by Fatima Babih, EdD
When the performance of advocacy causes more harm than the problem it claims to fight.
If there were any remaining doubt about whether Fatima Jabbie Bio’s advocacy for girls is genuine or theatrical, her return to Freetown after the United Nations General Assembly settled the question definitively, and in the most damning way possible.
A woman who stood at the UNGA podium to present a resolution she neither originated nor drafted; a resolution against child marriage and for girls’ education returned home and forced schoolgirls to miss a day of school to serve as props for her political homecoming.
Private Jet. Red Carpet. EBEMA Entourage.
Fatima Bio did not return to Sierra Leone quietly. She arrived on a private jet, stepping onto a red carpet in her EBEMA campaign cap, the same political campaign branding she has been building ahead of a reported 2028 presidential bid. Waiting at the airport were men and women dressed in campaign t-shirts bearing her face and her name,” mobilized to manufacture the appearance of a nation celebrating a triumphant hero’s return.
The message being constructed for public consumption was unmistakable: Sierra Leone’s champion has returned. The whole country is rejoicing.
But the country was not rejoicing. Her small group of EBEMA political operatives were performing joy on her behalf, as they always do, funded by taxpayers and directed by Fatima Bio to create a spectacle for social media amplification.
What happened next, however, was not just political theater. It was an active harm perpetrated against the very population Fatima Bio claims to champion.
Schoolgirls: Human Props for a Manufactured Hero
Lining the route of her arrival were hundreds of schoolgirls from multiple schools across Freetown, dressed in their school uniforms, blue, maroon, purple, holding posters bearing Fatima Bio’s image. The photographs from the event, taken and distributed by the Office of the First Lady itself, document this without ambiguity. These are not activists who chose to be there.
These are schoolchildren who were mobilized, organized, and directed to stand in the heat holding campaign posters for a First Lady who wants to be President.
The slogans on the posters are aspirational. The reality is the opposite of everything they say.
Because on the day those girls held those signs, they were not learning. They were not dreaming. They were not leading. They were standing in the sun, missing their education, serving as human scenery for Fatima Bio’s political performance.
If childhood is not a bridehood, it is also not a campaign rally. If girls’ futures matter, they begin in the classroom, not on a red carpet arranged for a false hero’s arrival.
The Harm Is Not Hypothetical. It Is Documented.
Sierra Leone has one of the highest rates of female illiteracy in West Africa. Girls’ school attendance is fragile, disrupted by poverty, cultural pressure, domestic responsibility, sexual violence, adolescent pregnancy, and yes, early marriage. Every day a girl misses school is a day she falls further behind. Every missed lesson is a compounding disadvantage in a country where the education system is already severely under-resourced.
The research on this is unambiguous: irregular school attendance is one of the strongest predictors of dropout, and dropout is one of the strongest predictors of early marriage. The very chain of harm that Fatima Bio claims to be fighting at the United Nations is directly reinforced every time a schoolgirl is pulled out of class for her political event.
This was not one girl. This was not one school. The photographs show hundreds of uniformed students from multiple institutions, crowded along a red carpet in what appears to be a coordinated, large-scale mobilization. Someone organized this. Someone contacted those schools. Someone gave instructions. Someone decided that girls’ school attendance was less important than Fatima Bio’s false hero homecoming optics.
That someone operates under the authority of the Office of the First Lady, the same office that stamped its seal on the photographs and distributed them proudly as evidence of celebration.
The Posters Tell the Story She Fabricated Not the True One
Look carefully at the posters those girls were made to hold. Every single one features Fatima Bio’s face. Not Bhuwan Ribhu, who originated and drafted the resolution. Not the Parliamentarian who actually introduced Sierra Leone’s Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2024. Not the anti-FGM activists she has publicly attacked as scammers. Not the survivors of child marriage whose real stories she appropriated.
Just her face. Her image. Her name.
The message those posters communicate, to Sierra Leoneans, to international observers, to anyone who sees the photographs, is that Fatima Bio is the singular hero of girls’ rights in Sierra Leone. That she wrote the resolution, championed the law, led the movement, and returned victorious.
None of that is true. All of it was paid for, organized, and photographed at the expense of taxpayers.
And the girls holding the posters? They have no idea they are being used to propagate a false narrative. They are schoolchildren. They were told to be there, given signs, and photographed. They did not choose this. They cannot consent to being instruments of political image management. And they certainly did not choose to miss school for it.
This Is What “First Lady Syndrome” Looks Like in Practice
In the book The Unbecoming Mrs. Maada Bio of Sierra Leone: A Case of First Lady Syndrome, I documented the pattern that defines Fatima Bio’s conduct: the relentless construction of an international image that bears no relationship to her actual impact inside Sierra Leone. The gap between the global stage performance and the domestic reality is not incidental. It is structural. It is deliberate. And it is maintained at a cost that is paid, always, by the people she claims to serve.
The private jet lands. The red carpet unfurls. The campaign operatives cheer in their branded t-shirts. The schoolgirls stand in the heat, holding posters of her face, missing their education so that her social media team can document a triumphal return.
And somewhere in Sierra Leone, a girl who missed school today is one day closer to the moment where staying in school stops feeling possible. Where the family decides she is more valuable as a bride than as a student. Where the path that Fatima Bio claims to be fighting for closes behind her.
That girl will never know that the First Lady who was supposed to be protecting her was, on that very day, using her absence from school as a backdrop for a campaign photo.
A Word to the Schoolgirls in Those Photographs
To the girls in the blue uniforms, the maroon dresses, the purple checks, the ones holding the signs, standing on the red carpet, crowded along the waterfront in the heat of the day:
You deserved to be in school. Your education matters more than any politician’s homecoming. Your time, your attendance record, your learning, none of it should have been sacrificed for a photo opportunity. You were used. You did not deserve that. And the adults who organized this event should be held accountable for every lesson you missed.
The woman whose face was on those posters stood at the United Nations and declared that childhood is not a bridehood. On the day you stood in the sun holding her image, she proved that for her, childhood is also not sacred enough to protect from political exploitation.
The Performance Has a Body Count
Fatima Bio’s advocacy is not harmless theater. It causes active, measurable damage to the girls it claims to protect.
It damages them when it fabricates a survivor identity that erases real victims. It damages them when it uses the UN podium to claim credit for work done by others, crowding out the voices of genuine advocates. It damages them when it defends Bondo/Sande, a society that facilitates FGM and functions as a pathway to early marriage. It damages them when it attacks FGM survivors on social media and calls their advocates scammers. And it damages them when it pulls them out of school to stand in the sun on a red carpet, holding posters of a politician’s face, so that she can look like a hero on social media.
Every one of those girls deserved to be in a classroom on that day. Fatima Bio put them on a red carpet instead.
That is not advocacy. That is exploitation. And it is time Sierra Leoneans, especially parents, teachers, school administrators, and civil society, name it for exactly what it is.
Related Reading on This Platform:
- Sierra Leone’s First Lady Fatima Bio Is No Longer Neutral on FGM: Gaslighting Victims and Anti-FGM Activists
- Sierra Leone’s First Lady Fatima Bio Doubles Down in Her Attack on Anti-FGM Activists
- Mrs. Fatima Maada Bio Hijacks Child Marriage Act 2024: Preparing to Usurp Resources
- Shreds of Evidence of Mrs. Bio Inciting and Perpetrating Violence in Sierra Leone
#SierraLeone #FatimaJabbieBio #GirlsEducation #ChildMarriage #UNGA #AccountabilityJournalism #RISEforJustice #HandsOffOurGirls #ChildrenRights #FirstLadySyndrome
MAMA SALONE ~ Lioness of the West Coast 