On November 26, 2023, a group of militants attacked several locations in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.The country was subsequently placed under a nationwide curfew, with a manhunt being called to find the militants. President Julius Maada Bio claimed the attack was repelled by the security forces and said the government was in control of the situation. The attacks were described by international organizations as attempts to disrupt constitutional order in the country, and by information minister Chernor Bah as an ‘attempted coup.’
For some of us, whose lives over the years have been dedicated to sharing positive stories of our country, thereby projecting all the positive images of our country to the world, opening it for tourists and investors to feel safe to come visit and invest in Sierra Leone, we have only seen our work in vain.
The group of militants who attacked the country’s armory on November 26, 2023, didn’t just cost the lives of our military men; its aftermath has and will greatly affect ordinary Sierra Leoneans. These are the people who wake up every morning, jumping on Poda Poda to go to the country’s capital to buy and sell. Thousands of men and women whose primary business is to make a living around the beaches of Freetown and run clubs at night are greatly affected by the aftermath of the November 26 attack.
While it is unclear why the attack occurred, the president stated a few days ago on national television that it was a coup.
On December 5th, I took a short trip to Guinea, Conakry, to run some errands. As I jumped into the taxi taking me to Kambia, passengers in the taxi who had already traveled from the provinces started sharing their frustration. They talked about how they were forced to get out of their cars to be searched and how the number of checkpoints had increased. I had already been frustrated by these testimonies from them even before I left. If it hadn’t been for the importance of the errand, I would have canceled my trip and returned home immediately to save myself the headache.
Just a day ago, my brother Festus Conteh, who is the project coordinator for the INEDEM organization, an organization focusing on improving and empowering the lives of school-going pupils by providing schools with the needed support, had just come from Songo where he went on a site visitation. He had shared his frustration with me, including how drivers took advantage of the situation. ‘Security is watertight, but what caught me off guard is how drivers are taking advantage of the situation. As soon as they unload the passengers at Post Office, the idiots will just zoom off, leaving the passengers stranded,’ Festus Conteh said in a Facebook post.
The checkpoint at the Post Office close to Waterloo was where I saw the negative impact of the aftermath of the coup attempt. I met a woman sitting and crying because her luggage had been taken away by the driver just after she made a stop to be checked at the checkpoint. ‘My luggage is gone, it has been taken by the driver. I can’t find him,’ she said while producing tears.
As if this wasn’t enough, nobody from the security forces looked at her or made an attempt to look for her missing luggage allegedly stolen by a driver. Now, while the government of Sierra Leone’s measures to mount checkpoints and put a curfew in place from 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM might be intended to enable them to arrest ‘assailants,’ it is important that they consider the lives of ordinary Sierra Leoneans whose livelihoods depend on what they earn daily from selling on the streets.
