By Alpha Amadu Jalloh
Author of Monopoly of Happiness: Unveiling Sierra Leone’s Social Imbalance
Recipient of the Africa Renaissance Leadership Award
Mr. President, can we talk?
There is a fire burning beneath our nation’s feet. It is not the kind of fire that comes from protests or riot bullets. It is the slow, quiet, deadly fire of drugs, desperation, and abandonment. Our young people are sinking, Mr. President. They are not just unemployed. They are not just undereducated. They are drowning in addiction, mental health crises, and hopelessness. And what they are crying for is leadership. They are crying for direction. They are crying for a government that sees them as more than political rally numbers or occasional photo ops.
Mr. President, look around you. Go beyond your convoy. Leave your red carpet. Step into the ghettos. Go to the back streets of Kenema, Makeni, Bo, and Freetown. The young people are falling like flies. Kush is destroying them. This synthetic poison, whose chemical content is still not fully understood, has turned our youth into shadows of themselves. They walk the streets with blank eyes and broken minds. Their bodies twitch uncontrollably. Some scream into the wind. Others lie motionless beside gutters, discarded like trash.
Mr. President, it is not only Kush. Tramadol is also wreaking havoc. It is sold like candy on street corners and in backdoor pharmacies. Young boys take it to escape pain. Young girls use it to survive trauma. Both end up addicted, enslaved, and sometimes dead. This is not just a health crisis. This is a national security threat. It is a slow genocide against the very generation that is supposed to carry Sierra Leone forward.
Mr. President, what has your government done? You announced a war on drugs, and that was good. But beyond the headlines, where is the real fight? Where are the rehab centers? Where are the detox programs? Where is the mass education campaign? Where is the national task force that should be mobilizing communities, parents, teachers, imams, and pastors to fight this scourge? You cannot defeat drugs with microphones. You cannot fix addiction with slogans. This war demands funding. It demands vision. It demands commitment. And most of all, it demands urgency.
Mr. President, girls are also victims. The pain is layered. Some are pushed into early sex work. Others are raped and shamed. Many are trafficked under false promises of jobs. Drugs become their comfort and their curse. Girls as young as thirteen are being exploited. They turn to tramadol to cope. To forget. To numb the horror of their lives. And yet we say we are building a future. What future, Mr. President, when the womb of the nation is bruised and bleeding?
Our youths are using drugs not because they are evil. They are using them because they are abandoned. They have no jobs. No dreams. No mentors. No leaders who speak their language or understand their pain. The schools are broken. The homes are broken. And the nation is looking the other way.
Mr. President, look at your ministers. How many of them have walked into these communities? How many have sat with the addicted, not for cameras, but for compassion? How many have developed a real action plan with clear goals, funding strategies, and timelines? Most are just busy defending your image while the country decays.
And if this pain is not enough, Mr. President, our daughters, sisters, and even sons who travel to the Middle East in search of jobs are being treated like animals. Sierra Leoneans in Lebanon, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia are calling for help. They are being tortured, beaten, raped, locked up, and stripped of dignity. Some are forced to work twenty-hour shifts without pay. Others have their passports seized. And yet your embassies look away. Your Foreign Ministry remains silent. Where is the outrage? Where is the government of Sierra Leone when its citizens are crying abroad?
Mr. President, these are not isolated stories. They are a pattern. A painful, shameful pattern. Girls are returning from these countries with deep scars. Some with mental trauma. Others with babies conceived through rape. Yet we treat them like they chose that pain. No reintegration program. No trauma healing center. No legal support. No economic empowerment. Just silence.
What is worse is that this suffering continues because the trafficking networks are protected by powerful people. Some of them have links to your government. Some work with agents who bribe their way through airport checks and embassy channels. Mr. President, if you really want to protect our girls and boys, clean your house. Make an example of those profiting from the sale of our people.
Mr. President, your silence on this is becoming complicity. You must speak. And not just speak. Act. Demand answers from your foreign missions. Set up emergency hotlines. Send investigators. Fund return and reintegration programs. Work with credible civil society groups, not just party loyalists in diaspora uniforms. Tell the world that Sierra Leone values her children and will fight for their protection no matter where they are.
And yet, if all this were not enough, Mr. President, we are burying our youth along the banks of the Mediterranean Sea. Desperate parents are sending their children through Libya. Through deserts. Through jungles. Through death traps. Just to escape a life they no longer believe in. They call it Temple Run. A desperate and deadly pilgrimage toward a Europe that may not even want them.
How many more bodies must wash ashore in Tunisia, Libya, or Italy before we wake up? How many mothers must wait for WhatsApp messages that never come? How many fathers must beg strangers for news of their missing sons? These are not numbers, Mr. President. These are lives. Sierra Leonean lives. Buried without prayer. Lost without justice. And forgotten without a trace.
They are dying because they see no light here. They are running because they have lost all hope in the system. They are fleeing from corruption, from unemployment, from hopelessness, from hunger, and from a government that does not seem to care. And Mr. President, these journeys are not made by criminals. They are made by people like you and me. People who once believed. People who still want to believe. But belief is nothing without evidence. And right now, the evidence is against us.
Mr. President, your human capital development agenda means nothing if the human beings it is meant to develop are either drugged, trafficked, or drowned. You cannot build a nation on slogans while the nation bleeds under the surface. You must act, and you must act now.
Rehabilitate the addicts. Protect the girls. Rescue our citizens abroad. And stop the burial of Sierra Leonean dreams in foreign seas.
Mr. President, can we talk?
