Questions are being raised over the whereabouts of the Speaker of Sierra Leone’s Parliament, Rt. Hon. Segepoh Solomon Thomas, after he failed to appear before the Supreme Court on Wednesday during a major constitutional case in which he is a key defendant. His lawyer, Hon. Hindolo Gevao Esq., told the Court that the Speaker was unable to attend because he was suffering from diarrhoea and was therefore absent on medical grounds.
The development has now attracted renewed public scrutiny following claims circulating that the Speaker was spotted in neighbouring Guinea around the same period. If the Guinea sighting is confirmed, it raises an obvious question: was the Speaker genuinely unavailable because of illness, or was he simply unavailable for the court proceedings? At present, the Guinea sighting has not been independently verified, and the Speaker’s lawyer’s statement in court remains the documented explanation for his absence.
The timing is particularly sensitive because the Supreme Court hearing concerns the controversial Constitutional Amendment Bill, 2025, whose passage in Parliament has generated a major constitutional dispute. The applicants are challenging, among other things, whether Parliament complied with the constitutional requirement for the necessary voting threshold. The Speaker is directly connected to the dispute because he presided over the parliamentary proceedings in which the Bill was passed.
This is therefore not an ordinary court appearance that can simply be brushed aside. The matter goes to the heart of constitutional governance, parliamentary procedure and the interpretation of Sierra Leone’s supreme law. The Speaker himself had previously ruled that a simple majority could apply to the Bill, while also referring the constitutional question to the Supreme Court for an opinion. His absence at the very hearing dealing with the controversy inevitably places greater importance on the explanation given to the Court.
The central issue now is not whether a public official can fall sick — of course, anyone can. The issue is consistency, transparency and accountability. If the Speaker was medically unfit to attend court, the public deserves to understand the circumstances clearly. If he was in Guinea for an unrelated reason, that too should be explained. And if the reported sighting in Guinea is inaccurate, a clear denial would help settle the matter. Until independently verified evidence emerges, however, the claim should remain a claim rather than a proven fact.
For many Sierra Leoneans, the question is simple: who is fooling who? The Supreme Court is being asked to determine questions of constitutional importance, while the principal parliamentary actor in the controversy was absent on medical grounds. In such circumstances, transparency is not a luxury. It is essential to maintaining public confidence in Parliament, the courts and the constitutional process itself.
