Journalist Melvin Tejan Mansaray Alleges Ernest Bai Koroma Betrayed Samura Kamara
Alex Fefegula Harding Journalist and social commentator Melvin Tejan Mansaray has accused former President Ernest Bai Koroma and sections of the APC of failing Dr Samura Kamara when he needed the party’s support.
Mansaray made the allegation while discussing Kamara’s political career and the internal divisions that have persisted within the All People’s Congress following the 2023 presidential election.
Kamara served as the APC’s presidential candidate in both 2018 and 2023. Koroma, who led Sierra Leone from 2007 to 2018, selected Kamara as his successor and backed his candidacy for the 2018 election. The Carter Centre also records that Koroma endorsed Kamara as his successor after reaching the constitutional two-term limit.
Mansaray’s characterisation, however, remains an allegation rather than a fact. Available public accounts show that the relationship between the two men has become increasingly strained, with both sides associated with competing claims about loyalty and responsibility for the APC’s internal problems.
A leaked conversation reported in March 2025 allegedly featured Koroma criticising Kamara over contacts with President Julius Maada Bio after the 2023 election. Reports said Koroma questioned whether Kamara had consulted key APC figures before engaging the government. The authenticity and full context of the leaked recording remain important considerations when assessing the allegations.
Kamara has previously offered a different account of his relationship with Koroma. In a 2024 interview, he described their relationship as extending beyond politics, thanked Koroma for selecting him as the APC’s 2018 flagbearer and said he could not recall doing anything wrong to the former president.
The dispute has unfolded against a broader struggle within the APC over its response to the disputed 2023 presidential election. Kamara and the APC rejected the official results, while the government maintained that President Julius Maada Bio won the election.
The APC later presented its own analysis of results forms, claiming Kamara had secured 57.15% of the vote based on 70.2% of the results reconciliation forms it had collected. That figure represents the party’s own analysis and should not be treated as an independently verified election result.
The political fallout has also produced conflicting narratives over whether the APC supported Kamara sufficiently after the election and whether Kamara’s subsequent engagement with the government represented an attempt to resolve the political impasse or a departure from the party’s position.
Mansaray’s latest comments therefore add another layer to an already contentious debate: whether Kamara’s political setbacks resulted primarily from opposition outside the party or from divisions within the APC itself.
The question is particularly significant as the APC continues to navigate leadership disputes and prepare for its next political chapter. Recent reporting has documented disagreements among party figures over Kamara’s role and the direction of the party, although APC officials have rejected suggestions that such differences amount to a formal split.
For now, the claim that Koroma “betrayed” Kamara remains a political interpretation advanced by Mansaray, rather than a fact independently established by available evidence.