Jon Slade

56 hours. That is how long #SierraLeone has lived with The Economist’s 1843 investigation into how a European cocaine network, allegedly led by Jos Leijdekkers, turned the country into a transit state for billions of dollars in #Colombian cocaine—with political protection, security-force complicity, and a public silence that is itself part of the story. Major local news outlets have barely touched it. The governing elite has not offered a credible public accounting. The official opposition has not issued a serious institutional response. In a functioning republic, an allegation of this scale—narco-capital penetrating the state, the police, the military, and the political class—would force hearings, investigations, and resignations. Here, the vacuum is the evidence. If even a fraction of the reporting is accurate, Sierra Leone is not merely suffering a #drug problem. It is facing state capture: a country whose beaches, ports, banks, and ministries are being used as infrastructure for a criminal economy large enough to rival a quarter of #GDP. Media avoidance does not disprove the story. It raises a harder question: who benefits from the quiet? A cartel that can intimidate local journalists, co-opt officials, and operate in plain sight does not need to refute an investigation if it can simply wait for the news cycle to look away. A government that cannot explain how a wanted European trafficker could live, move, spend, and allegedly bind himself to the political family of the state has already answered the charge of weakness. An opposition that treats an existential allegation as someone else’s scandal has already confessed its own. Fifty-six hours of silence is complicity by default. We must defend our country before the country is no longer ours to defend. @DEAHQ @StateINL @USAfricaCommand @USEmbFreetown @LibertyOnlineTV @TruthmediaSL @sierraeyesalone @MoiceComm @APCofficial001 @JosefSkrdlik @sophievleeuwen @LeoneIssues @TheEconomist #SsloneX