Mohamed Kroma: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 12 May 2026:
On 8 May 2026, the Sierra Leone Civil Aviation Authority (SLCAA), in collaboration with the Presidential Hajj Task Force, convened a strategic coordination meeting at Freetown International Airport, Lungi, to strengthen preparedness for the 2026 Hajj operations. Sierra Leonean pilgrims are expected to depart for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on 15, 16, and 18 May 2026.
The SLCAA inspected the pilgrims’ holding center, reviewed passenger processing arrangements, crowd management systems, and safety and security procedures. Officials reaffirmed their commitment to international best practices and operational excellence.
It was, by all accounts, a thorough and professional exercise. One question, however, remains conspicuously unanswered: who is managing the immigration desk?
The Inconvenient Timing
The SLCAA’s Hajj readiness meeting took place on the very same day — 8 May 2026 — that Chief Immigration Officer Moses Tiffa Baio was issuing a formal directive to eight international airlines, withdrawing a circular his own subordinate had issued just twenty-four hours earlier.
That circular, issued on 7 May 2026 by the Head of Immigration at Lungi, had introduced new verification requirements for non-national passengers claiming residence in Sierra Leone. It caused immediate alarm across ASKY Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, Royal Air Maroc, Turkish Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Air Peace, Air Sierra Leone, and Kenya Airways.
By 8 May, Chief Immigration Officer Baio was in damage control — assuring airlines that nothing had changed, thanking them for their cooperation, and formally superseding his subordinate’s communication.
In one wing of the airport: strategic readiness meetings, board inspections, and commitments to International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standards.
In another: a public reversal of immigration policy, with no explanation, no accountability, and no stated consequence. This is the same airport. The same day.
Pilgrims Deserve Better Than PR
Hundreds of Sierra Leonean pilgrims — many of them elderly, many travelling internationally for the first and only time in their lives — will pass through Lungi’s immigration checkpoint on 15, 16, and 18 May.
They will carry their Biometric Residence Permits, their visas, their documentation. They will join queues managed by the same immigration unit that, last week, could not maintain a coherent policy position for twenty-four hours.
The SLCAA’s commitment to passenger facilitation and international standards is noted and welcome. But passenger facilitation does not begin at the boarding gate. It begins at immigration — and the evidence of 7-8 May suggests that the immigration function at Lungi operates on its own terms, outside the reach of the coordinated readiness the SLCAA is projecting.
No strategic meeting fixes that. No press release closes that gap.
The Structural Problem
This is not, ultimately, about the Hajj. It is about the fundamental governance architecture of Sierra Leone’s only international gateway.
In 2008, the Anti-Corruption Commission of Sierra Leone (ACC) convened the Airport Operations Review Committee, which identified precisely this type of fragmented authority as a structural vulnerability. Its recommendations — mandatory personnel rotation, unified command protocols, independent oversight — were never publicly verified as implemented.
Seventeen years later, different units at the same airport are operating in parallel universes: one preparing briefings for pilgrims, another withdrawing immigration circulars from international airlines.
The SLCAA cannot be held responsible for the immigration function — that falls under a separate authority. But that is precisely the problem. When no single body holds coherent authority over what happens at Lungi’s checkpoints, the result is exactly what Sierra Leone witnessed on 7-8 May: improvised policy, public contradiction, and institutional embarrassment at the country’s front door.
Pilgrims deserve a gateway that works. So does every other traveller who passes through Freetown International Airport. Coordination meetings are necessary. But they are not sufficient.
The rule of law is the rule of law.
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