Mr Lansana Dumbuya

National Secretary-General

All Peoples Congress (APC) Party

Freetown Sierra Leone

June 12th, 2025

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

The Executive & Members of Parliament

All People’s Congress (APC) Party

Dear Mr Dumbuya & Co,

SUBJECT: HISTORY IS WATCHING – AND SO ARE THE PEOPLE YOU WERE ELECTED TO DEFEND

We address you once again on behalf of millions of anxious, frustrated, outraged – yet still fiercely hopeful – Sierra Leoneans. In a few weeks, the nation will mark the second anniversary of the 24th June 2023 elections, which were marred by secrecy, statistical acrobatics and outright contempt for constitutional procedure. Since that pivotal day, citizens have endured growing hardship: families crushed by hunger, children forced to study by flashlight, and an entire generation ravaged by synthetic “Kush.” You, as the leading opposition, were entrusted with the responsibility of defending their voices and safeguarding our democracy. (Photo: Lansana Dumbuya).

Notwithstanding the above, we have witnessed a strategy of silence, side-room deals and the astonishing claim that the APC has “moved on” toward 2028. Moved on from what? From truth? From duty? From the unshakeable fact that sovereignty resides in the people -Article 5(2)(c) of the 1991 Constitution – and cannot be bartered for parliamentary allowances or committee chairs.

The Country You Say You Represent

• Water: Only 1 in 10 Sierra Leoneans has access to safely managed drinking water. Every day, mothers queue at dawn to draw from contaminated wells, risking 2 disease and death. This is not a rural inconvenience; it is a national emergency whose cost is measured in lost lives and shattered futures.

• Electricity: Barely 30% of households are even connected to the national grid, and just 11% enjoy power “most of the time.” Hospitals resort to diesel generators at crushing expense, and clinics often turn patients away because they cannot guarantee safe refrigeration. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Energy continues to issue glossy press releases about “ambitious plans” for electrification that never materialise.

• Food: 83% of families are food-insecure; children and elderly alike wake each morning uncertain whether their next meal will arrive. Rice prices have spiked more than 50% in the past two years, even as wages stagnate. Our farmers, who once fed the nation, now watch their crops rot from lack of irrigation and roads.

• Drugs: A narcotics wildfire rage. Thousands are hospitalised, yet fewer than 300 citizens -only 40 women – have ever completed rehabilitation. Streets in Freetown and Provincial Towns have become corridors of despair as the “Kush” trade flourishes under official indifference. Entire families have been torn apart while law enforcement looks the other way or profits in silence. If these numbers do not ignite outrage in an opposition party, what will? If your hearts are not moved by mothers weeping for sick children, if your consciences are not pricked when your countrymen languish in drug-fuelled violence, then what hope remains for Sierra Leone’s future?

2. The Boundary Fraud You Have Tolerated

While hospitals ration gauze and teachers beg for chalk, the Bio Administration has split Freetown in two and conjured five new councils without a single public hearing or published study. District borders have been redrawn on paper, not by census or cost analysis, but by political convenience. By inflating seats in ruling-party strongholds and deflating them elsewhere, they are stacking the deck for 2028 well before ballots are printed. This is gerrymandering in plain sight, designed to carve up votes before the next election dawns.

• The decree claims the capital’s population plummeted by 42% – from 1,055,964 in 2015 to 606,701 in 2021 – an impossibility outside war, plague or statistical manipulation. If these numbers are false (and they manifestly are), then the ECSL and the Data Protection Commissioner must explain who sanctioned this travesty.

• That same proclamation elevates Lungi to “City” status without any analysis of infrastructure or public demand. Lungi remains a cluster of informal settlements and a bustling airport; declaring it a “City” only increases administrative overhead and enriches cronies.

• While you, the APC MPs, occupy seats in Parliament again, public resources have been diverted from water pipelines and farm-to-market roads into new Mayoral Chambers that exist only on letterhead. Every day you remain silent, these distortions become more entrenched. Every day your absence of protest further normalises boundary fraud, allowing the SLPP Executive to sidestep accountability and sabotage future elections before the ink is dry on this year’s budget.

3. The Constitutional Crisis You Were Elected to Contest

• 1991 Constitution, Article 5(2)(c): Sovereignty belongs to the people; their participation is non-negotiable. Yet the Bio Administration’s closed-door boundary changes violated this core principle. You were sworn to uphold the Constitution, to ensure that no law or decree is enacted without genuine public participation. Instead, you watched from the sidelines as the Executive weaponised procedure over democracy.

• Local Government Act: Stipulates that any new District or Council must meet clear demographic, topographic and fiscal criteria- and those criteria must be publicly disclosed. To date, no feasibility study, no budget analysis, no census data has been published. This deliberate omission is a textbook breach of statutory procedure. The people have a right to know how the Ministry of Finance justified hundreds of millions of Leones in administrative overhead for newly created wards.

• Public Elections Act 2022: Polling-station results must be published and verified before any winners are declared. Two years later, the ECSL still refuses to disclose the granular vote totals – the very evidence needed to confirm that ballots were counted correctly. Instead, the Chief Returning Officer announced national winners while dozens of District tallies remained unverified, flouting Section 51 of the Act. By law, every Party Agent had the right to be present at every stage of counting – yet countless Agents were turned away or intimidated.

And you? The APC, once the standard-bearer of electoral integrity, has refused to petition the courts, refused to summon the ministries, refused to invoke the very laws you claim to protect. Your silence makes you complicit in a constitutional crisis that threatens the bedrock of our Republic.

4. The Hypocrisy of Selective Outrage.

We observe that in recent days, the APC Party Leadership has finally summoned the courage to boycott Parliament – but not for the constitutional violations, election theft, drug epidemic or mass poverty that have plagued this nation for years. Instead, you have chosen to boycott over the Clerk of Parliament’s alleged political ambitions. Let us be clear: we do not defend partisanship by public officials. If the Clerk’s conduct compromises parliamentary neutrality, the Speaker should act. But where was this moral clarity when:

• The 2023 elections were stolen under cover of darkness, with polling-station results still hidden nearly two years later. You may argue that you boycotted the stolen elections – but have since returned to business as usual, rendering the gesture hollow and meaningless. A true boycott should have persisted until justice was served, until the truth about the 2023 elections was fully exposed. Instead, the elections were stolen under cover of darkness, with polling-station results still hidden nearly two years later, and yet they sit in Parliament legitimising the theft they once denounced.

• Freetown’s Boundaries were gerrymandered, splitting communities and violating constitutional rights to public participation? · Over 80% of Sierra Leoneans went food-insecure, with rice prices skyrocketing 50% while you negotiated committee seats? · Thousands of young people overdosed on Kush, with barely 300 rehabilitated – and only 40 women – while traffickers like Johannes “Bolle Jos” Leijdekkers roam Freetown freely? · Record drug seizures at Lungi Airport (November 2024) and Queen Elizabeth II Quay (May 2025) vanished from official briefings without inquiry or prosecution? · Electricity collapses daily, with only 30% of households connected to the national grid via EDSA, and barely 11% reporting reliable power?

• Only 1 in 10 Sierra Leoneans has access to safe drinking water – among the worst rates on earth – while public funds are squandered on imaginary Districts? Are these not greater constitutional violations? Are these not greater betrayals of your oath of office? Are these not worth a boycott? When you boycott over personal grievances but remain seated while your people suffer, you reveal not moral leadership but political self-interest. The people you were elected to defend see this clearly. And history will record it with even greater clarity.

5. What We Now Demand of You

• Raise the Red Flag – Publicly. Declare that the June 2023 results remain unverified and unacceptable until every polling-station form is published and independently audited. Challenge the ECSL to release those forms within 14 days or face contempt charges. Mobilise your full caucus to demand instant transparency from the Head of the Commission.

• Invoke the Courts. File for mandamus, compelling ECSL to release disaggregated results and the Information Commissioner to enforce the Right-to Access-Information Act. If the Supreme Court hesitates, escalate to the ECOWAS Court of Justice. Let the world see that Sierra Leone has not abandoned its legal remedies.

• Mobilise, Do Not Muzzle. Call peaceful, nationwide demonstrations on 24 June 2025 – the People’s Verdict March—so the world sees that Sierra Leoneans have not “moved on.” Coordinate with youth groups, faith networks, market associations, and disability advocates to ensure that protests are inclusive and non-violent. Provide legal observers and medical support teams so citizens are not left defenseless against intimidation.

• Block Boundary Gerrymandering. Table a motion in Parliament to suspend all new Districts and Councils pending open, televised hearings in every affected community. Insist that those hearings be conducted in Krio, Temne, Mende, Limba and other languages, with transcripts released in all languages within 48 hours. Demand that any boundary change be supported by a transparent census and fiscal note verified by the National Revenue Authority.

• Champion Life-and-Death Budgets. Refuse to approve any 2026 appropriations that do not allocate emergency funds for water pipelines, rural electrification, food-security programmes and gender-responsive drug rehabilitation. Publicise the names of all Ministers and MPs who block these allocations – let voters know who stands with families dying of thirst and hunger.

• Stand With the Bereaved. Demand an independent inquiry – local or international – into the killings and arrests of protestors from August 2022 onward and the lethal spread of synthetic “Kush.” Insist that any police or military officer implicated be suspended pending investigation, and that victims’ families receive immediate reparations. If the Attorney General refuses to prosecute, take the case to ECOWAS or the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Your Party’s Constitution pledges to defend “freedom, justice and the rule of law.” Now is your moment to prove it. If you do nothing, you empower the very forces that crush the voiceless.

6. Our Pledge – and Our Warning

SLAM-Global will mobilise communities, faith networks, student unions, workers, market women, disability and women’s groups, and the Sierra Leonean diaspora for nonviolent, relentless, lawful resistance until electoral truth and social justice prevail. We will train legal observers, document every instance of intimidation, and broadcast updates in real time so the world sees both your failures and our resolve.

• If the APC fails to act, history will record that, when the nation cried out for guardians, its principal opposition opted for comfort over courage. Your silence will read as complicity – every power outage, every poisoned well, every ruined youth a testament to that choice. · We will take our case to the United Nations, ECOWAS and the African Union. We will demand that international partners re-evaluate Sierra Leone’s standing under the ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance and the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance. We will ask them to impose targeted sanctions on individuals, not the people, under the Global Magnitsky Act and EU Human Rights Regimes.

• We will not rest until every last ballot sheet is laid bare, until every District map is redrawn by the people, and until public finances reflect the life-or-death priorities of water, power, food and health. “We refuse to let cartographers’ pens determine our destiny.” The time for timid press releases is over. We ask—no, we demand—the APC Executive to put country before convenience, principle before politics, and to stand with the people who once lifted you to office and who still, against all odds, believe that Sierra Leone can rise.

We remain fully committed to constructive partnership and stand ready to support every measure that turns commitments into verifiable results. Act now! Speak loudly! March beside us! P.S. We invite you to explore our recently published analysis in a book, “Building a Nation: Good Governance and Democratic Principles in Sierra Leone.” As we unite for change in 2025, this resource provides valuable insights for activists, policymakers, and concerned citizens committed to Sierra Leone’s transformation. Find it here: link.

Yours faithfully,

Dr. Alfred A. Veenod Fullah DIRECTOR-GENERAL

CC: Office of the President of Sierra Leone

• Office of the Vice President of Sierra Leone
• Speaker of the Sierra Leone House of Parliament
• Office of the Chief Minister of the Government of Sierra Leone
• Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL)
• Inspector General of Sierra Leone Police
• Chief of Defence Staff, Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF)
• Office of National Security, Sierra Leone
• Independent Commission for Peace and National Cohesion
• Leonardo Santos Simao, Representative of the Secretary-General & Head of UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS)
• African Union (AU)
• Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)
• Amnesty International
• Marco Rubio, United States Secretary of State
• Vice President, Congressional and Public Affairs
• The Commonwealth Secretary-General
• Karim Ahmad Khan, Chief Prosecutor, International Criminal Court (ICC)
• Richard YOUNG, Chief de Division, Afrique de l’Ouest
• Ms. Ursula Von Der Lyen, European Commissioner
• The United Nations Representative in Sierra Leone
• H. E. Bola Tinubu, President of Nigeria & Chairman of ECOWAS
• H. E. Oumar Touray, President of ECOWAS Commission
• Madam Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang, former VP of The Gambia
• H.E John Dramane Mahama, President of Ghana
• H. E. Bassiru Faye, President of Senegal
• H.E. Mamadi Doumbouya, President of Guinea H.E. Joseph Boakai, President of Liberia
• David Lammy, Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth & Dev Affairs, UK
• Neil Alan John Coyle, MP for Bermondsey & Old Southwark, UK
• Ambassador Aly Diallo, Ambassador of the Republic of Guinea to the UK&I
• Ambassador Mohammad Maidugu, Acting High Commissioner of Nigeria in the UK&I
• Her Excellency Dr Fatou Bensouda, Head of Mission, The Gambia high Commission, UK&I
• H.E Fatimata Dia, Ambassador of Senegal to the UK&I
• H.E Gurly T. Gibson-Schwarz, Ambassador of Liberia to the UK&I
• Her Excellency Josephine Gauld, British High Commissioner to Sierra Leone
• Ambassador of the United States of America to Sierra Leone
• Head of the European Union Delegation in Sierra Leone
• General Consul of Canada in Sierra Leone
• Ambassador of China to Sierra Leone
• Ambassador of Germany to Sierra Leone
• Ambassador of Lebanon to Sierra Leone
• Ambassador of Iran to Sierra Leone
• Ambassador of Brazil to Sierra Leone
• Ambassador of Sweden to Sierra Leone
• Ambassador of Libya to Sierra Leone
• Ambassador of Egypt to Sierra Leone
• Ambassador of Cuba to Sierra Leone
• Ambassador of Guinea to Sierra Leone
• Ambassador of Liberia to Sierra Leone
• High Commissioner of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to Sierra Leone
• High Commissioner of Ghana to Sierra Leone
• High Commissioner of The Gambia to Sierra Leone
• General Consul of Italy in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul-General of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul-General of Ireland in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul-General of Japan in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul-General of India to Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Senegal in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Switzerland in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Syria in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Turkey in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Mali in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Ukraine in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Romania in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Norway in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Hungary in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of France in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Belgium in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of The Netherlands in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Spain in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Serbia in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Austria in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Denmark in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Russia in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of Malaysia in Sierra Leone
• Honorary Consul of South Africa in Sierra Leone
• Civil Society Movement – Sierra Leone (CSM – SL)
• Media Reform Coordinating Group of Sierra Leone (MRCG)
• Sierra Leone Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (SLANGO)
• Civil rights Defenders – Sierra Leone
• National Elections Watch (NEW) – Sierra Leone
• Campaign for Good Governance (CGG) – Sierra Leone
• Women’s Forum – Sierra Leone
• Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD)
• Sierra Leone Legal Aid Board
• Faith-Based and Interfaith Organizations – (Interreligious Council of Sierra Leone)
• Council of Churches in Sierra Leone (CCSL)
• Fourah Bay College – University of Sierra Leone
• Institute of Governance Reform (IGR)
• Youth Partnership for Peace and Development (YPPD) Children’s Forum Network
• Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) – Sierra Leone
• Awoko Newspaper – Sierra Leone
• Liberty TV Online – Sierra Leone
• Radio Democracy 98.1 FM Station – Sierra Leone
• The New York Times
• The Washington Post
• The USA Today
• The Cable News Network (CNN)
• The MicroSoft National Broadcast Corporation (MSNBC)
• The Fox News
• The Associated Press
• Thomson Reuters
• The National Public Radio (NPR)
• The Brookings Institution
• The Heritage Foundation 9
• The Center For American Progress
• The National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People (NAACP)
• The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
• The MoveOn
• The Democratic National Committee
• The Republican National Committee
• The EMILY’s List
• The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
• The Sky News
• Al Jazeera
• The Independent Television (ITV)
• The Times
• The Financial Times
• The Guardian
• The Daily Telegraph

Sierra Leone Advocacy Movement (SLAM-Global) Motto: Trust, Unity and Social Justice Email: advocacy1@slam-global.org.uk Mobile: UK – +447725982424/+447564115946 EU – +46734836874/+34676768005 US – 01732-619-9510/01608-772-3917