Reports further intimated that the former vice president will return to Sierra Leone after spending years in Ghana, to exercise his civic and constitutional rights in the forthcoming general elections.
Chief Samuel Sam Sumana returned to Sierra Leone from Accra on Thursday 13 April this year, after he was unceremoniously removed from the position of vice president of Sierra Leone.
Upon his return to his homeland, an official from the immigration department confiscated his diplomatic passport and was taken aback the manner in which he was treated and his diplomatic passport confiscated.
“I was shocked the way my diplomatic passport was taken away from me, since I am a decent and a forward looking politician, I peacefully handed over my diplomatic passport including other travelling documents to immigration officers at the Freetown international airport,’ the former V P stated.
After his diplomatic and other traveling documents were taken away from him, he was reported to have informed the immigration officers that his diplomatic passport was property of the State, but that the procedure used to take away the said documents from him was very crude and undiplomatic, as it was the responsibility of officials in Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to request for such documents.
He stated that his predecessors used to carry diplomatic passport, and even some former ministers and other state authorities still continue to carry such sensitive state documents, but that he was pleased the way his diplomatic passport was impounded.
Recently, Dr. Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella who was one of the leading contenders for the flagbearership of the Sierra Leone people’s party resigned from his party to join a new movement in the Sierra Leone’s political arena, called National Grand Coalition.
The former SLPP flagbearer aspirant resigned from the race along with several senior members of the party, including former vice president, Albert Joe Demby and former deputy governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, Momodu Fofanah.
Speaking at a news conference held in Freetown recently, Dr. Yumkella was unequivocal about his reasons for leaving the Sierra Leone Peoples Party and his aspiration to change the country for the betterment of every Sierra Leoneans.
‘I am energized and ready to join other people of like minds as part of a new force of hope and a coalition of progressiveness. I have been talking to several political movements and parties and at the same time trying to assess the best approach for my compatriots’Dr. Yumkella added.
Reports also disclosed that Chief Sam Sumana and Dr. Yumkella will merge and run the affairs of the National Grand Coalition, and for the past two decades, the phenomenon of the opposition coalition has attracted citizens across the Africa continent.
In 2000, a group of opposition parties in Senegal joined forces as the Sopi (or “Change”) alliance. Together, they defeated the then incumbent president, thereby ending forty years of one party system of governance in that country.
In Kenya various political parties formed the National Rainbow Coalition that kicked out the then government that governed Kenya since 1963.
It is no gainsaying that pre-electoral coalitions have changed governments in Senegal, as well as in Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Nigeria and recently in The Gambia.
This would be a broad and impressive coalition, bringing together many well-known faces and politicians who have electoral support outside of traditional opposition strongholds.
The million dollar question on the lips of many electorates is whether the national grand coalition will make history in Sierra Leone by defeating the All People’s Congress and the Sierra Leone Peoples Party?