Politics is not for the faint-hearted. It is not a field for the righteous because in the process of electioneering and politicking the righteous are sure to be corrupted, made useless, and eventually fall like all else before them. This is why millionaires don’t enter Sierra Leone politics and would instead focus their attention on talking less and doing more behind the scenes.
But this has not been the trajectory of the man that is being aided and abetted in his own corruption by people who stand to benefit from his largesse and use such for their own purposes knowing fully well that Jagaban stands no chance of getting his way into our national politics without a track record or policy statements on our most pressing governance and reputational issues.
Instead he keeps wasting large sums of money that could have been used for far greater purposes than conning the people out of their mandate to lead.
There is a growing concern and call from concerned members and supporters of the main opposition All People’s Congress (APC) that Mohamed Omodu Kamara, also known as Jagaban, should explain the source of his so-called “self-made millionaire” status so that APC party stalwarts could have their minds clear that he is not using some surreptitious tactics through APC politics to wash some kind of ill-gotten money that he is now claiming to be a “self-made millionaire” money.
The general consensus is that Sierra Leonean politics is corruptive and that anyone entering into it with his hard-earned cleaned money must be doing so for some clandestine reasons that could include selfish interest or hiding the source of the money especially one that is sourced from outside Sierra Leone that cannot be properly and efficiently traced to verify and ascertain the authenticity of the millionaire status. This hidden fact which is developing as a contention over the suitability of Jagaban for the flagbearer ticket of the APC party looms in the horizon until it is appropriately cleared by Jagaban with substantive evidences. The APC supporters will not want to have a flagbearer whose financial credentials will open a cankerworm of postulations and embarrassment at the height of the campaign in 2028.
According to ranking members of the APC, Jagaban is trying to intimidate party stalwarts and in particular, the elected delegates to the 2028 National Delegates Convention with money so as to distract them from vetting his ability and capacity to administer this country as President.
Money or millionaire status is not any criteria for being a competent and efficient President especially for someone like Jagaban who has no proven record of holding or having served in any capacity that can be used as yardstick to guarantee is suitability for flagbearer, not to talk of President.
Instead of him using his money or millionaire status to improve the lot of his people in Yele and in Blama, he is using it to expose their vulnerability and poverty status by cheaply dishing out cash in the name of either a Jagaban Foundation or using the Islamic religion with donations that have never been noticed or felt from him until he apparently bulldozed his way to support the Presidential election campaign of the APC candidate in the 2023 election. As far as the general public is concerned, Jagaban has no track record of public leadership anywhere; of course not in Sierra Leone; not in the APC.
If dishing out large sums of money at Ataya Bases and to community groups or individuals as he has been doing is his way of sweeping his way to the flagbearer position, then he has no idea about how to spend the public purse, which spending is based on established rules and procedures.
“We don’t want to face a situation where the national wealth is being shared the way Jagaban has been wasting his money to get political relevance or mileage,” a very senior APC party member confided to Nightwatch.
Concerned APCians and other Sierra Leoneans say millionaires don’t enter politics because of a moral issue. Although God establishes the governments, they are however headed by fallible men. If Jagaban is claiming to be richer than all the flagbearers combined, then the APC grassroots is saying that they don’t believe him. More than anything they are of the contention that Jagaban is not rich and is instead trying to enter politics to either get rich or launder his money.
Giving an example, an APC executive said although he is connected to Yele, a town said to be located in the middle of the country, that town remains in its old shadow of impoverishment and decadence, with no impactful sign of Jagaban’s millions. Even Blama in the Kenema District where he was born by parents who hailed from Yele, apart from the cheap solar lights he provided and the petrol station he owns there that is making him money, there is nothing substantial that he has done there that has actually transformed the lives and wellbeing of the people therein. What he seems to be doing are just shambolic and farcical to woo desperate people; people he has come to identify as poor, by splashing pittances in order to attract them to him.
Despite the nation not knowing what his policies are on pressing national and international issues, Jagaban keeps dishing out money wherever he goes in the hope of using cash- violence on a desperately poor people living on a rich land. The political history of Sierra Leone is replete with men and women who are either rich or educated who come into our national politics promising heaven on earth only to end up becoming a burden on our economy, laws, peace and national security. Therefore, if Jagaban is a millionaire as he is claiming to be, he must use his money to start industries, sponsor the establishment of schools and hospitals. If he is indeed the millionaire he claims to be, this medium is challenging him to undertake the road rehabilitation or reconstruction from Matotoka to Yele which is the main thoroughfare linking that central town with the rest of the northern province. Since the country has identified farming or agriculture as the most effective way of rendering us food self-sufficient, Jagaban can use his wealth to make a great difference by funding farming families and households in Yele and in Port Loko where he recently claimed to have paternal connections. There are so many potential entry points for Jagaban to salvage the poverty status of his long line of relations that now stretches from Port Loko to Bombali, to Tonkolili and Kenema Districts. Even the Government’s Utopian Feed Salone Changer is a sure point of entry for Jagaban to display his wealth and millionaire cash.
But insofar as Sierra Leoneans are seeing, all Jagaban has been doing is splashing cash here and there in the hope of using such ‘munku’ political tactics and political amateurism to jump the line ahead of ranking party stalwarts who have sacrificed time, personal safety, and wealth to push the party’s and people’s agenda forward. The people that are encouraging Jagaban to seek the APC flag are doing so for their own self-interest. Jagaban must be made to realize that the nation’s problems are too many for someone to be making fun of with parables of how is he a self-made millionaire and that he will crush “anyone who stood” in his way in this 2026 APC Flagbearer race. This type of ‘Agba-satani’ sentimentalism and rhetoric no longer holds sway in this 21st Century APC.
While he might be intending to do a good thing by wanting to enter our national politics, the way Jagaban has been going about it has instead relayed to the people that he has some sinister agenda for which he is now using physical cash to fraudulently access power; a power that he could possibly use to reincarnate his true self in the eyes of the American people who have hosted him for so long. The belief is that the money is running out and Jagaban is trying to enter our politics to get his piece of the national pie. He believes that as a rich man he is entitled to lead the country. Sierra Leoneans, in this day and age, want a leader who has stayed and lived with their problems and who will not run away from them when the tides rise up.
Sierra Leone needs people who can articulate and proffer solutions to her pressing needs and issues, not those who would boast yet give us pittances in a veiled attempt to steal our national wealth.
According to grassroots APC members, this generation of voters are more in tune, more lit, more awake and even more conscious than previous generations. Their consciousness now goes as far as accentuating the saying that: “you can fool some people sometime but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” If Jagaban is claiming to have over two thousand employees then he is capable of opening manufacturing and downstream processing businesses of finished goods out of our natural or mineral wealth. He could also fund a political party of like-minded people dedicated to solving the people’s problems directly. This would bode well instead of trying to usurp the order in an established political institution like the APC. Lonta!