分类： politics

Nearly three years after he was first arrested on charges tied to a failed coup attempt, the government of Sierra Leone has formally dismissed all criminal charges against Ernest Bai Koroma, the West African nation’s former head of state. The 72-year-old ex-president, who has maintained his innocence in the case, has been living in exile in Nigeria since early 2024 after a regional mediation deal allowed him to leave the country for medical care. Now, the office of Sierra Leone’s attorney general confirmed Tuesday that all legal barriers have been lifted, clearing the way for Koroma to return to his home country whenever he chooses.

The charges against Koroma, which included the grave offense of treason, stemmed from the November 2023 attempted uprising that shook the nation just months after a deeply contentious general election. On the day of the coup attempt, armed assailants stormed a military armoury and multiple correctional facilities across the country, enabling the escape of close to 2,000 incarcerated people. The violent unrest left roughly 20 people dead before government forces quelled the uprising.

The botched coup followed a tight re-election victory for current President Julius Maada Bio, who first defeated Koroma in the 2018 national vote to end the former president’s 11-year tenure in office. Bio’s narrow second-term win was immediately disputed by Koroma’s All People’s Congress, the main opposition political party. International election observers also issued public criticism of the poll, pointing to widespread gaps in transparency during the vote-counting process that fueled widespread public distrust in the results.

In an official statement responding to the dismissed charges this week, Koroma reaffirmed his long-held belief that peaceful resolution, justice and national reconciliation will always overcome political hardship and division. He also extended explicit public gratitude to three key actors for their role in facilitating the outcome: sitting Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who hosted his exile, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the regional bloc that negotiated the initial agreement to allow Koroma to leave Sierra Leone for exile and medical treatment. To date, the Sierra Leonean government has not offered any public explanation for its decision to drop the full set of charges against the former president.

NAIROBI, KENYA – In a landmark ruling delivered Wednesday, Kenya’s High Court has thrown out a legal petition that sought to grant Rastafarian worshippers an exemption from national cannabis prohibition laws for religious use. The decision has ignited fresh public conversation over the intersection of religious freedom and national drug regulation, while the petitioners have already announced plans to challenge the outcome in the country’s Court of Appeal.

Justice Bahati Mwamuye, who presided over the case, ruled that Kenya’s existing laws banning the cultivation and consumption of marijuana do not infringe on the constitutional right to religious freedom protected for all Kenyan communities. He emphasized that any carve-out for the Rastafarian community would require clear, robust legal and constitutional grounding that the petitioners had failed to provide in their filing.

Despite upholding the current prohibition, Justice Mwamuye used the ruling as a platform to call for a broad, inclusive national dialogue on Kenya’s decades-old drug policy framework. He noted that the question of cannabis regulation is not a niche concern limited to the Rastafarian community, but a pressing social issue that touches every corner of Kenyan society.

Kenya’s current regulatory regime, the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act, outlaws all cultivation, possession and use of cannabis across the country. Penalties for personal use are steep: violators can face fines of up to $2,000, prison sentences of as long as 10 years, or both, while trafficking convictions carry even harsher sanctions including longer prison terms and larger financial penalties.

For the Rastafarian petitioners, cannabis is a sacred sacrament core to their religious identity and practice, making the ban a direct violation of their most deeply held religious rights. They turned to the courts to seek a formal exemption from the act’s provisions, arguing that the state had no right to bar their religious ritual.

Shadrack Wambui, the lead attorney for the petitioners, confirmed immediately after the ruling that the legal team would move forward with an appeal to the Court of Appeal, vowing to continue fighting for their clients’ religious freedoms.

Following the court’s decision, dozens of Rastafarian advocates gathered at Nairobi’s iconic Freedom Corner to stage a peaceful protest, where they chanted slogans, beat traditional drums, and openly smoked cannabis to demonstrate their defiance of the ruling. Wanjiru Gakiu, a 60-year-old Rastafarian who has practiced the faith for 34 years, told reporters she felt profound disappointment with the decision, describing Kenya’s current drug laws as “satanic.”

“I’m sure if we were seeking to legalize something satanic, we would have been allowed. But when it comes to religion, the country is deaf and doesn’t want us to enjoy our religious rights,” Gakiu told the Associated Press.

The ruling has divided public opinion across Kenya, with many Kenyans from other faith backgrounds supporting the court’s decision to maintain full prohibition. Nairobi resident Jedidah Ng’ang’a, a Christian, publicly welcomed the ruling, saying she could not support any move to legalize cannabis use in the country.

The decision sets up a new legal battle over religious freedom and drug policy in East Africa, as advocates push for broader reform of outdated national drug laws that many argue have failed to address changing social attitudes toward cannabis both regionally and globally.

A long-running manhunt for the self-proclaimed leader of a bogus Nigerian government agency set up within the presidential office complex has come to an end, with law enforcement officials confirming the suspect’s arrest after weeks of him evading capture.

Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, who claimed the title of Director General of the non-existent Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC), was taken into custody in Osun State, a southwestern region of Nigeria. The arrest was executed following an arrest warrant issued earlier this week by the Federal High Court based in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. The warrant was activated after Matthew failed to appear at a scheduled court hearing to answer to multiple charges of forgery and official impersonation.

The fraud scandal has dominated national headlines in Nigeria since President Bola Tinubu ordered a full corruption probe into the fake agency just one week ago. While full details of the tactical operation that led to Matthew’s arrest remain limited as of Tuesday, Nigeria’s police force confirmed that specialists from two elite units — the Force Intelligence Department and the Intelligence Response Team — took part in the detainment. Following his arrest, Matthew is set to be transferred to the national police headquarters in Abuja to undergo further interrogation over the alleged scheme.

The search for Matthew launched last week after allegations of the PFIPC’s illegitimacy first came to light. In an official statement shortly after the scandal broke, Tinubu’s office confirmed that an official-looking document purporting to establish the agency was entirely fabricated. The Nigerian presidency added that forensic analysis conducted by police had verified that the signature of Femi Gbajabiamila, President Tinubu’s Chief of Staff, appearing on the supposed founding appointment letter had been forged.

The unfolding controversy has triggered widespread demands from across Nigeria’s political and civic sphere for an independent public inquiry. Civil society organizations, opposition political figures and senior legal professionals have all joined the call for greater transparency into how a fake agency was able to secure official-looking credentials and space within government facilities.

Prior to his arrest, Matthew had repeatedly maintained his innocence in conversations with local Nigerian media. According to local reporting, Matthew had claimed his life was under threat, though he initially stated he would appear in court to clear his name. Despite this pledge, he did not attend this week’s scheduled hearing. Matthew’s legal representative, Genesis Francis, told the court he had been unable to convince his client to attend the proceedings, citing Matthew’s stated concerns for his personal safety. The lawyer also confirmed that Matthew had submitted an open letter to President Tinubu outlining these safety worries.

Matthew had previously claimed that the PFIPC was founded in 2024 with the explicit goal of attracting new foreign direct investment to Nigeria. To date, however, there is no public or official record of any investment deals being successfully completed by the supposed agency.

A reporting team from BBC News Pidgin uncovered that the fraudulent organization had managed to secure dedicated office space inside Abuja’s Federal Secretariat, the large central government complex that houses most of Nigeria’s federal ministries. Reports also emerged that the PFIPC was listed in the 2026 Nigerian Appropriation Act with a proposed public allocation of 1.3 billion naira, equivalent to approximately $950,000 or £700,000, and was said to hold official accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria. However, Nigeria’s Accountant-General’s Office has since refuted these claims, confirming that the PFIPC never opened any active accounts with the central bank, never received any public funding, and never paid salaries to any supposed staff.

Court documents outline that Matthew and two additional co-accused face charges of using forged government documentation to create and run the fake council, opening multiple bank accounts under the agency’s false name, and repeatedly seeking official state recognition for the unregistered, non-existent organization.

Kenya’s highest judicial body has thrown out a legal challenge from the country’s Rastafarian community, which had pushed to exempt religious practitioners from national cannabis bans on the grounds of constitutional protection for freedom of belief. The case, which has drawn widespread public attention across the East African nation, centers on a longstanding tension between controlled drug policy and religious autonomy.

The Rastafarian community has long held that cannabis, referred to in their doctrine as a sacred herb, is an integral part of their spiritual practice. In their submission to the court, the group argued that the blanket national prohibition on cannabis use directly violated the fundamental right to religious freedom enshrined in Kenya’s constitution.

In the widely watched ruling delivered by Justice Bahati Mwamuye, the court dismissed the petition on the basis that the Rastafarian group failed to present sufficient evidence proving that existing drug legislation infringed on their constitutional rights. While the outcome fell short of the community’s demands, Justice Mwamuye used the ruling as an opportunity to call for a far-reaching, inclusive national conversation on the country’s cannabis policies.

“This is not an issue that concerns only the Rastafarian community. It is a national question that touches every segment of our society,” Justice Mwamuye stated in his judgement. “We need to hold open, frank discussions about what direction our cannabis policies should take moving forward.”

The ruling comes amid a growing movement across Kenya to review the country’s strict cannabis laws. Advocates for reform have put forward a range of economic and social arguments for loosening restrictions, noting that regulated commercial cultivation could generate new employment opportunities for thousands of Kenyans, increase public tax revenues, and unlock the potential of industrial and medical applications of cannabis that remain off-limits under current law. For the Rastafarian community, however, the debate is first and foremost a matter of religious equality, with members maintaining that their sacred use of cannabis deserves legal recognition and protection under the law.