Sierra Leone’s First Lady’s Dangerous Overreach: Fatima Bio Declares Herself  the Power Behind the Sierra Leone People’s Party

by Fatima Babih, EdD

Fatmata Jabba, aka Fatima Bio’s continued interference in both her husband’s political party, the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), and national political space has entered a dangerous phase. Her most recent political rally in Freetown made one thing unmistakably clear: Fatima Bio no longer sees herself as merely the wife of the President or SLPP leader; she sees herself as his replacement.

The political rally, involving bike riders and groups of men and women clad in green SLPP T-shirts emblazoned with photos of the Bios, was less a party event than a personal coronation for Fatima Bio. What followed was a speech that was openly divisive, deeply disrespectful, and revealing Fatima Bio’s growing sense of political entitlement.

From First Lady to Stand-In Leader

At the height of her speech, Fatima Bio instructed the crowd to chant her name using the same slogan usually reserved for her husband. Where supporters usually sing

Maada Bio, Maada Bio eeh,

Fatima Bio commanded them to replace his name with hers:

Fatima Bio, Fatima Bio eeh.

Her justification for this was even more startling. She told the audience that when Julius Maada Bio is absent, she steps into his shoes.

This was not a metaphor. It was a declaration.

In that single moment, Fatima Bio publicly positioned herself not just as the First Lady of the nation, but as a political surrogate in the SLPP, an unelected stand-in for the leader of the ruling party and the sitting president.

No constitutional basis. No party mandate. Just a raw assertion of power by a woman drunk with power.

Rewriting SLPP Power Structure

Fatima Bio dismissed the authority of the newly elected SLPP National Chairman, Batilo Songa, by asserting that Julius Maada Bio is the only legitimate leader of the party, thereby reducing the Chairman’s role to a ceremonial title.

She then went further to declare that, as the wife of the party leader, she is not only the First Lady of Sierra Leone but also the First Lady of the SLPP, and therefore, the wives of all the SLPP leaders, including the wife of Batilo Songa, are under her authority.

There is no such title or rule anywhere in the party’s constitution.

In the same breath, Fatima Bio elevated the SLPP Secretary General, her close ally Paran Tarawally, the man who put his wife as a ghost worker on the Parliamentary payroll when he was the Clerk of Parliament. Fatima Bio proclaimed Paran as the most powerful man in the SLPP.

According to Fatima Bio, the Secretary General can make or break the Chairman, and the Chairman’s success depends entirely on his good relationship with the Secretary General.

Fatima Bio was not making a political analysis. She was trying to publicly humiliate and intimidate the party’s newly elected leadership, which was also a blunt exposure of the internal power struggle now consuming the SLPP because of Fatima Bio.

Notably, Fatima Bio cited no clause of the party constitution, no rule, no precedent for any of her statements. In her version of democracy, authority flows not from institutions but from proximity to her husband and to herself.

Jetting women & Missing Funds

In a self-praising segment of her speech, Fatima Bio boasted of the good she has done for SLPP, especially the women. She claimed to have personally provided millions of dollars to the party, money she claimed later “disappeared.”

This claim raises a vital question: If true, what is the point of a First Lady publicly disclosing her donations to the party and claiming the funds went missing?

There is a word for that: Blackmail.

As the First Lady who does not have a constitutional mandate or salary, and a woman we now know, thanks to OCCR, came from UK government housing with no money or job when she became First Lady, where does Fatima Bio get all that money to donate to the party that put her husband in power?

The answer: Usurpation of party and national funds and resources.

She also bragged about taking SLPP women along on overseas trips aboard private jets and giving scholarships to their children. This is an extraordinary statement by a First Lady whose financing, usurpation of public resources, and private privileges are already dangerously blurred.

These remarks raise obvious questions: Whose money? Under what authority? And to whose benefit?

What Fatima Bio deliberately neglected to say in her statements is the fact that since she engineered the ousting of the SLPP Women’s Leader, Fatmata Sawaneh, who refused to bow to her commands, and replaced her with her personal maid, a woman called Hawa Foray, Fatima Bio has been in control of all the SLPP women’s wing funds and other resources.

She has been using those funds to blackmail SLPP members, pay delegates for votes during elections, do favors for Parliamentarians and Cabinet Ministers, as well as pay for party members’ loyalty. She has always said that she believes in naming and shaming, which is another word for “blackmail; do as I command or I will expose the transaction between you and me.

Some might credit her for “exposing corruption” in the SLPP. But that would be a distraction from her neferous intent, because Fatima Bio is the most corrupt individual in the Maada Bio cabal.

By pretending to expose corruption in SLPP, she only exposed herself as the First Lady who steals money from the nation to buy loyalty in her husband’s party. And this so-called exposure of corruption in the SLPP is also a message to those she has given money to that she will blackmail them if they fail to be loyal to her and do as she says.

It is no wonder cabinet ministers such as the Minister of Mines, Minister of Labor (Julius Daniel Matthai and Rado Swaray), and many others have been useless in their positions, as they take commands from Fatima Bio.

Authoritarian Instincts

Fatima Bio’s authoritarian instincts were on full display during her one-woman circus show. As she spoke, a group of people standing behind her on the stage was talking amongst themselves. Fatima Bio abruptly stopped her one-woman show to order them off the stage. Everyone else on the stage was then given a warning by Fatima Bio: submit to her command to stay silent when she is speaking, or leave the area. And these were not children, but adult SLPP loyalists.

This small but telling incident captured the essence of Fatima Bio’s political style: intolerant of dissent, obsessed with control, and dismissive of collective processes.

The “Ebema Gbi” Gimmick

Fatima Bio reiterated her now-familiar personal political campaign slogan “Ebema gbi,” which was written on her T-shirt. She claimed it means the SLPP will never leave power for the APC in Sierra Leone. Never. In other words, elections are no longer relevant in Sierra Leone.

In a democracy, such a statement should alarm every citizen, regardless of party affiliation. It suggests permanence of rules, not electoral choice.

More telling still was the Guinean-born Fatima Bio’s implication that once Julius Maada Bio completes his second term, she will step into his place, which is the real meaning of “Ebema Gbi.” She stated plainly that her husband picked her as a wife for a purpose and that she intends to fulfill that purpose.

This was not a slip of the tongue. It was a statement of intent.

What this statement really reveals is that Fatima Bio laid bare several uncomfortable truths:

• She sees herself as above the SLPP and national constitutions.
• She publicly undermines elected party officials.
• She treats party structures as extensions of her household.
• She speaks with the confidence of a woman already planning the next rigging.

Fatima Bio’s statements are not in support of her husband. They are to declare herself a substitution for her husband.

Fatima Bio’s actions confirm what many within and outside the SLPP have long suspected: She is not merely interfering in party and national affairs; she is actively trying to reshape them around herself as a successor to her husband, either on the national stage or SLPP.

And in doing so, she is eroding internal democracy in SLPP, inflaming factional divisions within the party, and preparing the ground for a dangerous personalization of power.

Sierra Leone has had enough of Fatima Bio confusing her marriage with constitutional mandate and proximity to legitimacy.

The SLPP and the country cannot afford a First Lady who behaves as though the party, the state, and the future of the country all belong to her alone.

It’s time for Sierra Leoneans and the SLPP to hold Julius Maada Bio accountable for the illegal activities of Fatima Bio. Enough is enough!