Sierra Leonean Writes Open Protest Letter to UK Mayor about the Dubious Award to President Bio
By a press release (17/10/2021)
The dubious Award dished out to the Sierra Leone President by hustlers from Nigeria is taking an international dimension through a protest letter.
The latest information reaching the Organiser newspaper says a patriotic Sierra Leonean based in the United Kingdom has written a protest letter to the Mayor of Islington in north London Councillor Troy Gallagher informing him about the dubious “West African President of the Year 2021” Award from the Nigerian company called Cater and Merger based in the UK. Citizens were shocked when they heard that this fake company run by hustlers had given this Award to President Bio, a leader whose SLPP government has failed the people of Sierra Leone big time. As a consequence, patriotic citizen Mr Yankuba Kai-Samba in Chelmsford-UK wrote to Mayor Khan thus – (Photo: Islington Mayor Troy Gallagher).
The Hon Mayor Troy Gallagher,
I am shocked to hear that a ceremony will be held at Islington Council, of which you are the esteemed leader to award the president of Sierra Leone as the “west Africa president of the year” As a retired British civil servant of Sierra Leone origin and one time the secretary-general UK branch of the governing SLPP, I find this award totally dubious and ludicrous. Cater and Merger is a management consultancy company based in the United Kingdom and with a presence in Nigeria. One of the services it provides clients is “Corporate Media and Political Campaign Marketing”. My concern is how much of Sierra Leone taxpayers’ money the president and his team had paid this consultancy company to promote his image.
Over 40 prisoners were gunned down unlawfully in the early hours with his deputy minister of interior and the party women’s leader both present. Until now, the relatives of those murdered do not know what happened to their bodies. Dozens of unarmed youths were killed in Makeni City by his security forces for protesting against the removal of electricity generators from their city. This happened days after his resident minister for that region had threatened the youths that they would be killed if they join a demonstration against his government. (Photos: President Bio has blood on his hands for the Makeni Massacre in 2020 when protesting youths were killed by state security).
Dozens of more youths were shot and killed by security forces across the country, but especially in the opposition stronghold in the North. In the 2020 US country reports on human rights practices in Sierra Leone, it states that: “Significant human rights issues included: unlawful or arbitrary killings by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; serious acts of corruption; and criminalization of same-sex sexual conduct”.
On corruption and embezzlement of state funds, both the auditor general report and the Africanist Press investigative media based in America have revealed unprecedented corruption at the heart of government, including the president and his wife. This is a government that purchased 30 SUV jeeps, costing 80,000 US dollars each, and handed it to ministers to fight COVID19, when the main government hospital in the second largest city of Sierra Leone didn’t have a single oxygen metres machine, which is vital to the treatment of COVID19. Sir, It is with great sadness and disappointment as citizens of the UK, that contributed significantly in building democracy, which has been under threat to hearing that your Borough holding an award ceremony to honour a very corrupt and human rights abuser as the president of the year in West Africa. It is an unseemly award.
What’s all this propaganda for? Sierra Leoneans are dying of hunger daily and death from treatable diseases on a scale never seen before in peacetime in the bear 4 years of this Administration. Less than one percent of households have pipe-borne water in their homes. Yet this president and his wife have travelled more than 80 times in three years looking for investors. There is not a single investor in Sierra Leone that resulted from his numerous overseas trips abroad with enormous cost to the taxpayers. Freedom of speech is under attack, in spite of the repeal of criminal libel law. A 40 years old man was looked up in jail for 4 months after he said the president and his wife had committed a sin and he would like to talk to them about it. (Photos: Author Yankuba Kai-Samba, left, and the Nigerian hustler who gave Maada Bio the fake Award).
Civil society and the media are compromised and they don’t hold the government accountable and this includes the government-appointed Anti-corruption agency, which many people believe is protecting government officials whilst chasing opposition politicians. There is no such thing as the separation of powers as we have it here in the UK. This is to bring to your attention for information purposes and to impress on your worship that your Borough hosting this controversial awards ceremony will be disappointing to great many Sierra Leoneans in the UK and in Sierra Leone.
Yours Sincerely,
Yankuba Kai-Samba, Chelmsford-UK
