By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
One of the things decent and patriotic members of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) hate to hate about their party, whenever it is in governance, is the issue of some of their political elites attempting to turn Sierra Leone into a narco-state and engaging in possibly money-laundering activities.
During the SLPP government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, Sierra Leone was nearly turned into a narco-state which culminated in cocaine being allegedly found in a Diplomatic Pouch belonging to the Sierra Leone High Commission in London, England. Although that diplomatic scandal was scandalously scandalous with all the signatures of Colombia’s Medellin Drug Cartel; no heads were axed simply because it might have been in vogue among the SLPP higher-ups at the time!
Even Kabbah’s beloved son was said to have been troubled with cocaine addiction, which might be one of the reasons why the cocaine trade traded fairly well under Kabbah’s watch! He didn’t have the moral authority to shout against it whilst his own son was allegedly sniffing it inside the State Lodge (the presidential residence) at Hill Station in Freetown! So, thousands of youths just hung on Kabbah’s son’s tailcoat and gate-crashed at State Lodge dinners. And Kabbah couldn’t do anything about the cocaine trade because charity should have begun at home!
Now, the SLPP government of President Julius Maada Bio appears to be following the seemingly SLPP-ian traditional tradition—albeit now in an apparent grander and bolder scale! Let’s, for the moment, forget about the “Kush” epidemic that is now blighting the future of our youthful youths. We could pretend as if we have never heard the rumours and allegations about the big and influential names in SLPP-dom who are said to be highly associated with the Kush-demic in Sierra Leone. And we could even pretend as if the “Kush” business is only meant for the small SLPP-ian fishes to transform themselves from rages to riches.
So, let’s come to the more serious issue: the seemingly elevation of the cocaine trade in the corridors of power. If the SLPP government of Kabbah was only contented with a few wraps of cocaine allegedly wrapped inside a Diplomatic Pouch; then the SLPP government of President Bio appears to have elevated the narcotic business to suitcases full of cocaine allegedly found in a vehicle belonging to the Sierra Leone Embassy in Conakry, neighbouring Guinea.
And while decent Sierra Leoneans are still trying to digest that Cocaine-in-Sierra Leone’s diplomatic vehicle inedible food; international news outlets like CNN and Reuters have lobbed a figurative grenade into the scandalous melee: European cocaine kingpin, Jos Leijdekkers, is reported to be now residing in Sierra Leone! How on earth could our hyper-alert security apparatuses, which can easily extradite Very Important Pestilences (VIPs) from neighbouring Guinea and Liberia to Sierra Leone, miss such a high-profiled person who has been hiding in plain sight?
And what is frighteningly frightening is the frighten fact that the “33-year-old Leijdekkers, who was sentenced in absentia to 24 years in prison on June 25 by a Rotterdam court for smuggling more than 7 tonnes of cocaine” (according to Reuters), is reportedly seen in Sierra Leone rubbing shoulders with the SLPP elites—even at close proximity to our Commander-in-Chief inside a Catholic church (if the photos that are now on social media are not doctored ones)!
But this Leijdekkers issue has now taken a twist of comedy of errors with errors sucking dry the comedy from the intended laughter! Imagine the alleged photo of Leijdekkers seated just three pews behind President Bio’s pew inside a church in the president’s village of Tihun in southern Sierra Leone. And imagine also another alleged video of Leijdekkers just a sniff from the Commander-in-Chief in the latter’s rice farm symbolically harvesting rice with the president. Yet, the Ministry of Information and Civic Education could muster the bravery, in a Statement on 26 January 2025, to tell us that: “The President has no knowledge of the identity and the issues detailed in the reports [of CNN and Reuters] about the individual [Leijdekkers] in question.” What is laughably laughable in that laughable Statement is the assumption that President Bio could not take any notice of the only white male inside his village church and on his paddy field—both places he was present at the same time with the alleged Dutch drug lord!
However, the Inspector General of the Sierra Leone Police, William Fayia Sellu, told a press conference on Tuesday 4 February 2025, that: “the police have identified the individual in question as Omarr Sheriff”. And as I tried not to muffle my laughter, IGP Sellu told us again that: “the police have conducted searches in multiple locations suspected to have housed the individual and remain committed to tracking him down.” Well, Chinua Achebe puts it succinctly that if you want to get at the root cause of murder [in a village setting of course], you must first find the blacksmith who made the cutlass. To seek Jos Leijdekkers’s or “Omarr Sheriff’s” whereabouts; Sellu’s men must start their investigation with the person who first posted his photos and videos on social media.
Probably, decent and patriotic Sierra Leoneans might now begin to figure out some of the fruits of President Bio’s countless overseas travels to rebrand Sierra Leone. But it is ironically ironical that while our Rebrander-in-Chief is telling potential foreign investors how fertile Sierra Leone is for investments; it seems that only cocaine barons and “Kush” drug lords (and drug ladies for the sake of gender parity) appear to have answered his call. Probably, just a probable probability, Jos Leijdekkers or “Omarr Sheriff” might be in Sierra Leone to explore investment opportunities. Who knows, he might be in the country to create the 500,000 jobs which the SLPP promised in 2023 to create by 2025!
It is a pitiable pity that after spending millions of dollars in his rebranding campaigns, all what seems to have come out of President Bio’s efforts is a nation which appears to be bespattered with “Kush” and cocaine trafficking. As things now stand, Sierra Leone is being on international news for all the wrong reasons: drug trafficking and possibly money-laundering.
It seems to me that every SLPP government has its own cocaine mysteries. And President Bio’s SLPP government appears to be full of those SLPP-ian mysterious mysteries. From the mysterious container that led to the “People’s IGP” Sovula being axed from his job to the unauthorized aircraft that landed at the Freetown International Airport to the improvised submarine boat seen at Tombo and the fibre boat discovered floating at Black Johnson beach—all appear to have the signatures of Colombia’s Medellin Drug Cartel!
It is on that note that I will end today’s One Dropian dropping with an excerpt from the 7 February 2025 online edition of the Africa Confidential (Vol 66 – No.3) which alleges that: “…the Dutchman [Jos Leijdekkers or “Omarr Sheriff”] took over Sierra Leone’s existing cocaine smuggling network, and, deploying enormous bribes, recruited members of the country’s national security infrastructure to provide logistical and security services….”
And as my Krio relatives would say: “Dis tin full me mot”!
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