First Lady of the Republic of Sierra Leone, Madam Fatima Bio, on the 8th February, 2023, addressed members of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP ) at the party’s 13th National Delegates Conference held at the Bintumani Conference Centre in Freetown.

Madam Bio started by expressing her gratitude to His Excellency, Maada Bio, for choosing her as his wife, notingthat without him, she wouldn’t have been the First Lady of Sierra Leone.

She highlighted and counted her developments had under the leadership of President Bio and the Sierra Leone People’s Party.

The first achievement the First Lady talked about is the bedrock initiative, “The Hands Off Our Girls,” campaign which she boasted of being “one of the most successful campaigns ever, not just for Sierra Leone but for the entire world (HOOG).”

This Hands Off Our Girls initiative, she said opened doors to many achievements for her;  she was selected  by the UN to serve as the Global Champion for Girls and was chosen by the African Union to represent sanitation in Africa.

Another development she made mention of is the distribution of food to every district in the nation during COVID-19 under the National Food Basket project.

“I provided remote villages, towns, areas, and cities in this nation with food worth $2 million. I made the decision to offer free sanitary pads to all girls in this nation through the president’s signature initiative, “Free Quality Education,” in order to encourage them to attend class regularly. The women’s wing of Julius Maada Bio helped us raise $680,000 in the first year of the free sanitary pad program, which we used to purchase all the pads for our girls,” Bio said.

“My office is once again providing girls across the country with free sanitary pads as part of the second phase this year. I argued that the Army Forces should have 300 women in the military. As a result of my initiative, infant and child mortality rates have fallen by 35%.Many men have stopped touching our girls as a result of the Hands Off Our Girls Initiative. I made history by becoming the first female first lady to address the UN General Assembly,” she added.

The first lady continued by mentioning the building of numerous mosques and the 34 military hospitals at a cost of at least $6 million which ls to serve as both medical facilities and training facilities from the United States of America.

She concluded by thanking her husband, the President of the Republic, for giving her such an opportunity to “excel on a global scale” and the people of this country for voting for her husband.