FREETOWN, 29th September 2026 – Lawyers for SLPP flagbearer aspirant, Hon. Alhaji Musa Tarawally, have fired back at the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), insisting that the Party has no evidence to justify its decision to blacklist their client.
In a new letter dated 24th September 2026, seen by this medium, the law firm Jengo, Sam & Partners wrote to Hindolo M. Gevao Esq. of Gevao & Associates, Mamuto Chambers, who is representing SLPP National Publicity Secretary, Moses Sellu Mambu.
The letter is a response to a 23rd September letter from Gevao & Associates defending the controversial Public Notice issued on 19th September 2026.
The SLPP had, in that Public Notice signed by Moses Sellu Mambu, warned all its executives, members, supporters, businesses, banks and development partners not to “engage, transact, negotiate or conduct any official business with Hon. Alhaji Musa Tarawally in the name, on behalf or under the authority of the SLPP.”
The Party took the action days after National Chairman, Jimmy Batilo Songa, had in a 17th September letter ordered Tarawally to stop using the SLPP logo and parading himself as a member and flagbearer aspirant. Songa said his decision was based on a letter from the Citizens Democratic Party (CDP) National Secretary General dated 3rd September 2026, confirming that Tarawally remains a member of the CDP – the party under which he contested the 2018 presidential election.
Tarawally, a former Minister of Internal Affairs and one-time SLPP stalwart who left to form the CDP, has rejected the claim. He says he resigned from the CDP in 2018 and returned to the SLPP, where he is a fully paid-up Grand Chief Patron with dues paid up to 2028 and a National Delegate who voted at the 2025 National Delegates Conference.
His lawyers had in an earlier letter dated 20th/21st September given the SLPP a 7-day ultimatum to retract the Notice, provide particulars of any transaction he allegedly did in the SLPP’s name, and disclose which organ of the Party authorized the Notice.
In the latest letter signed by Jessie M. Jengo Esq., Jengo, Sam & Partners says the SLPP’s response through Gevao & Associates failed to answer those two demands.
“We are entitled to conclude, and shall invite any court to conclude, that there are no such occasion and no such authority, and that the Notice was a bare instrument of ostracism issued without foundation and without power,” the letter states.
The firm says its client’s demands as stated in its letter of 20th September stand, and that compliance time remains unaffected, and upon its expiry, they shall proceed as indicated without further notice.
They warned they will file a criminal complaint under Section 44 of the Cyber Security and Crime Act 2021, commence libel and injunctive proceedings in the High Court, and petition the Political Parties Registration Commission (PPRC), the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the ECOWAS Court of Justice if the Notice is not withdrawn.
The letter was copied to the National Leader of the SLPP, the National Chairman, the Deputy National Chairman, the National Secretary General, the National Publicity Secretary and to Hon. Tarawally himself.
The dispute comes as the SLPP prepares for its flagbearer race ahead of the 2028 general elections, with Musa Tarawally positioning himself as a leading contender for the ruling party’s ticket.
