primary tool for siphoning government and donor funds into their private bank accounts.
Ms. Kapu’s appointment follows the same pattern as all the women Maada Bio appoints. Most of his women appointees are not in leadership roles and are from within his Paopa cartel. Nevertheless, assigning Ms. Kapu to the lands ministry indicates Maada Bio and his wife’s financial interest in that ministry, which Ms. Kapu would most probably be focused on protecting while enriching herself. That is if Maada Bio gets away with his coup d’état and stays in power for the next five years.
In the past five years as President, Maada Bio did nothing to mitigate the plight of women and youth in Sierra Leone. Youth unemployment is over 75% in that country, and women continue to die in childbirth and continue to be the least educated and socioeconomically empowered. Therefore, his appointment of women who are already privileged by being in his family, political and social circles, and his co-conspirators like Dr. Sengeh, boasting of these appointments as progress for women and youth in Sierra Leone, is deceitful and intended to dupe the women and youth in that country.
MAMA SALONE ~ Lioness of the West Coast 