The Returning Son and the APC’s Second Wilderness

The Returning Son and the APC’s Second Wilderness

By Yoni Emmanuel Sesay

Sometimes history does not announce its return. It simply walks through the door wearing a familiar face.

On 6 September 2026, former President Ernest Bai Koroma returned to Sierra Leone from Nigeria after the Government discontinued the criminal proceedings against him. ECOWAS welcomed the decision, linking his return to national reconciliation, unity and lasting peace. Koroma subsequently reaffirmed his commitment to national cohesion, peace and Sierra Leone’s continued development.

His return is more than a personal homecoming. It is a moment of political and moral significance — for Sierra Leone, and especially for the All People’s Congress.

For many Sierra Leoneans, Koroma’s political journey evokes the image of Moses. The comparison must be used with humility. Koroma is not a prophet, Sierra Leone is not biblical Israel, and political opponents are not Pharaoh. But biblical stories endure because they speak to human experiences that remain familiar: exile, adversity, leadership, disappointment, return, forgiveness and succession.

Koroma’s first political wilderness came before 2007. In the 2002 presidential election, he received 22.35 per cent of the vote. Five years later, after remaining in opposition, he led the APC into the first round of the 2007 presidential election with 44.34 per cent. He won the runoff with 54.62 per cent, returning the APC to State House.

For the APC, 2007 was a great political crossing. A party that had spent years in opposition had returned to power. Yet the story of Moses teaches that crossing the sea does not necessarily end the wilderness. Sometimes it begins a new and more demanding stage of the journey.

Victory brings responsibilities that opposition does not. Expectations replace promises. Allies who were united by the desire to win begin to disagree about how power should be used. The leader who once represented hope becomes responsible for the failures, disappointments and crises of government.

Koroma was re-elected in 2012 with 58.7 per cent of the valid vote. His second term faced serious national challenges, including the Ebola epidemic and the 2017 mudslide. These tragedies should not be forced into biblical equivalents. They were human disasters that tested families, communities, health workers and government. But they illustrated a broader truth: leadership is not merely about bringing people to power. It is about carrying responsibility through uncertainty and crisis.

By 2018, Koroma’s constitutional presidency had ended. Sierra Leone changed government, and political authority passed to President Julius Maada Bio. That transition contained a lesson that every political party must eventually learn: no leader owns the future simply because he once shaped the past.

The APC now finds itself in another wilderness. This wilderness is different from the one between 2002 and 2007. Then, the Party’s challenge was to return to government. Today, it must first demonstrate that it can govern itself.

The Party faces questions about internal elections, constitutional authority, succession, litigation, institutional legitimacy and the long-awaited National Delegates Conference. These are not merely technical disputes. They concern whether the APC can persuade the country that it is ready to govern Sierra Leone again.

A party that demands constitutionalism nationally must practise it internally. A party that calls upon institutions to be respected must build institutions capable of surviving individual personalities. Courts may interpret legal questions, but they cannot manufacture political trust. Judges may determine legal authority, but they cannot reconcile comrades. That work belongs to the Party itself.

It is at this difficult moment that Koroma has returned.

The question is not whether he should return as commander, kingmaker or political owner. He should not. The APC does not need a former President to announce from a mountain who must inherit the Party. It needs credible internal elections, legitimate delegates, trusted dispute-resolution mechanisms and a National Delegates Conference whose outcome is accepted as sufficiently legitimate for the Party to continue functioning afterwards.

If Koroma has a role to play, it should be the role of an elder — not the role of a permanent successor-maker. His contribution may lie in helping the APC move from mistrust towards reconciliation, from personality politics towards institutions, and from inherited grievances towards a credible transition.

That is where another biblical story becomes relevant: the parable of the prodigal son.

I do not suggest that Koroma is the biblical prodigal son. The parable contains a moral judgment that cannot be casually imposed upon a real political figure. The aspect that speaks to this moment is the response to return.

A son had been away. Distance had developed. The family relationship had been strained. When he appeared on the road home, the father could have remained at the gate, holding open the ledger of grievances. Instead, he moved towards him.

That act did not make the past disappear. It did not prove that the son had never done wrong. It did not require the elder brother to forget his loyalty or sacrifice. But it created a possibility that revenge could never create: the possibility of restoring a family relationship.

The scenes of euphoria that accompanied Koroma’s return, particularly in Makeni, revealed how deeply many people still identify with him and with the political history he represents. The welcome was not merely a reception for an individual. It was, for many supporters, an emotional release after years of absence, uncertainty and political anxiety.

That emotion should be respected. It should not, however, be mismanaged.

Euphoria is powerful but temporary. It can unite people in a moment, but it cannot by itself settle constitutional questions, reconcile competing tendencies or determine the future leadership of a political party. If mishandled, celebration can become triumphalism; welcome can become exclusion; affection for a former leader can become pressure upon institutions; and reconciliation can be mistaken for the restoration of personal authority.

The warmth of Makeni must therefore become wisdom. It must not be converted into a demand that every APC member support one tendency, endorse one aspirant or abandon legitimate criticism. Nor should it be used to humiliate those who remained, disagreed or suffered during Koroma’s absence.

A returning son may be embraced without being given ownership of the house.

That is the challenge now before Sierra Leone.

Koroma’s years away followed a deeply contentious period in national politics. There were accusations, criminal proceedings and political distrust. Those matters belong to the historical record and should not be exaggerated or erased. The discontinuance of the proceedings brought the case to an end, but it was not a judicial determination that every allegation was true or false.

Reconciliation therefore does not require historical amnesia. It does not require opponents to rewrite their judgment of Koroma’s presidency. It does not require APC supporters to pretend that every decision made during his administration was beyond criticism.

It requires something more difficult: the ability to disagree without needing permanent enemies.

For me, this is not an abstract argument.

I knew Ernest Bai Koroma as a friend by 1998. By 2001, I had joined the APC without his knowledge. Years later, he attended our marriage ceremony and signed our marriage certificate — a small but deeply personal reminder of how our lives had crossed beyond politics. I was later deeply involved in the political campaigns of 2007 and 2012.

I gained no political wealth from that association. My personal relationship with Koroma and my involvement in the Party machinery did not translate into material advantage. At times, the consequences moved in the opposite direction.

Along that journey, I came frighteningly close to losing my life. The strain reached my family, unsettled relationships and placed burdens on those closest to me. Career opportunities slipped away. I paid a heavy personal and financial price for political choices I had made. Some losses could never be recovered. Others became scars I simply learned to carry.

But I made one decision: whatever politics had taken from me, I would not allow it to take my capacity to forgive.

That is why Koroma’s return speaks to me beyond politics. I do not see it as an invitation to reopen an old account. I see it as an opportunity to decide whether the past will continue to govern the future.

My forgiveness does not erase what I endured. It does not rewrite history or deny legitimate questions. It simply refuses to allow an old injury to claim the rest of my life.

What would revenge restore? Would it return lost years, rebuild lost opportunities, repair damaged relationships or repay financial sacrifice? It would do none of those things. It would merely allow the past to continue collecting interest from the future.

Forgiveness is not weakness. It is not forgetting. It is not surrender. It is the refusal to remain permanently imprisoned by what has already happened.

The elder brother in the parable reminds us, however, that reconciliation must not mock those who stayed, sacrificed or suffered. Welcoming Koroma home should not insult those who opposed him. It should not diminish those who remained loyal to the APC during his absence. It should not require anyone to deny the pain of the past.

The lesson is not that one person’s return makes another person’s experience irrelevant. The lesson is that a family — and a nation — must eventually decide whether its wounds will become permanent weapons.

The same question confronts the APC.

The Party contains aspirants, tendencies, old grievances, wounded friendships and competing interpretations of its history. Some believe they have been unfairly treated. Some fear that others are attempting to capture the process. Some believe loyalty has not been recognised. Others carry injuries accumulated over many years.

But if every wound is carried into the next National Delegates Conference, the APC may discover that it has created more grievances than its political body can heal.

The Party must therefore learn to distinguish between justice and vengeance, between accountability and permanent hostility, and between remembering history and being ruled by it.

Koroma’s greatest contribution now may not be to produce another electoral victory. It may be to help create conditions in which the next generation no longer requires him to settle every disagreement. The elder statesman’s achievement is not to remain indispensable. It is to help build institutions that can function when he is no longer present.

Moses mattered, but Moses was not the Promised Land. The returning son matters, but the house must not be surrendered to him. The APC must honour its elders without allowing any elder to replace its institutions.

That is the meaning of Koroma’s second wilderness, if we choose to understand it properly. The first journey took the APC from opposition to State House. The next journey must take it from disputed authority to constitutional order, from factional suspicion to a credible conference, and from personal dependence to institutional maturity.

Beyond the APC stands Sierra Leone itself.

Our country has endured coups, war, political violence, exile, accusations, prosecutions and divisions that have sometimes travelled from one generation to another. We cannot undo that history. But we can decide how much authority it will exercise over tomorrow.

On 6 September 2026, one of Sierra Leone’s former presidents came home. The country did not collapse. The following day, a former president and a sitting president were seen together at State House, while the public language surrounding the moment was that of peace, cohesion and national unity.

Such moments do not erase the past. They demonstrate that the future remains possible.

I lost much on my own political journey. I gained little materially from the relationship I once had with Koroma. But I refuse to make bitterness my pension, and I refuse to demand revenge as compensation.

If Ernest Bai Koroma has returned without publicly using the language of vengeance, Sierra Leone should not be ashamed to meet peace with peace.

The father saw his son from afar and opened the gate. Moses led his people through difficult terrain, but the journey eventually continued beyond Moses.

Those lessons belong together.

Welcome the returning son, but do not surrender the house to him. Honour the old Moses, but allow the next generation to continue the journey. And let the euphoria of return become a bridge to reconciliation — not a substitute for constitutional order.

Sierra Leone must remember its history without becoming imprisoned by it. The APC must respect its elders without surrendering its institutions to them. And Ernest Bai Koroma may now have an opportunity to make his most consequential contribution — not by determining who must inherit the Party, but by helping it understand that no leader, however important, is the destination.

That is the maturity forgiveness demands.