A former fighter from Sierra Leone’s civil war has become the main opposition party’s candidate for next year’s presidential election, Reuters reported on Monday.
Former junta leader Maada Bio told the news agency that he is “a people-centered politician. I got into politics because I greatly believe in the welfare of the people.”
Bio is now a member of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and his appointment has caused a stir in the country that was riven by civil war between 1991 and 2002.
The stir is over whether the former fighter is fit to lead a country still struggling to put its bloody past behind it, Reuters said.
Analysts have said the retired brigadier is the strongest candidate his party could have fielded against incumbent Ernest Bai Koroma and will offer a strong challenge despite accusations from rivals he was involved in atrocities during the fighting.
47-year-old Bio was part of a group of young soldiers who in April 1992 seized power in Sierra Leone, ousting then-President Joseph Momoh and installing a 26-year-old army captain, Valentine Strasser, as the youngest head of state in the world.
Four years later Bio himself deposed Strasser and served as head of state for a few months before elections took place.
Next year’s elections will take place ten years after the end of the civil war and will be a bellwether of the country’s return to stability, Reuters said.
Last week the ruling APC party put out a statement attacking Bio’s association with the NPRC junta. Victor Foh, the national secretary general of the APC, told Reuters he does not think Bio is fit to hold power in a democracy.
“We don't want recycled military people with very bad, very poor human rights records,” he said.
Bio has been accused of involvement in the execution of around 26 people in 1992 after his junta’s coup and also of overseeing brutality by soldiers during his short reign in 1996.
Bio has said he accepts “collective responsibility” for the 1992 killings but denies he was behind them. He has also said the military brutality in 1996 was the result of rogue army units running amok.