FREETOWN, 29th October 2026 – Former Vice President Chief Samuel Sam-Sumana has finally opened up on the real reason behind his fallout with his former boss, ex-President Ernest Bai Koroma, that led to his expulsion from the All People’s Congress (APC) and his controversial sacking as Vice President of Sierra Leone.
Speaking on AYV’s State of The Nation programme with journalist Umaru Fofana, Sam-Sumana was asked point-blank: What went wrong between you and your boss at the time?
The former VP, who was the country’s youngest elected Vice President when the APC won in 2007, said while he and President Koroma worked well together to deliver on their mandate, there were individuals within the circle who were bent on bringing him down.
“I’m very much grateful to God Almighty and to thank the people of Sierra Leone to have given me the mandate to serve as our first time youngest Vice President elected in 2007 under the leadership of President Ernest Bai Koroma,” Sam-Sumana recalled.
“We worked very well and our politics being what it is there are ups and down but we were able to sail through. Remember we have a mandate. It is not our individual issues. The responsibility is to make Sierra Leone better so we have to put our personal egos or personal issues aside and to work for the state.”
He said despite the distractions and internal fights, the first five years of the Koroma administration delivered development across the country.
“You saw what happened in those first five years… there were developments in this country right across the country. So we had to look at the bigger picture unlike the obstruction or the distractions,” he said.
The Lies That Led to Expulsion
On his 2012 re-election and subsequent removal in 2015, Sam-Sumana said the allegations that he abandoned the party, engaged in anti-party activities, falsified his education and religious faith were all fabricated.
He alleged that those who pushed for his expulsion later confessed before the highest decision-making body of the party.
“You don’t only listen to the spoken words but you listen to the unspoken words. There are individuals who were bent on bringing me down,” he told Umaru Fofana.
“Remember… these individuals at the end of the day confessed before the entire National Advisory Committee which is the National Advisory Committee of the APC and said they lied, all that they said about Chief Sam-Sumana they lied – namely that you are guilty of anti-party activity, that you abandoned party, your education, your faith.”
He said the confession came too late to reverse the damage.
“But it was so late that couldn’t turn the clock back. That was when I tried to come back to the party together with my conversations to the President himself then and the Chairman and Leader of the party after he was out of office and we discussed it.”
Sam-Sumana was expelled from the APC in 2015 and sacked as Vice President on 17th March 2015 – a decision that sparked a constitutional crisis, with cases filed at the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone and later at the ECOWAS Court, which ruled in his favour in 2017.
The clip, released from his official media archive with the theme “Peace – Unity – National Cohesion”* and his slogan *”Sierra Leone First, Peace Always,” is the latest in a series of interventions by the former VP and now Global Peace Ambassador as the country heads toward the 2028 elections.
