Sierra Leone’s Ex-President Returns After Two Years in Exile Thanks To ECOWAS

Former Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma returned to Sierra Leone for the first time since leaving the country in January 2024, arriving to attend the 69th Ordinary Summit of ECOWAS at the invitation of the Chairman of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government. He departed Abuja aboard a Nigerian Presidential Fleet aircraft and landed at Freetown International Airport in Lungi, where he was received by senior government officials and senior executives of the All People’s Congress.

The visit marks his first return since the 19th of January 2024, when he relocated to Nigeria following ECOWAS-mediated diplomatic engagements after the failed events of November 2023. Since then, the Government of Sierra Leone has discontinued all criminal charges against the former president.

Koroma’s departure in January 2024 followed a violent night in Freetown on the 26th of November 2023, when heavily armed gunmen attacked key security sites including the Wilberforce Barracks and Pademba Road Correctional Centre, freeing roughly 2,000 inmates and leaving 21 people dead, most of them soldiers. The Sierra Leonean government labelled the violence a failed coup and brought treason charges against Koroma.

His exile in Abuja was widely understood as an ECOWAS-brokered arrangement to reduce political temperatures rather than a voluntary medical leave. The process overseeing his return was described by observers as having been clumsy, and at times fraught with legal and constitutional confusion. Parliament ultimately voted unanimously to endorse the discontinuation of treason charges, clearing the path for his attendance at the Freetown summit.

In a statement after the charges were dropped, Koroma urged Sierra Leoneans to focus on national unity: “I remain grateful for the support and goodwill extended to me and reaffirm my commitment to peace, reconciliation and the democratic future of our beloved Sierra Leone.”

Political analysts said Koroma’s participation in the ECOWAS summit, held under the theme “Where Peace Lives,” highlights the regional body’s continued role in promoting dialogue, democratic engagement and peace-building across West Africa.

The symbolism was not lost on anyone. The 69th ECOWAS Summit was hosted in Lungi, Sierra Leone, by the very president whose government had brought the treason charges. President Julius Maada Bio sitting in the same room as his predecessor, less than three years after the events of November 2023, under the auspices of a regional body that had spent two years brokering the conditions for that moment, is as clear a statement as ECOWAS can make about what it exists to do.

West Africa’s political landscape in 2026 remains under significant strain: the Sahel’s military governments remain outside ECOWAS, jihadist violence is pushing southward, and the ECO currency launch faces obstacles. Against that backdrop, Sierra Leone’s quiet reconciliation, achieved through patient ECOWAS diplomacy and the willingness of both sides to step back from a legal confrontation that could have gone much worse.

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