What began as a security visit to a rural chiefdom in Karene District on Saturday ended with a proposal that could shape the health prospects of pregnant women across Sanda Magbolontho an outcome that speaks to the widening scope of Sierra Leone’s community policing model and to the particular character of the man who chairs the chiefdom’s traditional council.
The Local Unit Commander of Kamakwie Division, Superintendent John S. Koroma, led his team to Gbogodo Village on 9 May 2026 for a courtesy visit to key traditional authorities and stakeholders in Sanda Magbolontho Chiefdom, part of a sustained outreach campaign that has seen the Kamakwie Police Division engage multiple chiefdoms across Karene District over the past several weeks.
Superintendent Koroma has been among the more visible local unit commanders in Sierra Leone’s north-western districts in recent months, prosecuting a deliberate program of grassroots engagement well beyond what routine policing requires. As recently as late April, traditional authorities in Kamaranka Chiefdom pledged stronger collaboration with the Sierra Leone Police following a community policing drive led by the Kamakwie Division, with Superintendent Koroma emphasising that effective policing depends on trust and timely information from the public. Days later, his unit engaged residents and stakeholders of Sanda Loko Chiefdom in a meeting aimed at establishing a Local Policing Partnership Board, during which he explained that the gathering was convened to sensitise communities on the Sierra Leone Police’s ongoing transition from a “force” to a “service” a people-centred policing approach that places community participation at its core.
Saturday’s visit to Sanda Magbolontho extended that arc further into the district’s interior, with Superintendent Koroma and his delegation meeting the chiefdom’s Paramount Chief and the Senior District Officer to discuss crime prevention strategies and police-community relations. He called on stakeholders to establish a Local Policing Partnership Board, reinforcing the message he has carried from chiefdom to chiefdom: that lasting security cannot be imposed from above but must be co-produced with the communities the police serve.
The man across the table from Superintendent Koroma was no ordinary traditional ruler. The Paramount Chief of Sanda Magbolontho Chiefdom, Sanda Sorie Jim Abu Sankoh Kintho V, is a retired Superintendent of Police a convergence of roles that lent the meeting an unusual professional symmetry and signalled that the relationship between state authority and traditional governance in the chiefdom is grounded in something deeper than protocol.
It was Paramount Chief Kintho V who would steer the day’s conversation into its most consequential direction. After the security discussions concluded and health officials had addressed the gathering, the Paramount Chief proposed the introduction of chiefdom by-laws that would compel pregnant women to deliver at recognised health centres rather than at home a binding community mechanism to address a risk that data consistently identifies as one of Sierra Leone’s most persistent public health failures.
The presence of health voices at what was officially a police engagement reflects a growing recognition within Sierra Leone’s governance structures that security and social welfare are not parallel tracks but intersecting ones. The Coordinator of the Office of National Security in Karene District, Mr Jacob Santigie Conteh, and Mr George Brima, a Community Health Officer attached to the Sendugu Health Centre, both addressed the gathering in Gbogodo Village using the platform to urge residents to discourage home deliveries and encourage pregnant women to seek care at accredited facilities.
Sierra Leone carries one of the highest maternal mortality burdens in West Africa, and the northern and north-western districts where health infrastructure is thinner and distances to facilities often significant are among the areas where the gap between need and access is sharpest. The proposal by Paramount Chief Kintho V to legislate health-seeking behaviour through chiefdom by-laws echoes approaches that have been tried elsewhere in Sierra Leone, where traditional authority structures retain genuine enforcement weight at the community level in ways that formal state systems sometimes cannot replicate.
Superintendent Koroma has consistently emphasised that effective policing extends beyond traditional duties, stressing the importance of building strong relationships with the public and adopting proactive strategies to prevent problems including those beyond crime before they arise. Saturday’s meeting embodied that philosophy in its most concrete form.
The engagement at Gbogodo Village closed with stakeholders reaffirming their commitment to both the proposed security partnership and the healthcare awareness agenda. Superintendent Koroma’s outreach across Karene District continues to build the architecture of a Local Policing Partnership Board network a structure the Sierra Leone Police has identified nationally as central to its transformation into a service that communities trust rather than merely tolerate.
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Karene District, headquartered in Kamakwie and formed as one of Sierra Leone’s two new districts created in December 2017, is home to a predominantly Temne population and is made up of thirteen chiefdoms. The reach of the LUC’s recent community engagement suggests that Superintendent Koroma is working methodically through that chiefdom map one traditional council at a time.
