A forged APC press release falsely announcing the former Sierra Leonean president’s death at a Ghanaian hospital circulated on social media this week. It is a complete lie. Ernest Bai Koroma is in Nigeria, under the care of the Nigerian government, and he is well.
On the morning of April 28, 2026, a document began spreading through Sierra Leonean WhatsApp groups and social media timelines. It bore the letterhead of the All People’s Congress. It carried what appeared to be the signatures of APC National Secretariat officials. And it announced that former President Ernest Bai Koroma had died at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, Ghana.
It was a lie. Every word of it.
As of today, April 29, 2026, Ernest Bai Koroma is alive. He is in Abuja, Nigeria, where he has been residing under the care and hospitality of the Nigerian government since January 2024. No credible news outlet has reported his death. No official government statement from Sierra Leone, Nigeria, or any regional body has confirmed such a tragedy. The APC has issued no authentic communication of the kind. The document is a forgery.
How He Came to Be in Abuja
The background to Koroma’s presence in Nigeria is well-documented. Following an attempted coup on November 26, 2023, a violent day of demonstrations that shook Freetown, the former president was placed under house arrest in December of that year. In early January 2024, he was formally charged with four counts of treason. His supporters maintained his innocence. His legal team argued he had been pressured.
ECOWAS intervened diplomatically. The regional bloc brokered a temporary asylum arrangement, and Sierra Leone’s High Court granted Koroma permission to travel to Nigeria for specialized medical treatment. On a Friday afternoon in January 2024, he landed in Abuja. He was received at the airport by Omar Alieu Touray, president of the ECOWAS Commission, and Nigeria’s national security adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, at a reception that underscored the seriousness with which Abuja had taken on this responsibility.
President Julius Maada Bio, in an address to the nation at the time, described the court’s decision as a “humanitarian gesture.” His government committed to discontinuing legal and administrative proceedings against Koroma and to continuing to disburse his benefits as a former president.
The forged document placed Koroma’s supposed death at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, Ghana. This detail alone should raise immediate suspicion Koroma has not been in Ghana. He has been in Abuja. And those who have been watching closely know that his time in Nigeria has not been the withdrawal of a dying man.
In February 2025, a high-level APC delegation including National Chairman Alhaji Minkailu Mansaray, the deputy national chairman, secretary general, and national publicity secretary traveled to Abuja specifically to visit their former leader. They presented him with the APC’s new digital identification card and certificate of registration. Koroma received them warmly and expressed his thanks. It was, by all accounts, the visit of a man very much alive and still connected to the political life of his party and country.
Then, just weeks ago, in February 2026, Koroma addressed dignitaries at Flutterwave’s 10th anniversary gala in Lagos. His remarks were substantive and wide-ranging; he spoke of Nigeria’s responsibility to drive African progress, praised Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, reflected on the mentorship of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and made the case that African innovation must be celebrated and amplified at the highest global platforms. He was not frail. He was not absent. He was present, thinking, and speaking.
This is the man the forged document claimed was dead.
Let us be clear about what this forgery was designed to do. It was not a clumsy mistake. It was a deliberate fabrication complete with party letterhead, a plausible date, a specific hospital, and fake signatures. Someone sat down and constructed this with intent.
Consider the human cost for a moment. Koroma’s family, upon seeing that document circulate, would have been thrown into immediate panic. APC members across Sierra Leone and the diaspora people who voted for him, who believe in him, and who may have served under him would have felt a wave of grief and shock. Elderly supporters in the north. Young activists who grew up following his campaigns. All of them, hit by a fabricated tragedy.
The political timing, too, is not incidental. Sierra Leone remains a country navigating delicate political terrain. Koroma is still a significant figure with legal proceedings, an ongoing exile, and a return to Sierra Leone that his legal team says he genuinely desires. Spreading disinformation about his death is not merely cruel. It is a disruption. It is designed to destabilise, to inflame, and to manufacture drama at a moment when the country needs clarity and calm.
In the language of this era, it is a digital weapon and it was fired at a civilian target.
Sierra Leone has been through enough. A civil war that killed tens of thousands. Ebola. Mudslides. Economic hardship. Years of contested politics. Our people have an intimate, painful knowledge of loss which is exactly why weaponizing a false announcement of death is so contemptible. It borrows the emotional weight of real grief and deploys it dishonestly.
Whoever produced this document — whether acting alone or as part of a coordinated effort — has shown that they are willing to harm innocent people, including a man’s family, to score political points or sow chaos. That is beneath any standard of decency we should be willing to accept as a nation.
The APC should issue a clear and immediate public rebuttal through verified channels. The authorities should investigate the origin of the forgery and pursue accountability where the law allows. Social media platforms and WhatsApp group administrators who have shared this document should remove it without delay.
And Sierra Leoneans wherever you are reading this should pause before sharing content that announces the death or serious illness of any public figure. Ask: who confirmed this? Where is the original source? Is this from a verified account or institution? A moment of scrutiny could spare a family untold anguish.
Ernest Bai Koroma served as Sierra Leone’s fourth president from September 2007 to April 2018. He is 72 years old. He was born in Makeni, Bombali District, and led the APC through two consecutive election victories. He is currently residing in Abuja, Nigeria, under a temporary asylum arrangement brokered by ECOWAS, where he is receiving medical care and remains under the hospitality and protection of the Nigerian government.
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He is not dead. He is not in Ghana. He did not die at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital on April 28, 2026.
What did happen on April 28, 2026, is that someone chose to lie elaborately, deliberately, and cruelly. That lie tells us nothing about Ernest Bai Koroma. But it tells us everything about those who made it.
