Sierra Leone Telegraph: 17 December 2020:
After our report yesterday about the safety of Dr Sylvia Olayinka Blyden, who we now understand escaped police arrest yesterday afternoon and is now in safe refuge in an undisclosed location, the Sierra Leone Telegraph has tried to obtain a statement from the government and police but without success about what took place yesterday.
Today, Dr Blyden has spoken out about her ordeal, and this is what she said:
“This is Dr. Sylvia Olayinka Blyden OOR, a noble Woman of Substance, who is currently being chased by a failing SLPP regime; the SLPP is indeed a failing regime that is well set to destroy our democratic freedoms if we don’t come together to stop them.
“Thanks for all the show of concern over the raid of my house yesterday Wednesday 16th December 2020 by three vehicles loaded with armed policemen.
“I am unable to respond to each and every one who has reached out to express concerns but let me assure you all that I am doing well. I am safe and sound. Praise the Lord.
“Indeed, the Police went to arrest me, but their mission was not successful because God protects his own. Amen.
“Now, let me notify you all that against the backdrop of recent events, I will be making a Live Broadcast to the Nation at 9pm tonight, Thursday 17th December 2020. I will be broadcasting my statement out from the current location where I am taking temporary refuge as me and my various partners try to understand what is really going on.
“Meanwhile, the video accompanying this update (see below) was recorded in the year 2015, over 5 years ago when H.E. Ernest Koroma was then the sitting President. The video shows senior members of the current Government including the Long-standing Spokesman of the current President and current senior government officials including Agriculture Minister.
“The video was recorded and then shared by Yusuf Keketoma Sandi, the Spokesman of President Bio. Watch it. Watch and see the kind of derogatory and defamatory language deployed against the then sitting President.
“Accompanying this update also is a photo of Keketoma Sandi (Photo below) at the protest where they had grievously insulted the sitting president. As is now their noted practise of deception, they had dressed up their SLPP members back then in bright APC t-shirts and placed them to pretend as if APC members were part of the protest. Also, in the protest is a prominent so-called Civil Society activist. You can see him in the video back then in April 2015 joining SLPP members to hurl out loud insults and unprintable invectives at the then President.
“Sierra Leoneans, please watch this video and listen to the highly offensive, derogatory things being said back then against a sitting President by the current President’s selected and trusted team. Nobody in that video ever faced harassment when they were under the presidency of Ernest Bai Koroma because the APC is a democratic party that respects dissent, no matter how offensive.
“In sharp contrast, this current president, H.E. Julius Maada Bio, under his oppressive SLPP regime, now has his folks with ruffled feathers simply because I condemned his BLINKING LIES including his LIE of May 8th, 2020 that he uttered; using his position to personally defame me. They are now like bloodhounds because I also condemned the very, very loose manner in which his wife (our current First Lady) has been behaving on and off social media.
“Also accompanying this update is a post on social media by the First Lady on Facebook last month (November 2020). She was addressing two Women in public and disregarding obvious outrage at her looseness. This screenshot shows the kind of very, very loose rants of Fatima that bothers all well-meaning Sierra Leoneans.
“Fatima Bio goes on social media to post loose comments like these for the entire Planet Earth to see it and for the viewers to shake their heads at Sierra Leone for having such a First Lady. There are so many similar loose rants all over social media posted directly by her without remorse.
“Meanwhile, stay tuned for my live broadcast during which I will address contemporary and historical issues around Fatima Bio. I will not speak of her past personal life as I can NEVER do so, but I intend to clarify the unprovoked lies issued against me on Saturday night by one of Fatima Bio’s allies known as GENTLE. May God bless 🇸🇱Sierra Leone.”
Dr. Sylvia Olayinka Blyden OOR.
This is exactly what Dr. Sylvia O. Blyden is looking for, attention really you got some mama! I wonder who is advising this poor woman, sending her in to do some ugly stuff. Freetown is only one entrance, Sylvia don’t you know that the government knows your whereabouts? They don’t want to repeat the same mistake in 1993, when the Guinean Ambassador’s residence was raided in search of NNNNNN, and someone has to be dismissed from his position, also is against the law. Will you remain in your hiding location forever? Or is it a time now for you to relocate? if yes, well good luck. If I were you, I rather stay than get arrested, believing that what I am doing is right. Are you afraid now of the detention or the prison yard?.
Do you think that the APC party and members will sympathize with you and come to a unanimous agreement to select you as the party flag bearer? Surely you must be dreaming. Can’t you take a lesson from the jailed former defense minister? I don’t understand what’s actually going with this fine woman’s IQ, can someone tell me?. All these video clips you and your associates are posting online these days are rubbish. Most of these guys pushing you right now on your death row, are not living in Sierra Leone, what a heck.
The re-run election of constituency 110, has been peacefully and successfully concluded. However, with clearly a but, that less than a week from the event, the cold war, which ensued between the two campaigns on the eleventh hour, is now turning physical. The unfortunate exchanges between surrogates; on the one hand, by the first lady, Fatima Bio, supporting Ms. Josephine Jackson and, on the other, with Dr. Sylvia Blyden, stumping for Ms. Kadie Davies, leaves reasonable room to suspect the disaffection they have for each other, that, a deep animosity between the two stateswomen, was borne.
Where the story will all end, to become a thing of the past, is everybody’s guesswork. But, what is now known is that, Sylvia is now being hunted by the police as she confessed to being in hiding, accused of calling the Pa Bio, “a liar”.
Thanks to Allah/God that the indomitable lioness of the political jungle of Sierra Leone was able to give SLPP the slip. My usual refrain is expressing how much I loath both SLPP and APC, but I politically love and admire Dr Blyden (APC), Mayor Aki-Sawyer (APC) and Right Honourable Ngevao(SLPP). They are what politicians should be – to relentlessly push the interests of their country.
Dr Sylvia Blyden’s case very much reminds me of Yaboum Fornah, the wife of Dr M.S.Fornah who was executed by Siaka Stevens in 1975. After the arrest of Dr Fornah on charges of treason, Siaka Stevens and his hatchet man, S.I. Koroma, were on the prowl for Yaboum and their children. Friends hid them until they were able to escape to England right under the amateurish nose of Stevens’ intelligence and security services.
Dr Blyden should go nowhere. Sierra Leone is her home, no one has the right to deny her the right to live there and be free to express her views the best way she can. May the Almighty help those who are helping her. If Bio and his gang want her to reappear, they must first unambiguously let her and the public know what her crime is and accord her the right to be represented by a lawyer in absentia.
Sierra Leone is trying to move away from the police state which dominated the political scene in the late 1960s, 1970s, up to the late 80s. We are not yearning for a Stalinist type of government in Sierra Leone, we have suffered too much under the two major parties. President Bio has to tell us whether the sedition and libel laws have actually gone or he has just been playing with words.
Reading this post, and if you harbour any doubts about the degree of how low this Bio government have sunk, look no further. More than any other politician in the current climate of political intermediation, and assault on the rule of law, and free press, all credit goes to Dr Sylvia Blyden, for exposing Bio and his political hoodlums, for bringing our country to where it is today.
Her honesty in speaking the truth to those who deserve the truth to be told to; her nerve of steel for challenging the status quo, and passion for justice , and royalty for our country’s wellbeing, and its development for the all not the few. And for which she’d never apologise, and owe no one any apology, especially to Bio and his team of renegades hoodlums, that want to see the destruction of our much won peace and security; that want to drag us back, if we are not already there, to the bad old days of political witch hunt, should make us all proud, that we are living this moment.
Dr. Blyden has shown she is not a cry baby like Bio, and she can stand and fight her own corner. She is leading us to the real “ONE DIRECTION” Only this time it is for the benefit of EVERYONE. THE LADY IS NOT FOR TURNING. May God bless Sierra Leone.
This is serious stuff. I’ll wait for clarity before commenting. I pray that she is safe and sound. God bless Dr Sylvia Blyden.
A pity she did not state which radio frequency or TV channel for the live broadcast.
Is this part of the thousands of videos she promised us earlier this year? No surprises there. Nobody is safe from this woman’s vituperations.