Dr. Kanu, alias AK 11, is a successful businessman in the West African Aviation sector and politician. He was born in Lokomasama, Port Loko District, in Northern Sierra Leone. He spent most of his childhood in Port Loko town, now city and Makeni, where he attended primary and secondary schools.

AK 11 has a university education at the Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone and the University of Nottingham in the UK. Later in the 1980s, he lectured at both universities before joining full-time politics. He also served at the National Diamond Mining Company as Mining Engineer in Kono for many years.

The Good Old Days

Fast forward, in 2001, he was awarded symbol by the All Peoples Congress to contest for the Member of Parliament seat in his native Lokomasama, and he won. He was also endorsed by the party’s National Advisory Council (NAC) as party spokesman, thereby becoming the longest-serving political party spokesperson (16 years) in Sierra Leone’s multiparty democratic history.

In parliament, though faced with solid internal resistance, Kanu led a strategic campaign that made former president Dr Ernest Bai Koroma, leader of the APC and minority leader in parliament. Even when the battle for the APC flagbearship for the 2007 elections intensified and became bloodier, Dr Kanu became the most potent force behind his dear friend and long time associate, Dr Koroma, on to the time he won the penultimate court battle that saw him as the chairman and leader of the party in 2005

In 2007, when all seemed lost and pockets emptied, Dr Alpha Kanu became the most significant source of financial and moral contribution to the Koroma campaigns. It is forever recorded in the political archive of Sierra Leone that Alpha Kanu was the highest spender in getting his friend and party into State House in 2007.

In eleven years of Ernest Bai Koroma’s leadership, Dr. Alpha Kanu held the following portfolios:

1) Minister of Mines and Mineral Resources: 2009 – 2010;
2) Minister of Presidential and Public Affairs: 2010 – 2013;
3) Minister of Information and communication: 2013 – 2016;
4) Special Adviser to President and Ambassador at Large: 2016 – 2017;
5) Minister of Information and Communication: 2017 – 2018; and
6) Presidential Campaign Spokesman: 2018.

Based on the many assurances from higher quarters of the APC, including from Ernest Bai Koroma, Dr Kanu was the first to resign from public office and declared his intention to become president in 2018 under the banner of the APC. Ernest Bai Koroma as president accepted the decision and wished his dear friend well.

Dr Kanu ran the most effective and expensive APC party flagbearship campaign in 2018. He galvanised supports across the country and pledged, if elected or endorsed as standard-bearer by the National Advisory Council (NAC), to be the most prominent financier of his presidential campaign. In twelve months, he had already built a global campaign brand with massive support from friends and fans.

2018 Makeni Convention

Close aides to Dr Kanu said he was called and congratulated by former president Koroma even on the day of the Convention.

The rest, as they say, belongs to history; Dr Koroma unanimously appointed Dr Samura Kamara to lead the APC against the current president of the Republic, Dr Julius Maada Bio and the latter lost.

AK 11 was the only party executive member to be replaced in Makeni by former president Koroma and later appointed campaign spokesman, which he gladly accepted and served well.

Being a highly disciplined person, Dr Kanu has never criticised his friend who betrayed him, neither his friend criticised him openly. It has become more of a muted reaction than any open fight between the two prominent politicians. But as things stand, the coming episodes will be more intriguing.

Dr Kanu is known across the political landscape of Sierra Leone not just as a man of competence, humility and results but loyalty and patriotism. One of the reasons he is referred to as a man of all seasons. A cutting edge politician with an oratory that can’t be ignored even by his enemies.