On 7 May 2026, the Head of Immigration at Freetown International Airport, Lungi, issued a circular to eight international airlines — ASKY, Ethiopian, Royal Air Maroc, Turkish, Brussels, Air Peace, Air Sierra Leone, and Kenya Airways — introducing new verification requirements for non-national passengers claiming residence in Sierra Leone.

Twenty-four hours later, his boss withdrew it.

Chief Immigration Officer Moses Tiffa Baio issued a formal directive on 8 May 2026 setting aside the previous notice, assuring airlines that nothing had changed. He thanked them for their cooperation. His directive superseded the earlier correspondence.

In bureaucratic language, that is a polite way of saying: someone acted without authority, alarmed eight international carriers, and had to be publicly corrected the next morning.

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A Symptom, Not the Disease

One might dismiss this as an administrative hiccup — a mid-level officer overstepping his brief, promptly corrected. Such things happen.

But at Lungi, they always happen.

Strip away the diplomatic language and Moses Tiffa Baio’s 8 May communication says three things. First, non-national residents must present a valid Biometric Residence Permit or visa — which has always been the law. Second, airlines should verify residence documentation before check-in — which is, in substance, exactly what the withdrawn circular demanded, repackaged without the panic. Third, and most critically, it reveals that the airport’s own Head of Immigration either did not know the current rules, or chose to change them without authorisation.

Either possibility is alarming.

If he did not know the rules, that is a catastrophic institutional coherence failure at the very unit responsible for controlling who enters and exits this country. If he knew and acted unilaterally, it speaks to a culture where airport officials believe they can improvise national immigration policy — and correct themselves the next morning with no accountability whatsoever.

Seventeen Years of Warnings

This episode does not exist in isolation.

In 2008, the Anti-Corruption Commission of Sierra Leone (ACC) convened the Airport Operations Review Committee to examine precisely this type of structural vulnerability at Lungi. Among its specific recommendations: mandatory rotation of all airport security, immigration, and customs personnel on a fixed cycle to prevent institutional capture.

Seventeen years later, that recommendation has never been publicly verified as implemented.

The same personnel configurations that enabled the 2009 Lungi Affair — in which 700 kilogrammes of cocaine were intercepted and fifteen convictions secured — persist today. In December 2024, 11.2 tonnes of cocaine were seized at the Port of Antwerp with Sierra Leone identified as the country of transit. Seventeen years. The same airport. The same vulnerability.

And now, in May 2026, the immigration command structure at that same airport cannot maintain a coherent policy position for twenty-four hours.

The Question No One Is Asking

Chief Immigration Officer Baio has reassured the airlines. The circular is withdrawn. Normal service is resumed.

But nobody has asked the obvious question: what prompted the 7 May circular in the first place?

Airport officials do not issue directives to eight international carriers without a trigger. Something happened — or was anticipated — that caused the Head of Immigration to act. That action may have been wrong in form, but it was not random. The hasty withdrawal and the careful reassurances suggest that whatever prompted the original notice, someone in authority decided it was better not to articulate it publicly.

Sierra Leoneans deserve to know what that trigger was.

A Gateway That Governs Itself

Freetown International Airport is not merely an airport. It is the single point through which this country’s international traffic — passengers, cargo, and currency — flows. It is also, by the evidence of nearly two decades, an institution that has consistently operated outside the reach of effective oversight.

The 7–8 May immigration episode is a small but revealing window into that reality. When the Head of Immigration at Sierra Leone’s only international gateway can issue a policy directive that is publicly withdrawn by his own superior within twenty-four hours — with no stated consequence, no public inquiry, no accountability — the institution has a problem that no reassuring circular can fix.

Lungi is not a local story. It is a West African narcotics transit point with a documented international footprint — and it is being run like a village checkpoint.

The rule of law is the rule of law.