By Ilyasa Baa

With the battle for the main opposition All People’s Congress (APC) vice presidential candidacy-running mate to the party’s leader and flagbearer for the June 24^th elections continue to intensify, the former Mayor of the Freetown City Council (FCC) Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr has yesterday Thursday 9^th March 2023 announced her withdrawal from the contest.

Speaking in an interview with journalists on a popular talk show ‘Gud Moni Salone’ (Good Morning Sierra Leone), the former FCC mayor expressed her strongest interest for a re-election for the Freetown mayoral seat. Madam Aki-Sawyerr dispelled claims that she has been eying and aspiring for the APC running mate to Dr Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara.

According to her, it has never come from her that she wanted the running mate position. People who think she is fit for the position.

“I never issued flyers on the running mate race, I have sent consistent message that I am running again for mayor of Freetown, if you are invited to serve, it will be an honour to serve”, she said.

It could be recalled that the former mayor Yvonne Aki Sawyer recently declared her intension for a re-election for the mayoral position on Wednesday 8^th March 2023, the celebration of International Women’s Day. She pleaded with Freetonians for a second mandate to serve as a mayor having operated under tense circumstances, citing huddles she went through within the corridors of the Sierra Leone Police station, Criminal Investigation Department and at the law court building to answer to diverse allegations.

She said she achieved much of her manifesto promise made in 2018, bluffed that under her administration Freetown was transformed erected markets, public toilets across the municipality and created over three thousand jobs in the areas of sanitation and tree planting.

However, critics cast aspersions on her saying she failed woefully in mitigating street trading. Her response to this criticism is that the issue of street trading has been endemic in the capital city, where people have largely migrated to without jobs. She blamed government failures to create factories in the districts which she said would have salvaged the situation of rural urban migrations.

“We have hungry and desperate people who I cannot control have taken to street trading”, she noted and added that she is 100% convinced that she will come again as mayor with her clarity of strength, dedication, commitments and experience. She challenged that there is not a single ward from 399 to 446 without the footprints of the FCC in terms of development.

The former FCC mayor refused to comment on growing hypes about Mohammed Gento Kamara of the governing Sierra Leone People’s Party vying for the mayorship of the Freetown City Council Mayoral.

So far, the two names that are at play for the opposition APC running mate ticket are, Hon. Chernor Ramadan Maju Bah and Sheikh Mohammed Omodu Kamara aka Money Jagaban.