By Obadiah D. Vanjahkollie
Before Senator Dillon’s supporters rush to dismiss this as politics as usual, one fact deserves sober attention: political offices collapse from within long before the public takes notice. Elections are lost, promises break, and credibility erodes not first on radio talk shows, but in private offices where trust either holds or crumbles.
When a senator’s own aides begin leaving in clusters, they are not merely seeking new jobs; they are rendering judgment. Ignoring such signals has never saved a political career.
Here is the fact:
Between 2020 and 2025, at least six senior staff members in key and strategic positions resigned from Dillon’s office. Staff turnover is common in politics; what is uncommon is a sustained pattern of coordinated departures by trusted aides, repeatedly connected to concerns about leadership conduct.
This is not a matter of numbers; it is a matter of patterns and what they reveal. Most notably, four major resignations occurred within a single year, 2021, three of which fell in August alone. Leadership experts call such clustering a red flag for internal collapse.
It often signals institutional strain, leadership dysfunction, or a collapse of internal confidence. In a country where stable employment is hard to find, professionals do not abandon positions of influence lightly. When they do, the environment they are leaving, and what it says about internal culture, demands scrutiny.
These exits did not unfold amid quiet normalcy. No! They unfolded under a relentless glare of public scrutiny, amid repeated revelations of dishonesty, weak discipline, hypocrisy, and deceit.
These are not retrospective inventions of critics but traceable, publicly documented events and statements.
The resignations include: Jacob Jallah, staff member (resigned October 19, 2020); Aaron Koffa Chea, Coordinator for Youth and Students Affairs (resigned February 23, 2021); Martin S. Kollah, Chief of Staff (resigned August 18, 2021); Abel Nyumah Plackie, Political Officer (resigned August 30, 2021); Ulysses Barchue, Administrative Assistant (resigned August 30, 2021); and Lasana S. Kanneh, Political Advisor (resigned November 2025). This is not simply a record of turnover; it is a timeline of institutional fracture.
While not every resignation spelled out its cause, one case articulated what many others implied in real sense. Ulysses Barchue resigned citing “opprobrium,” public disgrace, following Senator Dillon’s denial of traveling business class on national radio, a claim later contradicted by evidence presented by the FrontPage Africa.
The issue was never about airfare; it was about truthfulness under pressure. Barchue’s resignation, therefore, was more than an act of protest, it was an indictment of a leadership culture in which denial preceded accountability and truth followed exposure. His decision provided, in explicit terms, what the pattern of earlier resignations had intimated: a breakdown of trust, integrity, and internal coherence at the heart of the office.
Taken individually, these resignations might be excused as personal choice. Taken together, and especially when concentrated in one year, they signal a deeper crisis: a leadership style that alienates, rather than consolidates, capable people.
Political offices are not judged by rhetoric on the radio, but by institutional discipline and the quality of individuals who choose to stand behind the leader. When that inner circle repeatedly fractures, the verdict on leadership is already forming. We have raised these concerns not out of animosity toward Dillon but out of commitment to integrity in public service. This is not hatred of a man; it is rejection of conduct.
We reject poor character disguised as courage, disorder masked as advocacy, and inconsistency paraded as principle. On that measure, Dillon’s leadership record remains deeply troubling, and serves as a warning long overdue for acknowledgment.
