Election officials in Sierra Leone are calling for calm amid tension as collation of election results continue two days after voting ended.
On Thursday the country’s National Election Commission (NEC) Chairperson Mohamed Conteh told media in Freetown that “we value accuracy above speed”.
Conteh in a passionate appeal to citizens said “Please be patient and peaceful” with tensions high after a police raid on an opposition leader’s home.
More than 3.1 million voters registered for the elections which took place across the country.
In all 16 candidates took part in the elections to become a successor to President Koroma who has been in power since 2007 and served his maximum two terms.
Partial tallies of vote results are expected within 48 hours after voting and complete results within two weeks. A presidential runoff is likely, according to some experts, as the threshold to win outright in the first round is 55 percent.
The next leader of this West African nation has a major task of fixing the country’s economic crisis caused by a collapse in iron ore prices and an Ebola epidemic.
A civil war in the 1990s, fueled by conflict over diamonds was fought in part by child soldiers in which tens of thousands of people were killed, wrecking the West African country’s economy.
Source: Africafeeds.com
