Winstanley Bankole Johnson is a Sierra Leonean politician and served as mayor of Freetown from July 2004 until he was sacked by his fellow members of the Freetown-city Council on January 17, 2008. Johnson was appointed mayor in July 2004 and is a member of the opposition All Peoples Congress. Johnson came to power as the APC swept 2004 municipal elections.
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Johnson denied Norman, a man accused of war crimes by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a civil burial service. He did this despite the fact that President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah said that Norman deserved such a burial because he had never been convicted of any charges, only accused. Johnson also upset fellow APC members of the city council, Civil Society activists and former Kamajors members. [1]
In October 2005, Johnson and the APC accused the federal government of not allocating enough funds to clean Freetown in an effort to discredit the party before the 2007 federal elections. [2]
Oswald Hanciles, a fellow Creole and writer and commentator, levelled charges of defamatory libel against Johnson for his comments concerning the funding of Freetown's cleaning operations. [3]
In March 2007, Johnson and the city council agreed to rename various prominent streets in Sierra Leone after prominent figures in the anti-slavery crusade. These people include: Olaudah Equiano, Thomas Peters (one of the founders of Freetown) and Sengeh Pieh (of The Amistad).