An attempt to take an Ebola-ridden nonagenarian in Sierra Leone resulted in a riot after her son, described as a “famous gangster” in local media, and friend, blockaded the ambulance, insisting she was not sick.
Adamu Eze, son of Aminata Koroma, lost his sister to Ebola last week. Her body was taken away from medical officials and not buried properly. Adamu threatened to skin alive anyone who touched his 90-year-old mother.
All efforts to make Adamu change his position proved futile, in fact according to information he left the scene for the centre of town where he gathered most of his colleague hoodlums and headed for the Koidu Government Hospital. At the hospital, Adamu and his cohorts went on the rampage stabbing and looting innocent citizens. They threatened to burn down the Koidu Gov’t Hospital and the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Cooperation (SLBC) in Kono.
The security forces were called upon, the rioters were dislodged from the hospital premises but continued their mayhem in various parts of town. A curfew was immediately evoked to maintain law and order. During the curfew a Top up Seller named Safea was shot at the main Kainkordu road and died instantly, reports say another youth also lost his life as a result of the riot.
“Two bodies are now at the mortuary,” said one doctor. “I cannot say whether they have bullet wounds or what caused their deaths as the corpses have not yet been examined.”
Adamu Eze is not a young person. He claims he was born in 1969. The Patriotic Vanguard sat down with him in 2010 after his name popped up in interviews “as the principal perpetrator of most of the [sic] political violence, including gang-rape of SLPP [Sierra Leonne People’s Party] female supporters.” In 2009, a female supporter of the SLPP identified Eze as her rapist. Another supporter accused him of throwing feces at the SLPP office in Koidu City. In a report of the Political Parties Registration Commission (PPRC), he is specifically named:
“The Commission having examined the entire situation in Kono based on eye witness accounts and interviews has made the following conclusion: That the uninvited entry of Adamu Eze widely believed to be a supporter of the APC [All Peoples Congress] into the precincts of the Fachima Hall with Youths where the SLPP [Sierra Leone Peoples Party] was having their meeting is in the least an act of provocation and a show of political intolerance.”
From The Political Vanguard:
‘Uninvited entry’: the report understandably uses sedate language like that. It says, moreover, that “the SLPP delegates were attacked and pelted with stones through no fault of theirs. They did not provoke any situation that could warrant an attack on them by any group or group of individuals.”
The author, Lans Gberie, noted many times that both political parties use the youth in Kono (emphasis added):
It was the voice less of a believer than a true mercenary. Still, there was a touch of self-parody about this role: from participating in large-scale massacres, a sanguinary ‘rebel’ war, Mr. Eze is now merely a brutal political enforcer, with his phallic weapon to terrorise defenceless women and shits to throw at opposition buildings. But it occurred to me, listening to his deranged locution, in an impoverished city blighted and war-scarred, a place with so many layers of dereliction and decrepitude, it occurred to me that this may well be a dress-rehearsal for something more sinister, something that ought now to be halted in its track. “The APC is giving more to the youths now. The SLPP was all for chiefs; they were in complete control. But here in Kono, we the youths are in control, we are power.”
In 2013, Eze announced that no politician will ever incit him “to cause mayhem in the Land of Kono.” There were sixteen “youth men” officials described as the ring leaders in the Kono violence who signed “a peace communiqué” to guarantee a peaceful Kono. Eze was one of these “youth men” even though he was 44 years old at the time. It turns out the “youth men” are separated into three categories by officials: Official youths (15 – 35 years old), Political Youths (all active political parties youths), and Older Men Youths. Eze “begged the fourteen paramount chiefs and their representatives to forgive him and give him a new chance to prove himself once more to the people of Kono.”
But now it appears he is responsible for the riot on October 21. Unfortunately, Koroma died. The Sierra Express Media said Adamu was arrested, but AFP reported he is currently in hiding.