Koroma Returns After Charges Dropped
Ernest Bai Koroma landed at Lungi International Airport on Sunday after more than two years in Nigeria, ending a stretch that began with treason charges after the November 2023 unrest in Freetown and closed through regional diplomacy rather than a trial.
The 72-year-old former president stepped off the aircraft with Nigeria’s foreign minister, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, and former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo. Sierra Leone’s foreign minister, Mohamed Rahman Swarray, and officials from Koroma’s All People’s Congress were waiting. “Today I have come back home and I’m happy,” he told reporters.
President Bola Tinubu had instructed Odumegwu-Ojukwu to escort him, Nigeria’s foreign ministry said, presenting the trip as the last stage of an ECOWAS-backed confidence-building effort that started when Koroma left Freetown in January 2024. The minister said those talks had eased the climate between President Julius Maada Bio and his predecessor and that Koroma’s conduct in exile showed restraint. Goodluck Jonathan saw him off earlier on Sunday at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, calling Nigeria a “home away from home” and saying quiet contacts with Freetown had made a dignified return possible.
Koroma led Sierra Leone from 2007 to 2018. On 26 November 2023 armed men attacked barracks and prisons in the capital. The Bio government called it a coup attempt. At least 21 people were killed and hundreds of prisoners escaped.
Prosecutors later charged Koroma with treason, concealment of treason and related offences. He denied any part in the violence; his lawyers called the case political. A High Court allowed him three months in Nigeria for medical care, after which he left on 19 January 2024 on a Nigerian presidential jet and stayed far beyond that window while talks continued.
In mid-July the attorney-general discontinued the prosecution, discharged his bail and said he was free to come home. The government offered no detailed public reason. Vice-President Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh announced the homecoming on Friday in Makeni, Koroma’s stronghold, and framed it as a gesture of cohesion.
Nigeria’s intervention continues its tradition of West African mediation, echoing its past peacekeeping efforts in Sierra Leone. Both nations credit the diplomacy with defusing regional tensions without further conflict. Former President Ernest Bai Koroma has returned to Freetown, officially resolving a major legal dispute between the ruling SLPP and the opposition APC. However, with the 2028 elections approaching, Sierra Leone’s stability depends on whether this paperwork translates into a lasting political truce.
