President Julius Maada Bio is under the spotlight again for bashing at the sub-regional bloc, ECOWAS (Economic Community Of West African States) following a request to release former President Ernest Bai Koroma. Acting under Bio’s directives, Foreign Affairs Minister, Timothy Kabba has turned down ECOWAS’s request to allow the ex-President stay in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.
Kabba says the request is a unilateral decision and falls outside the terms of a recent agreement between Bio and the two ECOWAS leaders.
“The letter does reflect the meeting His Excellency President Julius Maada Bio held recently in Freetown with his colleague West African leaders,” the Foreign Minister challenged ECOWAS. The request was made after a brief visit to Sierra Leone by the Ghanian and Senegalese Presidents Nana Akufor-Addo and Macky Sall in the face of socio-political and economic crisis in the ECOWAS.
A letter signed by President of the ECOWAS Commission, Omar Allieu Touray states that former Sierra Leonean President should be temporally relocated to Nigeria to ease the country’s political tension.
“I am pleased to inform your Excellency that as part of the agreement reached during the mission, the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has offered to host His Excellency, Ernest Bai Koroma, former President of Sierra Leone in Abuja on a temporary basis,” the ECOWAS letter reads in part adding that Koroma has accepted the offer.
The ECOWAS correspondence also points out that once Koroma leaves Sierra Leone, government will discontinue all legal and administrative procedures against him, disburse benefits to him, secure his residences in various locations across the country and refund medical and travel expenses.
According to the letter, many Sierra Leoneans are sure and certain that an agreement to release the former President must have been reached between President Julius Maada Bio and ECOWAS during the visit of the two West African leaders.
However Bio, over the years, has gained fame for taking part in agreements which he is not willing to implement with hope that he would get away with it.
The coming of ECOWAS officials to Sierra Leone followed the arrest and detention of former President Ernest Bai Koroma over a widely trumpeted coup attempt.
He faces a four count of treason-related charges.
The coup which took place a day before the Election Investigation Committee was supposed to sit saw the arrest and brutal murders of current and former aides linked to the ex-President.
According to reports, President Bio and his cabal of SLPP politicians are never comfortable with the presence of former President Ernest Bai Koroma.
Bio, sources say, have been making complaints to ECOWAS about the former President who, he said, was still posing as President of Sierra Leone. Key SLPP politicians were also not happy with the onus bestowed on Ernest Koroma as AU/ECOWAS Chief Elections Observer, the first former Sierra Leonean President to be so honoured.
In such capacity, Koroma has been observing elections in such African countries as Namibia, Togo, Zambia, Kenya, Nigeria among others.
Sierra Leone’s former President was even invited by the American government just to witness the 2020 elections in the greatest country in the world. Although he has left the political stage, Koroma is still weighty and can mobilise international action against the current government.
Sierra Leoneans saw tough actions taken by members of the international community after a press release was issued by office of the former President urging inter-governmental bodies to make their voices heard in Sierra Leone’s post-election political crisis.
He is also on record to have neutralised threats by President Bio using the courts to stop an APC (All People’s Congress) national delegates’ conference in which Dr Samura Kamara emerged flag-bearer and Presidential candidate for June 24, 2023 elections.
News agencies who share their findings with Nightwatch indicated that the former President was in Nigeria at that time to observe the elections through which Ahmed Bola Tinubu became President.
Certianly, such actions would not go down well with President Bio whose ambition for a second term is one without. As Koroma is still on the way, the only option open to government is to get rid of the former President, one of the key submissions of Bio’s lawyers at the defunct commissions of inquiry.
State counsels have always argued that the former President should be banned from public life till death just to ensure that Bio continues to lord it over opposition politicians. The ongoing treason trial could be one way to hit hard the ex-President, a move seen by many as a dangerous precedent for Sierra Leone.
A long-standing and famous lawyer in Sierra Leone, Joseph Fitzgerald Kamara also shares such views, but ECOWAS currently stands with the former President, a man they believe to be innocent of all charges levied against him.
Brenthurst Foundation an association of top former African leaders including Nigeria’s President, Olusegun Obassanjo recently warned President Bio against arresting and detaining Ernest Koroma owing to dangerous consequences.
The African leaders request Bio to see the ex-Head of State as a resource person in the state governance project and not a coupist after ruling for two terms.
The fall out between ECOWAS and President Julius Maada Bio is something to worry about as Sierra Leone is currently in the bad books of the international community (the US, UK, France, Germany, EU, Commonwealth, African Union among others) owing to election rigging.
The United States was the first to resort to tough actions against the Bio regime after it held funding and imposed travel ban on its officials until stolen votes are returned.
The United States recently deprived the Bio regime of the much-needed US$750m under the Millenium Challenge Cooperation (MCC) compact as Bio failed to comply with the requirements of free and fair elections.
Former American Ambassador, David Reimer said in a radio interview that Sierra Leone passed most of the government benchmarks but failed on the election benchmark which cost the country such a huge grant.
Reimer was also blunt to say that the incoming Ambassador had his personal lifestyle but would dare not go against America’s stance towards Sierra Leone after the elections.
The new Ambassador, David Hunt is also treading on the same path calling on government not to walk away from the dialogue although the treason is being investigated. World Bank of which the US is the greatest financier also withheld US$250m swelling the total amount to US$1bn which would have healed Sierra Leone’s ailing economy.
UK also took similar actions by cutting off cooperation with Sierra Leone government pending the outcome of the election probe. UK High Commissioner, Lisa Chesney has been subjecting government to pressure so that it could comply with the provisions of the October 18, 2023 communique, a product of a peace deal brokered by the Commonwealth, African Union and ECOWAS following the June post-election stalemate between the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party and the main opposition, All People’s Congress.
EU also has adopted measures that are tightening the Bio regime by withholding the usual donor support which Sierra Leone has been benefitting from the inter-governmental agency.
The European body has been quite supportive of Sierra Leone by way of funding budget deficits and contributing to the country’s infrastructure. EU could take a big credit for most of Sierra Leone’s good roads, bridges and even energy which it has been supporting over the years.
It is believed that once UK, US, France, Germany, UN, EU and other bodies ignore Bio, the world would also isolate him as ECOWAS has done.