The room at Occasions Resort in Lakka carried the weight of unfinished business.
Senior officials of the Sierra Leone Road Safety Authority gathered there recently for a high-level Board Retreat, themed Year of Action: Role of the Board in Achieving Strategic Outcomes a title that, in its directness, acknowledged something many in the room already knew. Commitment without coordination had long been the authority’s quiet undoing. This retreat was an attempt to change that.
Board Chairman AIG (Rtd) Thomas Mustapha Lahai opened proceedings by doing something that institutional events in Sierra Leone rarely do he acknowledged the tension. Past friction between the SLRSA Board and Management, he said, should now be considered a thing of the past. He urged a renewed spirit of cooperation and called on Board Members to function as vigilant watchdogs, ensuring that whatever institutional gains the Authority had secured were not quietly eroded. He also underscored the importance of shared values and deliberate action toward the domestication of the African Road Safety Charter a continental framework that Sierra Leone has yet to fully absorb into its national road safety architecture.
Executive Director James Bagie Bio described 2025 as a year of strengthening road safety, pointing to key progress made under his leadership and reaffirming the Authority’s commitment to building on those gains. His address had the tone of a man who understood that ambition alone meant little without the institutional conditions to sustain it.
Prince E.O. Cole, Head of Civil Service and Secretary to Cabinet, brought both authority and clarity to the keynote. His message to Board Members was unambiguous active support of Management in executing its mandate was not optional. To Management, he offered an equally direct word: Board interventions should not be read as interference, but as essential oversight. Cole went further, calling for accurate data collection and analysis as the non-negotiable foundation of any serious road safety planning. Without reliable data, he argued, strategy remains aspiration. He also pointed to modern technology adoption, meaningful stakeholder collaboration, and sustainable urban mobility as key threads in Sierra Leone’s broader socio-economic development.
The Minister of Transport and Aviation, Alhaji Fanday Turay, reinforced the data agenda and added a note of urgency around enforcement calling for decisive action to remove unroadworthy vehicles from Sierra Leone’s roads, a long-standing hazard that continues to claim lives with little accountability.
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The retreat closed with broad agreement on collaboration, innovation, and accountability as the pillars of the SLRSA’s path forward. Whether those words will translate into measurable action on Sierra Leone’s roads where accidents remain frequent, data remains thin, and enforcement remains inconsistent is the question the Authority now carries back into the field.
