By Alpha Amadu Jalloh
The day will come when the cameras will stop flashing, the red carpets will no longer be rolled out, and the crowds that once sang his praises will slowly drift away. That day will mark the beginning of President Julius Maada Bio’s truest reality, the silence after power. He will no longer be His Excellency, President Julius Maada Bio. He will simply be Julius Maada Bio, a man stripped of titles, privileges, and the false comfort that comes from being surrounded by sycophants.
He will remember the days when he traveled endlessly to London, New York, and Paris, chasing awards, shaking hands, and delivering rehearsed speeches written to make him sound like a visionary. But when the applause stops, those same hands that once clapped for him will fold in indifference. Those who praised him to protect their jobs will quickly move on to the next ruler. The wisdom of the President will become nothing more than a faded slogan of a forgotten regime.
The First Lady, ever ambitious, will also discover the loneliness of a vanished stage. Her insatiable love for limelight, her emotional outbursts, her public dramas, and the “Coco Ros” saga will become relics of a time Sierra Leoneans will rather forget. Her influence over appointments, her endless desire for validation, and the whispers of funds misused under her watch will return to haunt her reputation. The glamorous glow of Her Excellency will dim, and she will stand alone under the harsh light of accountability.
But more painfully, when the curtain falls, the faces of those President Bio ignored, isolated, or disrespected because of power will begin to reappear. Friends who once stood by him in his humble beginnings, family members he abandoned to impress his political circle, and brothers and sisters who cried silently because of his arrogance will all come to mind. Many of them he dismissed simply because his wife could not stand them. She, in her pursuit of power and attention, allegedly stepped on countless toes, women who once called her sister, allies who once supported her, even those in the President’s inner circle who dared to disagree with her excesses. They will never forget.
They will tell the stories of humiliation and disregard, of being mocked, sidelined, and treated as though their loyalty meant nothing. The very people who sacrificed their reputations to defend him will one day speak out. They will remember the arrogance that came with power, the way the First Lady’s word became law, and the culture of fear that silenced even his closest allies.
Then, the reckoning will begin. The cases buried beneath his power will crawl back to life. The whispers of embezzlement, of financial impropriety, and of secret dealings between his family and Jos Leijdekjers will come back to question his legacy. Those who once shouted “Paopa Salone For Beteh” will betray him with the same energy they once used to defend him. They will call press conferences, turn into whistleblowers, and expose the rot that flourished under his protection.
Imagine the return of the APC, determined, ruthless, and bent on revenge. A new Anti-Corruption Commissioner will rise with zeal to unearth everything Bio tries to conceal. The Inspector General of Police, no longer a pawn of his command, will reopen long-buried files. The same police officers who once harassed journalists and activists at his command will themselves be dragged into interrogation rooms.
Sierra Leoneans will sit back, half amused, half disgusted, watching the same people who once defended him now tear him apart piece by piece. The same men and women who abused power under his watch will not defend him when the tables turn. They will abandon him as easily as they abandoned the people. The same authorities that once gave him a visa will no longer have a reason to grant one. Without the shield of power, he will stand as an ordinary man, one who must answer for the millions unaccounted for, the secret dealings hidden behind diplomatic curtains, and the moral debt owed to a nation that trusted him.
And then will come the ghosts.
Yes, the ghosts, not the ones of his political rivals or lost friends, but of the unemployed youths he deceived with promises of jobs that never came. Every night, they will visit his conscience, whispering in the silence of his retirement, “We believed in you, and you abandoned us.” The ghost of the young man who took his life after years of fruitless job hunting. The ghost of the graduate who turned to drugs because hope was stolen. They will not let his conscience rest.
Then, there will be the ghosts of the Kush victims. Those lost souls, burned by the flames of a drug epidemic he pretended not to see, will haunt his peace. The young men and women who destroyed their lives under the watch of his negligent government, their faces will appear in his dreams. Their mothers’ cries will echo in his silence. They will ask him, “Where were you when our children were dying in the gutters?” He will not have an answer. Their spirits will search his mind endlessly, refusing to be silenced, because their blood stains the soil of his legacy.
The First Lady will face her own reckoning too. The media that once glamorized her will turn their lenses into weapons of exposure. Every photo shoot, every self-congratulatory event, every extravagant expenditure will be revisited with anger. Her so-called charity work will be audited, and the truth will not flatter her. She will come to learn that fame fades faster than the people’s pain.
Even his daughter, once shielded by his power, will not escape scrutiny. Her alleged connection to figures like Jos Leijdekjers will be revisited in courtrooms and investigations. What was once glamour will become evidence.
President Julius Maada Bio’s post-power life will be defined not by what he built, but by what he destroyed, the trust, the hope, and the dignity of a people who believed in him. The unemployed youths, the Kush victims, the forgotten poor, the friends and family he betrayed, and the loyal members he allowed to be humiliated will all be his real historians. They will write his story in the dust of their pain.
And when he looks back, sitting in the quiet of his home without sirens, without convoys, without aides, he will realize that the laughter of State House was hollow. He will remember the times he mocked the suffering of the poor and the days he allowed arrogance to define leadership. He will see that all the titles, Chairman of this, Champion of that, Awardee of Excellence, meant nothing.
So, before that curtain falls, President Julius Maada Bio must remember this: power is fleeting, but conscience is eternal. The ghosts of his failures, the unemployed, the hungry, the addicted, the dead, the betrayed friends, and the forgotten family members will not vanish. They will live in the silence that follows power.
Because when the curtain falls on President Julius Maada Bio, it will not be applause that echoes, it will be the cries of those he failed.