Ernest Bai Koroma (born October 2, 1953) is the fifth and current President of Sierra Leone. He was sworn in as President on 17 September 2007 at the State House in the capital Freetown, shortly after being declared the winner of a tense run-off in the 2007 Sierra Leone presidential election with 54.6% of the vote as the candidate of then main opposition All People's Congress (APC); over the incumbent Vice President Solomon Berewa of then ruling Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) who gain 45.4% and conceded defeat. International and local observers assed the election as free, fair and credible. Koroma succeeded Ahmad Tejan Kabbah as president, who was constitutionally ineligible to run for the presidency again after serving the maximum two five year term limit.
Koroma is the leader of the ruling All People's Congress (APC) and was previously a member of Parliament of Sierra Leone representing his home District of Bombali from 2002 to 2007. In 2005 he was elected the minority leader of Parliament and remain in that position until his election to the Presidency on September 17, 2007. he is a 1976 graduate of the Fourah Bay College with a degree in Business Management. He speaks four languages: English, Krio, Temne, and Limba.
An insurance executive by professore, Koroma spent over twenty four years working in the private insurance industry before entering politics in 2001. From 1988 to 2002, Koroma was the Managing Director of the Reliance Insurance Trust Corporation (Ritcorp), one of the largest insurance companies in Sierra Leone.
In 2002 then mostly unknown by the general population, Koroma ran for president in the 2002 Sierra Leone Presidential election. He received 22.3% of the vote as the APC presidential candidate, losing in a landslide to the incumbent President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), who received 70.1%. However, in the Parliamentary election the same year, Koroma was elected to a seat in Parliament from his home District of Bombali.
On April 16, 2009, Koroma was re-elected unopposed by the APC as the party's presidential candidate for his second and final term in the 2012 Sierra Leone presidential election at the APC National Delegates convention held in the northern city of Makeni. His main opponent for the presidency will be former military ruler Julius Maada Bio of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP)
Early Life and Education
Ernest Bai Koroma was born on October 2, 1953, in Makeni, Bombali District in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. Koroma was born of christian parentage from the predominant Muslim north and a devout Christian himself. Koroma was raised in a Temne houshold in Makeni. Koroma's father Sylvanus Koroma was of Loko and Temne parentage. Pa Sylvanus was a very religious christian and he spent years working as a bible school teacher at the Wesleyan Church in Makeni. Koroma's father, Pa Sylvanus Koroma was also a strong supporter of president Siaka Stevens' APC government. Ernest Bai Koroma's mother Maddam Alice Evelyn Koroma is an ethnic Limba from the small rural town of Kamabai, Bombali District. Maddam Alice Koroma spent almost her entire career working as a primary school teacher in Makeni. Koroma is considered an ethnic Temne culturally, due to the fact that he was raised in a predominantly Temne household.
Koroma was raised in a deeply religious Christian household in Makeni. Koroma regularly attended church services with his siblings at the Wesleyan church in Makeni, where his parents were long time members of the congregation.
Koroma attended the Sierra Leone Church Primary School in Makeni, and then proceeded to the Magburaka Government Secondary School for Boys in Magburaka, Tonkolili District, (about 26 miles from his hometown of Makeni) where he graduated in 1973. Upon graduation from secondary school, Koroma moved to the capital Freetown to attend the Fourah Bay College. He graduated from the Fourah Bay College in 1976 with a degree in Business Management.
Soon After graduating from the Fourah Bay College, Koroma was briefly employed as a teacher at the St. Francis Secondary School in his hometown of Makeni from 1976 to 1978.
From : www.wikipedia.org
