Julius Maada Bio’s Self-Indictment & More False Claims to International Audience
On December 2, 2023, Mr. Julius Maada Bio, the current illegitimate president of Sierra Leone, delivered his second address to the nation since the November 26, 2023, event he is now calling an “attempted coup.” He delivered his speech in English, even though it is the official language of this former British colony, it is not widely spoken.
English is understood only by the educated population in a country where more than 50% is uneducated. According to Knoema World Data Atlas, in 2022, the adult literacy rate in Sierra Leone was 48.6 %. This is the percentage of the population over the age of 15 who can read and write simple statements with understanding in the official language, English.
Krio is the lingua franca of Sierra Leone. Therefore, any leader or ordinary Sierra Leonean who intends to inform the wider Sierra Leonean population would speak in Krio. Mr. Bio’s targeted audience for his speech is obviously the international stakeholders. Since his June 2023 electoral coup d’état, Mr. Bio has not been officially congratulated by many nations around the world. He has, therefore, been seeking the approval of countries like the United States, United Kingdom, and many others. Presenting himself now as a “victim of a failed coup detat” in an era of coups around West Africa, Mr. Bio has finally got the sympathy and support of those donor countries and institutions.
MR. BIO’S SELF-INDICTMENT
In his speech to the nation, Mr. Bio, a professed Catholic, made a very religious invocation that,
…To seek to overturn the people’s will by unlawful means is the gravest and mostunpardonable sin
What is an “unpardonable sin? In the Christian faith, it is a sin for which God cannot forgive the sinner. So, this religious invocation by Julius Maada Bio presents him as a sinner who should never have been forgiven by the people of Sierra Leone. Mr. Bio is well-known as a serial coup maker, or in his own words, ‘a serial unpardonable sinner’ in Sierra Leone.
Mr. Bio committed his first “grave and unpardonable sin” against the people of Sierra Leone when he and his fellow junior army officers overthrew a democratically elected President, Joseph Saidu Momoh, in 1992, at the height of the rebel war.
As reported by Human Rights Watch,
…In 1992, APC President Joseph Momoh was overthrown in a military coup by Captain Valentine Strasser, whose National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) ruled until it was overthrown in 1996 by his deputy, Brigadier Julius Maada Bio.
Also, as reported by the International Peace Institute’s Global Observatory, on January 16, 1996, Mada Bio and his associates stormed Defense Headquarters six weeks before the election. They handcuffed Strasser before taking a 30-minute helicopter ride to Conakry, Guinea…A few hours later, Maada Bio confirmed over the phone that he had taken Strasser to Conakry and that he, Julius Maada Bio, had taken over as the head of state of Sierra Leone.
Thus, Mr. Bio committed his second grave and unpardonable sin in January 1996 by unseating a government that his first coup brought into power. In his recent electoral coup, his appointed election commissioner, Mr. Mohamed Konneh, became his co-conspirator in an electoral coup detat. Mr. Konneh announced Mr. Bio as the winner of a disputed election without completing the counting of votes. This decision goes down in history as Mr. Bio’s third grave and unpardonable sin against the people of Sierra Leone.
In 2022, in a speech at a fundraising event in the diaspora, Mrs. Fatima Maada Bio, well-known for her flippancy, told her audience that nobody could remove her husband from power because he holds a Ph.D. in Coup d’état. Her audience applauded, and Sierra Leoneans laughed about it on social media. However, the one thing Sierra Leoneans did not understand then was that Mrs. Bio meant to say subtly that her husband plans to continue staging coups in Sierra Leone, including fake coups against himself.
His recent fake coup is Mr. Bio’s way to not only hold on to power by all means possible but to justify his autocratic rule and eliminate opposition by imprisonment or death.
As a man whose wife says he is a professor of coup d’état, Sierra Leoneans have now found out that his expertise in executing coups is not limited to military coups but includes electoral and manufactured coup d’états. Mr. Bio also uses the information highway to solidify his narrative through lies. He told many lies in his address to the nation; a few are refuted here.
In Mr. Bio’s LIE #1, he stated,
…fellow citizens this attempted coup is taking place exactly 5 months after we went to the polls and exercised our franchise in an election that has been widely acclaimed as the most peaceful in our countries post conflict electoral history.
An election that was marred by violence against opposition party members around the country does not fit Mr. Bio’s claim of being the “most peaceful” in the country’s history. For instance, In the European Union’s Election Observation Missionreport on Sierra Leone’s June 24, 2023 elections, observers reported that,
Political violence a week before the polls disrupted the playing field in at least six districts. Districts most affected by political violence were Kailahun, Pujehun, Kenema, and Bo in the south and east, as well Kambia in the north-west, all of them except for Kambia strongholds of the SLPP. Most assaults of party supporters and attacks on party offices or private properties of politicians went unpunished. The PPRC also noted that sanctions for campaign violations cannot be enforced before the police have concluded their investigations. It shrank the space for political participation in south and south-east .
(p. 48)
Most of the violence that occurred in the southern and eastern districts did not surprise Sierra Leoneans who had heard Mr. Bio’s wife, Mrs. Fatima Maada Bio’s hate speeches in the south and eastern districts during the campaign. Mrs. Bio practically instructed her husband’s supporters in the southern and eastern districts not to allow the opposition party, APC, even to have offices in those districts. Many believed that her speech led to the burning of opposition party offices and private homes of opposition party members in those districts.
Mr. Bio’s LIE #2: He Claimed that the people re-elected him in June 2023
In his speech, Mr. Bio said,
…in June 2023, you again chose me, Julius Maada Bio, and the Sierra Leone People’s Party to lead our country to continue to build upon the gains we have made in my previous mandate.
This claim is weak because the result of the 2023 presidential election remains in dispute due to blatant irregularities. According to a CNN report,
European election observers in Sierra Leone said there were “statistical inconsistencies” in the presidential results published by the electoral commission, which declared President Maada Bio the winner of Saturday’s vote. The European Union Election Observation Mission called on the commission on Wednesday to promptly publish disaggregated results data per polling station to allow for public scrutiny of the results, without which it said transparency was compromised.
Up to this date, Mr. Konneh has refused to publish the disaggregated data, which has left the outcome of the 2023 elections in Sierra Leone in a permanent dispute. Therefore, Mr. Bio’s claim that the people of Sierra Leone chose him and his party to lead the country in the 2023 elections is a blatant lie.
In his LIE #3, Mr. Bio stated,
…Good citizens of Sierra Leone as a nation deeply rooted in the rule of law let me assure you that no matter the provocation our response to the events of November 26 will be measured and determined along only one parameter of rule of law nothing more nothing less…
This is obviously to impress his international audience because the people of Sierra Leone have witnessed many cruel and unusual punishments and extra-judicial killings of citizens since Mr. Bio came to power in 2018. Since the November 26, 2023, event, most suspects who have been captured have faced torture and death. Here are some of the massacres by Mr. Bio’s brutal security forces in the days since 11.26.23.
Much evidence shows that Mr. Bio is not dealing with suspects by the rule of law as he claims but by jungle justice and mob justice.
Mr. Bio’s Jungle Justice in pictures:
Mr. Bio’s Rule of Law in Action
MR. BIO’S MISSION FOR HIS 11.26.23 FAKE COUP ACCOMPLISHED
From the language of his speech to many of the statements, claims, and promises Mr. Bio delivered in his address, all show that Mr. Bio staged his fake coup d’état event to gain the support of international stakeholders. Most countries had refused to officially recognize him as the June 24, 2023 election winner. It is now apparent that these same stakeholders, believing his false narrative about the November 26, 2023, events as a failed coup attempt against him, have publicly declared their support for Mr. Bio and his regime. Mr. Bio expressed his satisfaction with this outcome in his speech, saying,
…I thank leaders all over the world and our bilateral and multilateral partners including ECOWAS, the African Union the Commonwealth the European Union the United States of America the United Kingdom for standing by us at this challenging moment.
All investigations into the November 26th events have been conducted only by Mr. Bio’s government. No entity has conducted an independent investigation to confirm Mr. Bio’s claims of an attempted coup.
But the fact remains that when the so-called assailants broke into the armory to steal ammunition, they drove past Mr. Bio’s residence and went to the former president’s residence, where they killed one of his bodyguards and abducted another. The mysterious assailants did not go to the State House or the radio station. Still, they went to the prison to release prisoners. It is mind-boggling that anyone is buying this hogwash!
Of course, as democratic nations and institutions, the obligation of international stakeholders, at minimum, is to condemn undemocratic practices and events like coup d’état. So, suppose Mr. Bio, who is in complete control of the information reaching the outside world, says there was an attempted coup against him. In that case, the international stakeholders have no choice but to go with the flow of his narrative.
Therefore, even though they had criticized how Mr. Bio has remained in power at this juncture, it appears that these international stakeholders now support his regime. And by the look of things, Mr. Bio is well on his way to staying in power with the blessing of those regional and international bodies whose support he had lost after the June 2023 elections and was desperately seeking to restore.
Mr. Bio is thus winning the one-sided war he has waged on the people of Sierra Leone, so help us God!
MAMA SALONE ~ Lioness of the West Coast 