By Gbanabom Osman Thorli
If qualifications, commitment, and service to the All People’s Congress (APC) are some of the criteria that the delegates at the National Delegates’ Convention will be looking for, then they should vote the current Deputy Regional Chairman for the Southern Region, Sylvester Sheku Suaray aka “Triple S”, as their new Deputy National Secretary General.
Sylvester Sheku Suaray has not only learned by the ropes but has steadily climbed the APC ladder with dedication and commitment so much so that when he showed interest in gunning for the party’s Deputy National Secretary Generalship, a lot of APCians thought it is the right decision at the right time.
“Triple S”, as he is fondly called by both his peers and comrades alike, has the prerequisite qualifications to serve as a back up to any substantive National Secretary General of the APC. He has been an Honorary Executive Member of the party since 2009, serving the party both in governance and in opposition.
Despite he hailed from a prominent family in Sawula Village, Pujehun District, the birthplace of his uncle, the late former APC Second Vice President Francis Mishach Minah; Suaray is a self-made political man who doesn’t believe in hanging on someone else tailcoat to climb the political ladder. He served as the Southeast Presidential Campaign Secretary during the 2012 campaign that successfully re-elected ex-President Ernest Bai Koroma.
That’s not all. Before being elected as the APC Southern Region Deputy Chairman in 2022, he held the position of APC District Organising Secretary in Pujehun. In the 2023 elections, he served as the Presidential Campaign Secretary in the Southern Region.
Before that, he was appointed as the National Coordinator of the Attitudinal and Behavioural Change Secretariat in 2009. Later, he took on the role of Deputy Government Spokesman and served as the Administrative and Professional Head of the Office of the Government Spokesman until 2014. Additionally, he worked as a Media Consultant in the Ministry of Information and Communications until 2018.
Educationally, Sylvester Sheku Suaray aka “Triple S” studied Law at the University of Westminster in the UK and earned an MBA in Leadership and Sustainability from the University of Cumbria, UK. Currently, he is a doctoral student at the Institute of Business, Industry and Leadership at the University of Cumbria, where he is researching the “Effects of Leadership Communication on Sustainable Development Initiatives”.
Professionally, he started his career as a journalist at the Awoko Newspaper and later travelled to the UK for further studies, returning to Sierra Leone in 2009 as a politician.
He was born and raised in Pujehun, with a father from Pujehun District and a mother from Bonthe District.