Bailor Barrie

Alhaji Mohamed Bailor Barrie, simply referred to as Bailor Barrie or M.B. Barrie (1934 – 1989) was a Sierra Leonean businessman, activist and philanthropist. He hailed from Sierra Leone's northern district of Koinadugu and was a member of the Fula ethnic group of which he later became a well known activist and leader. Barrie became prominent in Sierra Leone's post colonial economic environment in the 1970s as the first Fula to venture into the European-Lebanese dominated import business of motor vehicles. He became very successful in the booming diamond mining and trading industry in the 1970s and 1980s, which established him as one of Sierra Leone's most successful businessmen, even without a standard level of education. Then president of Sierra Leone Siaka Stevens was using Barrie's success to defend himself against critics attacking him for ignoring the country's crumbling educational sector, by claiming that one could be successful like Barrie without any standard level of education. Barrie died in a road accident in 1989 on his way from Kenema, in the eastern part of Sierra Leone. Provided by Wikipedia