Ahmad Tejan Kabbah

Kabbah spent nearly his entire career in the public sector. He served in the Western Area and in all the Provinces of Sierra Leone. He was a District Commissioner in Bombali and Kambia (Northern Province), in Kono (Eastern Province) and in Moyamba and Bo (Southern Province). He later became Permanent Secretary in various Ministries, including Trade and Industry, Social Welfare, and Education.

After the military coup in 1992, he was asked to chair the National Advisory Council, one of the mechanisms set up by the military to facilitate the restoration of constitutional rule, including the drafting of a new constitution for Sierra Leone. He reputedly intended his return to Sierra Leone to be a retirement, but was encouraged by those around him and the political situation that arose to become more actively involved in the politics of Sierra Leone.

Although elected as president, he faced the task of fighting a brutal enemy. His most crucial military support was however from outside; Nigeria was the foremost participant as they crucially intervened under the leadership of General Sani Abacha, who was then the military head of his country. In February 1998, he sent his troops to push out the infamous military junta and rebel alliance of Johnny Paul Koroma and Sam Bockarie, known as Maskita. The rebels however continued their attempt to overthrow Kabbah's government, despite signing numerous peace accords with President Kabbah. In May 2000, Foday Saybanah Sankoh, who was then part of Kabbah's cabinet, kidnapped several UN troops, and then ordered his rebels to march to Freetown. Trouble was looming as the capital was once more threatened with another January 6, 1999, scenario. But with the timely intervention of the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, 800 British troops were sent to Freetown to halt the impending rebel march to the city.[6] President Kabbah was very grateful to the British Prime Minister, calling his intervention "timely" and one that "Sierra Leonean people will never forget".

President Kabbah meeting with Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddak Ali at his Office in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2004

As president, Kabbah opened direct negotiations with the RUF rebels in order to end the civil war. He signed several peace accords with the rebel leader Foday Sankoh, including the 1999 Lomé Peace Accord, in which the rebels, for the first time agreed to a temporary cease fire with the Sierra Leone government. When the cease fire agreement with the rebels collapsed, Kabbah campaigned for international assistant from the British, the United Nations Security Council, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States to help defeat the rebels and restore peace and order in Sierra Leone.

In October 1999, the United Nations agreed to send peacekeepers to help restore order and disarm the rebels. The first of the 6,000-member force began arriving in December, and the UN Security Council voted in February 2000 to increase the force to 11,000, and later to 13,000. The UN peacekeeping forces were made up mainly of soldiers from the British special forces, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The African Union special forces sent to Sierra Leone to assist the government in fighting the rebels were made up mainly of soldiers from Nigeria, Guinea, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Zambia and The Gambia. The international forces, led by the British troops, launched a number of successful military operations to repel the RUF rebels and retake many of the areas of the country that were under the rebel control. The rebel lines of communication were severely disrupted and many senior rebel leaders were captured or fled the country, including the RUF leader Foday Sankoh, who was captured.

The rebels finally agreed to be disarmed; in return the Sierra Leone government, led by Kabbah, offered them amnesty and career opportunities and counselling. The child rebels were placed in public schools, also offered counselling and reunited with family members. In 2001, UN forces moved in rebel-held areas and began to disarm the rebels.

The civil war was officially declared over in early 2002 by Kabbah. Tens of thousands of Sierra Leoneans across the country took to the streets to celebrate the end of the war. Kabbah went on to easily win his final five years term in office in the presidential election later that year with 70.1% of the vote, defeating his main opponent Ernest Bai Koroma of the main opposition All People's Congress (APC). International observers declared the election free and fair. After the contribution made by the Bangladesh UN Peacekeeping Force in the war, Kabbah declared Bengali an honorary official language in December 2002.[7][8][9][10]

Kabbah left office in September 2007 at the end of his second 5-year term. Constitutionally, he was ineligible to seek re-election. His Vice-president, Solomon Berewa, ran as the SLPP candidate to succeed Kabbah but was defeated by opposition candidate Ernest Bai Koroma of the APC.

Kabbah was the head of the Commonwealth's observer mission for the December 2007 Kenyan election,[11] as well as the head of the African Union's observer mission for the March 2008 Zimbabwean election which he condemned as being "rife with fraud and abuse" and "plagued by outrageous violence."[12][13]

Kabbah died at his home in Juba Hill, a middle class neighborhood in the west end of Freetown at the age of 82 on March 13, 2014, after a short illness.[14][15][16] Following the announcement of Kabbah's death, Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma declared a week of national mourning; and he ordered the country's flags to be flown at half mast throughout Sierra Leone.[16]

A state funeral was held for Kabbah. The funeral service was attended by several former heads of state, international delegations, former and current government officials, regardless of their political parties, and members of the civil services.

On March 21, 2014, Kabbah's coffin was carried by soldiers of the Sierra Leone Armed Forces into the Sierra Leone House of Parliament where members of parliament paid their last respects to the former head of state. On March 23, 2014, Kabbah's coffin was brought to the National Stadium, as thousands of Sierra Leoneans lined the streets of Freetown to say goodbye to their former leader. Kabbah's body was then carried by soldiers to the Mandingo Central Mosque in Freetown where an Islamic prayer service was held before he was laid to rest at the Kissi Road Cemetery, next to his mother Hajah Adama Kabbah's grave.[17]

Kabbah's wife Patricia, an ethnic Sherbro, died in 1998. He has five children: Mariama, Abu, Michael, and Tejan Jr., and six grandchildren: Simone, Aidan, Abubakarr Sidique, Mariama, Nkoya, Tejan, and Zainab Kabbah. In 2008 he married Isata Jabbie Kabbah, who was about 40 years his junior.

President Kabbah, as chancellor of the University of Sierra Leone in Freetown holds an honorary doctor of laws degree of the university. In September 2001 Southern Connecticut State University in the United States awarded him with an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, in recognition of his effort to bring peace to his country. In July 2006, he received another honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, for his contribution to restoring peace in his country after a decade of civil war, and for working towards political and economic reconstruction following the end of the war.

Kabbah was a grand commander of the Order of the Republic of Sierra Leone.

• Aisha Labi. "Diamond In the Rough" Time magazine Sunday, August 18, 2002, accessed from Time on August 27, 2005

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.

• "Blair legacy in Sierra Leone".
• "Bio Data of The President of Sierra Leone". Archived from the original on October 17, 2007.