By Chernor Alimamy Kamara
The gruesome discovery of the remains of Fourah Bay College (FBC) Lecturer Kabba Santigie Bangura at Sherbro Town outside Waterloo, 40 days after he went missing, has prompted calls by family members for his killers to be brought to book.
A relative of the late lecturer, Chernor Kamara yesterday told Politico that the late man’s elder brother had accompanied the Police to exhume the body reportedly buried inside what has been described as a shrine of a witch doctor who and his wife and five others are in Police custody as suspects.
Kamara urged the Pathologist to speedily carry out the postmortem so that Mr.Bangura’s remains could be laid to rest.
He said there are questions yet to be answered like who took the late man to the shrine and for what purpose was targeted.
According to an update from the Waterloo Police Division, an unidentified corpse was discovered on Sunday 16th April buried inside the shrine of the witch doctor named Ibrahim Kalokoh.
The release stated a group of people from Freetown identified the said corpse as Kabba Santigie Bangura, a lecturer at the Geography/Geology department, FBC, USL, who went missing last month.
It recalled that the Cyber Unit of Waterloo Police Station arrested two men in connection to the mysterious disappearance of the lecturer. Some of the personal belongings of the lecturer, including his T-shirt and trousers were also found inside the said shrine.
Also a statement from the Administration of the University of Sierra Leone (USL) on the 17th April, 2023 said it was appalled by the sad news of the discovery in a grave of the mortal remains of Mr. Bangura, who was a lecturer in the Department of Geography, FBC.
The statement expressed the administration’s strong and unequivocal condemnation of his killing and urged the police to get to the bottom of such tragic incident and to bring all those responsible to book. It expressed the administration’s sincere condolences to the bereaved family.
Members of the Academic Staff Association (ASA) of FBC also expressed concern over their missing colleague.
Speaking to Politico, the President of ASA Ambrose Rogers said that as lecturers, they are worried about their security on the campus, recalling another tragic incident that saw the killing of Mr. Arthur Edgar Smith formerly of the Language Studies Department on March 14 in 2021. Smith according to the Police then was found dead with his hands and legs tied and face covered inside his Lower Faculty apartment on campus.
“So for us at ASA, we are really very concerned because he worked that day and went. Remember, we had Arthur Smith who was murdered at his house at Lower Faculty and up to date we have not got an end to the story. We have always been complaining about security on campus,” he said.
He added that there are indications that Bangura was on Campus on Monday 6th March this year but that he did not turn up for lectures the following Tuesday and his family could also not tell his whereabouts since he left for a lecture that day.
“He could not show up on Tuesday, he could not show up on Thursday, some other colleagues needed him, tried to contact him no way. Got over to the wife, and the wife also said she had not seen him,” he said.
Bangura was declared missing by the Sierra Leone Police on the 6th March, 2023. His vehicle he was said to be driving at the time could not be traced until it was later discovered being driven by the prime suspect who is the witch doctor.
Copyright © 2023 Politico (19/04/23)
