Fatima Bio: Sierra Leone first lady defends renting UK council flat
An African first lady insists she has “not committed any crime” by continuing to rent a social housing flat in the UK nearly a decade after she left London.
Fatima Bio, the wife of Sierra Leone President Julius Bio, came under fire last year after The Times revealed the former actress was still the tenant of a council flat in south London — despite having left the country in 2018 when her husband was elected.
Ms Bio and her husband subsequently relocated to the presidential mansion in the hills above the capital Freetown, and since 2018 have accumulated a sprawling property portfolio in Gambia, according to a 2025 investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
The Times report suggested Ms Bio appeared to be in breach of council housing regulations, which require that the property be a tenant’s sole or principal residence.
Records showed Ms Bio had registered to vote at the two-bedroom flat several times since 2009, and Southwark Council confirmed the flat has had the same tenant since 2007, suggesting she continues to occupy the ratepayer-subsidised lease.
Social housing in the UK is owned by councils or charities and rented at below-market rates to applicants who meet certain criteria. Around four million UK households, or 16 per cent of the total, live in social housing.
More than 1.3 million UK households are currently on a waitlist for social housing, but only 12,198 were built last year, according to a report last month from housing charity Shelter, which noted that at the current rate it would take 119 years to clear the backlog.
According to The Times, the average waiting time for a three-bedroom council home in Southwark was more than five years, with more than 18,000 households on the waiting list. The average monthly council rent for a two-bedroom flat in Southwark was about £560 ($1075) at the time of the report, less than a third of the average private market rate of £2232 ($4283).
Speaking to the BBC in May, the first lady defended keeping her London flat.
“My children are all British citizens,” she said. “I’m paying for my council house myself. I have not committed any crime.”
Southwark Council told the broadcaster that it does not comment on individual tenancies but “if there is doubt that tenants are meeting the obligations in their tenancy agreement, we carry out regular checks and investigations to determine that those obligations are being met”.
Ms Bio was born in Sierra Leone but came to the UK as an asylum seeker in 1996 at the age of 16 to escape an arranged marriage.
She pursued a career in modelling and acting before meeting her husband in London in 2012.
Mr Bio, a former military officer who was involved in a series of coups in the 1990s during Sierra Leone’s civil wars, was fundraising for his first presidential run among London’s Sierra Leonean diaspora.
They married in 2013 and lived at the Southwark flat until his election victory.
When journalists from The Times and OCCRP visited the flat last year, they found letters addressed to the presidential couple deposited on the stairs leading to their apartment. Records showed their daughter, Tigda Soley, was registered to vote at the address in 2023.
Neighbours told The Times that Ms Bio visited the flat sporadically. “Last year in October or November, she came with these executive cars, black Mazdas, and entered the house,” one said.
One neighbour said that Ms Soley occasionally visited the property to collect mail, and another suggested she stayed at the property when visiting London for social outings.
In its statement to The Times last year, Southwark Council insisted “social housing tenants have a right to stay in their homes regardless of income, unless they fail to meet the obligations in their tenancy agreement”.
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