Sierra Leone’s incumbent President, Dr Julius Maada Bio, has accused the nation’s former president during the APC regime, Dr Ernest Bai Koroma, of inciting violence ahead of the elections.

President Bio in delivering his campaign messages to the Koya Chiefdom in Masiaka expresses his disappointment over violence ahead of the 2023 elections, stating that Former President Koroma is the orchestrator.

“I call on all the paramount chiefs in the Northern Region to advise him to stay off from inciting violence and be a statesman. He has been financing some APC (All People’s Congress) supporters to stage protests, murder police officers and destroy public properties. He has also been financing a particular APC supporter in Holland to incite bloody protests and pelt motherly invectives on our women in this country,” said Bio.

He disclosed that he has heard that the current APC presidential candidate, Dr. Samura Kamara, has called on the Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL), Mohamed Konneh, to resign within 72 hours, recalling that when he contested elections in 2012 and 2018, the two ECSL Chairmen were appointed by the then APC-led government but he did not ask them to resign.

He reminded his audience that it was APC’s bad governance that ignited the civil war in 1991 which destroyed lives and properties, adding that when he heard and saw the APC inciting and perpetrating violence and bloody protests in the country, he was very mad about it because he fought the war alongside some of his colleagues and tasted the bitterness of it.