Silent Hell: The Peace That Starves, Silences and Betrays Sierra Leone
By Alpha Amadu Jalloh
Author of Monopoly of Happiness: Unveiling Sierra Leone’s Social Imbalance
Recipient of the Africa Renaissance Leadership Award 2025
How do you define peace in a country where children die because hospitals lack oxygen? How do you rank as peaceful a nation ruled by fear, intimidation, corruption and hunger? How do you tell a mother who sleeps on a hospital floor with her malnourished child that she lives in one of the most peaceful countries in Africa?
To those who ranked Sierra Leone the fifth most peaceful country in Africa, your ignorance is not just offensive. It is dangerous. Your report, whether influenced by flawed data or well-funded propaganda, undermines the truth lived daily by millions of suffering Sierra Leoneans.
Let us be clear. Under President Julius Maada Bio, truth is not only twisted. It is bought, dressed in suits and sent to international conferences. His government has mastered the art of polishing a rotten image and branding a failing state. To declare Sierra Leone a peaceful nation is not only misleading. It is an insult to every struggling citizen.
Peace is not just the absence of gunfire. Real peace means justice, equity, access to clean water, electricity, education, healthcare, freedom of speech, a functioning judiciary and equal opportunity. It means people sleep without fear. It means institutions work. Laws are applied fairly and public resources are used for the public good.
By this standard, Sierra Leone is not a peaceful country. It is a nation teetering on the edge. A country where the causes of the brutal civil war have all returned. They are more entrenched and more normalized than ever.
Over 75 percent of Sierra Leoneans do not have access to electricity. Entire communities live in darkness. Students read under candlelight. Businesses struggle to operate. Hospitals cannot function. Electricity has become a political tool, switched off in opposition strongholds and selectively supplied during photo opportunities.
Over 70 percent of rural Sierra Leoneans lack access to clean drinking water. Women and girls walk miles each day to fetch water, often from contaminated streams. Waterborne diseases are rampant. Cholera remains a recurring threat.
Over 70 percent of youths are unemployed or underemployed despite being the majority of the population. The so-called Youth Empowerment programs are often fronts for corruption, job scams or political gimmicks. Young people are either fleeing the country or turning to drugs like Kush to numb their hopelessness.
Over 70 percent of government hospitals are failing. Patients are told to bring their own syringes, bandages and gloves. Maternal deaths are common. Babies die from lack of oxygen. Nurses are underpaid and overworked. If you are poor and sick in Sierra Leone, you are close to death.
Over 70 percent of public schools are overcrowded, underfunded and dilapidated. Teachers go months without pay. Children sit on bricks. In some villages, there are no teachers at all. Only hope slowly drains from the eyes of hungry pupils.
Sierra Leone today is a graveyard for human rights. Freedom of speech has been weaponised. Journalists are assaulted, arrested or threatened into silence. The police have become an extension of the ruling party. Protesters are gunned down like on August 10 2022 and no one is held accountable. The rule of law has collapsed into rule by fear.
Corruption is no longer a hidden disease. It is a celebrated achievement. Ministers drive luxury cars while children sleep hungry. Billions vanish from government audits yet no heads roll. Contracts are inflated. Fake universities thrive under political protection. Public land is sold off for personal profit.
Even the Anti-Corruption Commission, once a beacon of hope, now serves more as a political attack dog than an institution of justice.
The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission was clear in its findings. It stated, “The Commission found that endemic corruption, greed, bad governance and the denial of basic human rights provided fertile ground for the conflict.” It warned, “Unless the government undertakes comprehensive reforms to address these root causes, there is every possibility that violence could recur.”
It emphasized, “The civil war was the culmination of decades of misrule and failure by successive governments to address the basic needs and aspirations of the people.”
Today, not only have these causes not been addressed. They have multiplied. Instead of healing, the country is disintegrating slowly. Peace is not about the absence of war. It is about the presence of justice. Sierra Leone today has no justice, no transparency and no functioning systems. It has a government obsessed with power, image and control.
President Bio’s administration is built on intimidation. Elections are manipulated. Traditional leaders are co-opted. Dissent is silenced. The First Lady Fatima Bio operates as an unelected force, deploying state resources to push her personal agenda. She interferes in elections, uses the national platform to abuse opponents and misuses the state media to promote herself.
Sierra Leone is not peaceful. It is paralyzed. It is gasping from poverty, fear and hunger. People are too weak to rise up because they are too hungry. But silence is not peace. It is the calm before the storm. It is the final kick of a dying horse.
The only reason this nation is not currently in flames is because the people have been starved into silence. But history tells us that no government built on lies, fear and suffering will survive forever. The people will rise. When they do, no amount of cosmetic rankings or international praise will save the system.
To those who declared Sierra Leone one of Africa’s most peaceful countries, ask yourselves this. Did you walk through Kroo Bay? Did you speak to the mothers in Moyamba? Did you visit the schools in Kambia or the clinics in Koinadugu? Did you ask the amputees in Bo or the victims of police brutality in Makeni?
Or did you sit in hotels in Freetown and allow government officials to lie to you over cocktails and PowerPoint slides?
If you believe Sierra Leone is peaceful, you are either deceived or paid to lie. Because under President Bio, image is everything. He will pay to look good even while the country dies.
Sierra Leone is not peaceful. It is not stable. It is not fine. It is a country walking on broken bones. Its elites have turned governance into business. Democracy has become dictatorship. Truth is now treason.
Keep your reports. Keep your rankings. Keep your conferences.
But do not tell the people of Sierra Leone that they are peaceful.
They are not peaceful.
They are powerless.
And that silence is not calm. It is rage waiting to rise.