Sierra Leone Diaspora: How to help your candidate win the next elections

Two things to consider if you are in the diaspora and feeling electrified by your candidate for #SierraLeone’s next presidential elections.

1. You will need two plane tickets – Start saving now so you can buy two plane tickets to Sierra Leone; the first to go register with NEC when the time comes and the second to go vote.

2. Good Soup Na Money Kill Am – If you’re not going to raise money I mean serious cash dinero for your candidate you can just forget about the elections. Do you know how many people you have to bribe (I mean ‘traditionally handshake’) to get a win? You candidate has to ‘shake hands’  with the individuals who control the voting constituencies that will elect your him. He will need to ‘shake hands’ numerous times and in large amounts so that these constituency leaders may reach out to their people who will go to the polls and vote for the candidate.

If you are not well placed or interested in doing the above and all you will do is Facebook post or write on Salone news websites let me share a small statistic with you to give you some perspective.

Only 1.7% of Sierra Leone’s population have access to the internet. That is a little less than 100,000 people. This means that even if everyone on the internet supported your candidate after reading your post or write up you would still be very short of reaching the voting population.

It takes 50-55% of registered voters to win a national election in Sierra Leone so yeah if you intend to help your candidate win please prepare to do the necessary.