by Fatima Babih, EdD
Campaign season has not yet started, but Sierra Leone’s First Lady is already campaigning for the presidency with a crew from her UK hustling days.
In Part II of my La Biennale series, From UK Nollywood Struggle to Sierra Leone’s Presidency: The Fatima Jabbe Bio/Tony Morgan Squad, I showed that Tony Morgan is no stranger to Sierra Leone’s Office of the First Lady.
If you have followed that office since Fatima Bio became First Lady, you have likely come across his name. He keeps appearing around her as her communications strategist, a member of her frequent international travel entourage, and Office of the First Lady staff.
Partnership Origins
Fatima Bio and Tony Morgan’s relationship began years before Fatima Jabbie met Julius Maada Bio.
Both Tony Morgan and Fatima Bio were hustling in the UK and failing to break into the African entertainment industry. Fatima Bio never made it as a Nollywood actor. Tony Morgan, also known as Nelson Spyk, never made it as a Nollywood producer. So the two joined forces and manufactured their own fake Nollywood called UK Nollywood.
As it was meant to do, the label has led many people to mistakenly describe Fatima Bio as a former Nollywood actress. She was never one. The few videos she appeared in were not made in Nollywood or by Nollywood producers. They were filmed by Nelson Spyk, now known as Tony Morgan, under a company he named UK Nollywood. The label was invented to mislead people, and a myth was built on it.
The two men who introduced Fatima Bio to Maada Bio, Batilo Songa and Senesie Tarawally, knew a secret that they revealed to Fatima Bio.
Here is the secrret: When Maada Bio lost the 2012 presidential election, he promised to make Sierra Leone ungovernable if rejected again in 2018. Given his history of multiple coups and involvement in atrocities during the war, the two major parties, SLPP and APC, both caved to Bio’s threat, and promised him victory in 2018.
If you have read my book, you know how Fatima Bio met Maada Bio and pursued him. It was not love. Once the men revealed the secret to her that Maada Bio was guaranteed to win the next presidential election in Sierra Leone, Fatima Bio’s interest in him shifted from helping him with fundraising to a romantic pursuit.
She figured a political route was the shortest distance to the fame and wealth she had been seeking in vain for so many years. So, she went after Maada Bio agressively, even though he was in a Catholic marriage.
As soon as she became First Lady, Fatima Bio and Tony Morgan then moved his UK Nollywood production crew to Sierra Leone. Since then, Fatima Bio has been more of an actor on a stage than a First Lady.
She spends very little time in the country. Each time she return for a brief stay, she engages in her presidential campaign rallies across the country; staged like a movie production. And a few days later, she and her entourage would get on another chartered jet across the world.
The 2028 Production
In July 2024, Fatima Bio publicly denied any presidential ambition. She said her aim was to support her husband’s agenda. But her husband is serving his second and final term.
- So, why is Fatima Bio engaged in so many political campaign rallies across the country?
- Why is she cowardly denying what all and sundry can see in broad daylight?
A video trending on Sierra Leonean social media, posted under the headline “BREAKING: CEO Of EBEMA First Lady Fatima Storm Freetown As Thousands Rally In Constituency 112, shows a political campaign in everything but name:
- a motorbike convoy filling a Freetown street
- paid crowds in matching white T-shirts and caps
- crowds in green seated under rows of branded tents
- a raised stage with a red-carpeted runway
- a banner for the “West Rural District EBEMA Committee” bearing her portrait
- T-shirts printed with her face, worn by men and women alike
This is a branded, staged, logistically complex operation, not a spontaneous gathering. And the state is visibly part of it. A Sierra Leone Police vehicle moves through the crowd, and uniformed, armed personnel stand on the stage and work the crowd around it.
Citizens are entitled to ask who authorised the police presence, who paid for the shirts, tents and transport, and whether the Office of the First Lady is being used for a political project. Sierra Leonean analysts already say she is preparing the ground for 2028. If the 2024 denial was true, she should explain this. If it is no longer true, she should say so, declare her candidacy, and face the voters.
Follow the Money
These UK Nollywood productions, and Fatima Bio’s massive real estate accumulation in the Gambia and elsewhere, are where she spends the wealth she has amassed since leaving UK as an indigent who lived in government housing to become First Lady. The Times reported that she remained listed as a council tenant in Southwark even while living in the presidential lodge.
The truth behind the crowd, my reporting indicates, is that Fatima Bio pays for it, from the t-shirts, hats, down to the motorbikes and vehicles in the UK Nollywood produced political rallies. Far from what she and Tony Morgan, through their elaborate productions meant to project, there is no organic mass movement in Sierra Leone for Fatima Bio to succeed her husband in 2028 or any other time.
Sierra Leone is not a monarchy. And most Sierra Leoneans find it disgusting that Fatima Bio wants to turn their country into her personal empire.
A presidency is not earned by marriage, by UK Nollywood casting, or by a well-choreographed crowd scene.
