Membership, Loyalty and the Flag – Inside the Musa Tarawally–SLPP Dispute
In the space of a few days in mid-September 2026, the Sierra Leone People’s Party turned a long-simmering question about one of its most prominent aspirants into a public confrontation. Letters, membership cards, a resignation note from 2018, a public notice to businesses, and a split inside another party have all surfaced.
At the centre is Hon. Alhaji Musa Tarawally, Grand Chief Patron, national delegate and declared 2028 flagbearer hopeful — and the party’s National Chairman, Jimmy Batilo Songa.The dispute is not only about one man’s status. It tests how the ruling party handles internal challenge, how it reads its own constitution, and whether the Political Parties Regulation Commission will be asked to do what it recently did in a similar case involving former Vice President Samuel Sam-Sumana and the APC.
A long and winding political path
Tarawally is a Moyamba District politician with mixed Mende, Mandingo and other regional family ties. He rose through the SLPP Young Generation in the 1990s, went into exile with Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, served as an SLPP Member of Parliament from 2002 to 2007, and was Moyamba District chairman. After the SLPP lost power in 2007 he accepted senior posts in the APC government of Ernest Bai Koroma: Resident Minister South, Minister of Internal Affairs, and Minister of Lands. Those years still divide opinion. Supporters say he protected SLPP interests from inside; critics call it defection.
In 2018 he ran for president on the Citizens Democratic Party (CDP) ticket and received a small share of the vote. In the runoff he backed Julius Maada Bio. He has since presented himself as a returned SLPP loyalist, Grand Chief Patron and major financial contributor to party offices and campaigns. He has also been a visible critic of some current party practices, including the naming of a Kono hall after the First Lady and alleged ritual oath-taking in the east.
That history — SLPP, APC cabinet, CDP ticket, back to SLPP — is the backdrop against which the current letters are being read.
The SLPP’s case
On 17 September, Chairman Songa wrote to Tarawally (addressed care of the CDP secretariat) citing a 3 September letter from CDP National Secretary General Ibrahim Sorie Sesay. That letter stated that Tarawally “has not yet submitted a resignation” and “remains a member of the CDP.” Songa invoked Article 6(3a) of the SLPP constitution, which describes the National Chairman as administrative head of the party worldwide, and directed Tarawally to stop using the SLPP logo, stop presenting himself as a member, and stop holding himself out as a flagbearer aspirant.
Two days later the National Publicity Secretary, Moses Sellu Mambu, issued a public notice. It told SLPP executives, members, the public and the business community not to transact or do official business with Tarawally in the name of the SLPP unless expressly authorised. The notice was framed as protection of the party’s name and structures.
The SLPP’s position is straightforward: dual membership is incompatible with the party’s rules and with the fact that Tarawally once contested a presidential election under another banner. The CDP Secretary General’s letter, in this view, settled the factual question.
Tarawally’s reply and the paper trail
Tarawally’s 18 September letter to Songa, marked “strictly without prejudice,” rejects the allegation as untruthful and accuses the Chairman of cyber-bullying and acting outside the constitution. He says he formally resigned from the CDP on 15 June 2018 in a letter that has now been circulated, has paid no CDP dues and attended no CDP activities since, and is a fully paid-up SLPP member through 2028.
He attached an SLPP membership card (No. 0050681, Constituency 096, Moyamba) showing a large contribution recorded in the tens of millions of leones, plus monthly subscription booklets with entries running through 2026, 2027 and into 2028. He notes that he voted as a credentialed delegate at the 2025 National Delegates Conference that elected Songa himself.
On procedure he argues that Article 6(3a) makes the Chairman an administrator, not a disciplinary judge. Expulsion or a ban on seeking the flag, he says, must go through the Disciplinary Committee and the National Executive Council, with a right to be heard. None of that happened. He also points to a logical problem: if he was not a member in 2025, his vote at the convention that produced the current leadership would be invalid.
He has instructed lawyers to consider action under the Cyber Security and Cyber Crimes Act 2021, civil defamation and constitutional rights of association.
The CDP is not speaking with one voice
The same week, four CDP regional chairmen — Issa Turay (North), Joseph E. Kobby (South), Solution S. Brown (East) and Mohamed Bangura (West) — issued a statement dated 18 September. They said Tarawally resigned on 15 June 2018 to the then Secretary General, Victor O. King (now CDP National Chairman). They said they witnessed his public return to the SLPP and his support for Bio at Bo Coronation Field during the 2018 runoff. They accused the current Secretary General of writing to the SLPP without consulting them or the National Chairman, and of using an outdated letterhead whose address is now a private house. They declared that Tarawally is not a CDP member.
The result is an intra-CDP contradiction: the National Secretary General’s letter versus the regional chairmen and, according to them, the National Chairman.
The Sam-Sumana precedent
The Political Parties Regulation Commission has recently dealt with a comparable membership-transition case. Former Vice President Samuel Sam-Sumana was expelled from the APC in 2015, led the Coalition for Change in 2018, and in December 2019 the C4C itself announced that he had resigned to rejoin the APC. A December 2025 PPRC ruling later confirmed that his APC readmission took effect in September 2020 and that he met the five-year continuous-membership rule for the APC flag. The Commission treated the earlier C4C period as closed once the original party had announced the resignation and the receiving party had acted.
Tarawally’s camp will likely argue that his 2018 resignation letter and the CDP regional chairmen’s statement put him in a similar position. The SLPP leadership is treating a current CDP Secretary General letter as sufficient to bar him. Whether the PPRC, if asked, would treat the two cases alike is an open question. The Commission has not issued a public ruling on Tarawally.
What is at stake
The SLPP constitution sets a high bar for flagbearer eligibility, including Distinguished Grand Chief Patron status held for a qualifying period and undivided party membership. The 2028 succession race is already crowded in perception if not yet in formal nominations. A public ban on one well-funded, well-travelled aspirant with grassroots endorsements from constituency secretaries changes the internal balance — or at least the atmosphere.
For the party, the risk is appearing to use administrative power to sideline a critic rather than following its own disciplinary process. For Tarawally, the risk is that membership cards and a 2018 letter may not outweigh a sitting Chairman’s directive and a public notice that warns businesses away from him.
Sierra Leone’s 1991 Constitution does not recognise dual party membership in the sense relevant to holding office under one party’s symbol. Both sides cite that principle. They disagree on the facts of whether Tarawally left the CDP.
As of 19 September 2026 the documents are public, the letters have been copied to the PPRC and other parties, and neither side has withdrawn. The next move — NEC meeting, disciplinary hearing, PPRC complaint, or court — will decide whether this remains a party quarrel or becomes a test case for how Sierra Leone’s parties police their own boundaries.