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Dr. Samura Kamara, the All People’s Congress (APC) presidential candidate in the 2018 and 2023 elections, has said that he is not focusing on the upcoming 2028 general elections in Sierra Leone, citing the unresolved disputes of the June 2023 polls.
The declaration came in a highly anticipated national address delivered on his birthday, May 7, 2026, breaking a prolonged period of public silence that had sparked widespread speculation about his political future.
Addressing supporters who had noted his recent absence from the political arena, Dr. Kamara made his priorities unmistakably clear.
“I am not—and I repeat, I am not—on a 2028 elections agenda while 2023 remains unresolved. The will of the people is paramount,” Kamara stated in his address.
Kamara’s announcement effectively pauses any expectations that he would vie for the APC flagbearer position at the party’s upcoming National Delegates’ Conference scheduled for August. Instead, the former foreign minister doubled down on his campaign for “electoral justice,” a cause he has championed since his defeat to President Julius Maada Bio in the controversial June 24, 2023, multi-tier elections.
He described his recent retreat from the public eye as a deliberate and painful choice made at “great personal cost,” but vehemently denied rumors that he had abandoned his political base.
“Many have asked why. So many even have wondered whether I had left you behind. Let me be clear: I have not,” he assured citizens, noting that the demand for democratic legitimacy remains urgent until election fraud is criminalized and eliminated in Sierra Leone.
Kamara fiercely criticized the current electoral framework, warning against the dangers of political monopolization. “We must never accept a system in which the party in power becomes the referee, the player, and the scorekeeper all at once. That is not democracy; it is political dominance, and dominance in any form ultimately ends in grief,” he declared.
Kamara’s definitive pivot away from the 2028 race arrives against a backdrop of severe internal turbulence within the main opposition APC. Over the past two years, Kamara has found himself increasingly isolated by the party’s executive hierarchy.
In late 2024, the APC officially declared that Kamara was no longer the leader of the party, citing Section 47 of the new APC Constitution, which requires a defeated presidential candidate to vacate the position six months after election results are announced.
In September 2025, Kamara was replaced by former Finance Minister Dr. Kaifala Marah as the APC’s Chief Negotiator in the Tripartite Committee, a body formed under the Agreement for National Unity to review electoral systems.
Kamara has faced public criticism from within his own ranks, including a leaked 2025 audio recording in which former President Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma labeled him “unreliable and selfish,” accusing him of holding unapproved talks with President Bio and sponsoring negative social media campaigns against APC leadership.
Kamara was also notably absent from a high-level APC leadership engagement with flagbearer aspirants in early 2026, a gathering that included figures such as Mohamed Omodu Kamara “Jagaban”, Dr. Ibrahim Bangura and Freetown Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr.
Despite his alienation from the APC’s formal 2028 preparations, Dr. Kamara framed his ongoing crusade not as a partisan struggle, but as “the people’s cause.” He characterized the aftermath of the 2023 elections as a “landmark wound” that requires truth, justice, and moral courage to heal.
“If we truly seek transformative change, we must stop placing partisan politics, self-interest, sentiment, or regional and tribal excuses above the will of the people,” Kamara urged.
Kamara concluded his address with an appeal for national conscience and moral courage.
“We did not seek independence only to inherit new chains. We didn’t fight for the ballot so that it could become a battlefield,” he said. “Let us choose the restoration of our democracy. Let us refuse to lose our future.”
