By Alfred Koroma
The main opposition party, All Peoples Congress (APC) recently put out a press statement informing the public that former Vice President Samuel Sam-Sumana has been readmitted to the party.
The announcement came after APC’s National Advisory Committee (NAC) met with the former Vice President and his entourage at the party’s headquarters in Freetown.
“The discussions during the meeting were friendly and familial and former Vice President assured the meeting of his commitment to work with the Party henceforth,” APC said in a press statement.
But it appears Sam-Sumana’s camp is not pleased with the manner in which APC informed the public about the former President’s return to the Party.
They said the party failed to follow the agreement made at the NAC meeting.
In an interview with Brima Michael Turay, a Spokesman for Sam-Sumana,he said the former Vice President is returning to APC ‘unconditionally,’ the agreed condition under which Sam-Sumana and his camp are returning to the party.
It was also agreed that announcement about the former Vice President’s return to APC was to be made public only in a special event organized by a special committee, where all APC District Chair Persons would be present.
According to Turay, no official statement was supposed to have come out from either APC or Sam-Sumana’s camp unless the committee was setup and a special program organized to inform the public and the APC District Chairpersons the reasons the Party took the decision to bring back Sam-Sumana ‘unconditionally.’
“But it is unfortunate that Lansana Dumbuya who put the press release out never mentioned the word ‘unconditionally’ as it was agreed in the NAC meeting,” Turay said. “To us, we are back in the APC unconditionally.”
The APC leadership expelled Sam-Sumana from the party in 2015, after accusing him of flaming violence, and trying to form a breakaway party in Kono.
Following the party’s decision, Sam-Sumana who was serving as Vice President of Sierra Leone was sacked from his job. A statement from the then President’s office says, the Vice-President was sacked for ‘abandoning his duty and seeking political asylum in the US Embassy.
Sam-Sumana denied the allegations and regarded his sacking as unconstitutional, but the country’s Supreme Court ruled that the decision of the former President, Ernest Bai Koroma to sack his Vice was constitutional.
However the ECOWAS Court (West Africa’s regional Court) ruled the decision was illegal and ordered the then government to pay his reparations.
The former Vice President later formed the Coalition 4 Change (C4C) Party, under which he ran for President in 2018. He reconciled with his former party, the main opposition All People’s Congress (APC) last year with intention of running for President under the party but was disqualified from contesting for its flagbearer position
