Valentine Strasser: Sad Story Of Ex-Sierra Leonean Head Of State Earning $46 As Pension

                       
He wears faded clothes, drinks palm wine and cheap gin, owns neither car nor house, lives with his mother and is widely feared to be losing his mind. He is Valentine Strasser, Sierra Leone’s head of state between 1992 and 1996. A washed up alcoholic and out-and-out shell of a man, Strasser, now 49, has the stoop of a much older man and earns $46 as pension.

Five days ago, an open letter to Mr. Ernest Bai Koromah, President of Sierra Leone, was published in Standard Press Times, one of the country’s major newspapers. Written by Donald Georgestone, the letter is the latest in a series of appeals to Koromah to intervene in Strasser’s desperate situation.

“The deteriorating condition of former Head of State of Sierra Leone and a former military officer, Valentine Strasser, who went to the battlefield to save the peaceful people of the Republic of Sierra Leone, is on the internet and it is seen all over the world. Mr. President, the whole world is waiting and watching to see if your government has respect for a former head of state of the country you are governing and a former military officer, who was shot in the line of duty,” the letter said.

Strasser, an army captain aged 25, became the world’s youngest head of state when he and six other soldiers led troops to overthrow President Joseph S. Momoh and established the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC). On seizing power, Strasser was hailed as a savior by many. He and his junta were known as the “boys” because they were mostly in their 20s. Strasser, however, was no saint.

            

He was widely criticized when his government executed 29 alleged coup plotters without trial. He promised to hand over to a democratically elected government in 1996, but was denied that opportunity by his second-in-command, Julius Maada Bio, who overthrew him in a bloodless coup in January of that year. Strasser was forced into exile and ended up in Britain, where the United Nations got him a scholarship to study Law at Warwick University. There were claims that the UN withdrew the scholarship after one year, but the university’s spokesperson at the time, Peter Dunn, said Strasser spent 18 months studying, after which he wrote to the institution that he had run out of money and was quitting school. He moved to London, where he worked as nightclub DJ, but soon found himself back in Sierra Leone. Unlike other former heads of state, he did not get a lavish reception of a mansion, generous pension and a retinue of bodyguards. A house he built for himself was burnt down by soldiers in 1999, forcing him to move to his mother’s house. The Sierra Leonean government has maintained that he is not entitled to any benefits beyond that which the army pays him because he took power by force.

Strasser was a colourful character. After taking over power, he declared St. Valentine’s Day an official holiday. At the 1993 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Limassol, Cyprus, Strasser arrived wearing a pair of sunglasses and a T-shirt with the words “Sunny Days in Cyprus”.

He currently spends most of his time, not in the company of former leaders, but with the common folk, with whom he plays draught and drinks palm wine.