At dusk of Wednesday, 8thFebruary, 2012, in the court barrie of Lokomassama, Port Loko District, in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone, dozens of former SLPP leaders and partisans of the chiefdom publicly took off their green SLPP T-shirts (some, with campaign T-shirts of the 2007 SLPP presidential candidate, Solomon Berewa) and put on red T-shirts of the governing APC – in the presence of the APC Leader and Chairman, H.E. President Ernest Bai Koroma. There was loud cheering from the crowd inside and outside the court barrie. Bedlam broke when dozens more former SLPP partisans surged forward to get their own APC T-shirts. The green SLPP T-shirts were then publicly burned by the former SLPP partisans now turned APC.
SLPP HEADQUARTERS : BEING EMPTIED BY DEFECTEES TO APC
President Ernest Bai Koroma lauded the new peace that now reigns in the once troubled Lokomasama; and welcomed the new APC members who he said have equal rights to all old members. “What I have seen here today is what I have been expecting; what I have been dreaming about…”, President Koroma said. He promised greater development in the area – which has enjoyed development by the APC government: new feeder roads and highway road being constructed; new clinics; new primary and secondary schools – with the new harmony in the chiefdom. The President led a song in the Temne language which means in English, “We are all one family…”.
Among those who changed green SLPP T-shirts for red APC T-shirts were: Bobson Bangura (former SLPP Organizing Secretary); Santigie Koroma, Alpha Bedor Kamara (former SLPP Youth Leader), Osman Tollo (former District Chairman of the SLPP in Port Loko District), etc.
The President was touring villages and chiefdoms in Port Loko District to exhort them to do biometric voter registration, and had earlier in the day just launched the Smallholder Commercialization Programme in Port Loko Town, which is the most successful agriculture district in the country.
