A former military leader and opposition candidate in Sierra Leone’s highly contested presidential run-off election, Julius Maada Bio has been sworn in as new president of the country.
The 53-year old’s swearing in, which took place late on Wednesday was just hours after he was declared winner of the poll by the country’s elections commission.
Maada Bio from the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), won 51.81 percent of votes cast in the election held on March 31.
He beat his rival and the ruling All People’s Congress (APC) candidate Samura Kamara, who garnered 48.19 percent of the votes.
Bio said in his speech after taking the oath that “This is the dawn of a new era. The people of this great nation have voted to take a new direction”.
“We have only one country, Sierra Leone, and we are all one people,” Bio who who briefly ruled Sierra Leone in 1996 added.
The former President Ernest Bai Koroma stepped down after his maximum two terms in office.
Sierra Leone witnessed a brutal, diamond-fuelled civil war in the 1990s and the new president faces a huge task of trying to fix the West African country’s economy, still recovering from the war and recent Ebola epidemic.
Source: Africafeeds.com
