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![Ahmad Tejan Kabbah Ahmad Tejan Kabbah](https://trumpetmediagroup.com/downloads/1377/download/Ahmad%20Tejan%20Kabbah.jpg?cb=7b56722bf767fbb71b1c6e5accf3f4e9&w={width}&h={height})
Ahmad Tejan Kabbah
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![Julius Maada Bio handing over power to Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in 1996 Julius Maada Bio handing over power to Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in 1996](https://trumpetmediagroup.com/downloads/1378/download/Julius%20Maada%20Bio%20handing%20over%20power%20to%20Ahmad%20Tejan%20Kabbah%20in%201996%20c.jpg?cb=a6b59c290afb3c381063b19c427dddb7&w={width}&h={height})
Julius Maada Bio handing over power to Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in 1996
Tributes have been paid to the former President of Sierra Leone - Ahmad Tejan Kabbah who died the age of 82 after a period of illness.
President Ernest Bai Koroma's government described Kabbah's death as an "irreparable loss" and declared a week of national mourning.
Kabbah, a former official of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), won the presidency in 1996 under the banner of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), ending a decade of military rule.
He was briefly ousted in a military coup in May 1997 before being restored to power in March 1998.
He eventually took Sierra Leone through a peace process that ended the brutal civil war in 2002, with the help of the United Nations, a military intervention by former colonial power Britain and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) with Nigeria playing a very active role.
He won a landslide victory in 2002 winning 70.1% of the votes against his main opponent - Ernest Bai Koroma of the All People's Congress (APC). Koroma is currently the country's President.
At the end of the five-year term in 2007, he won praise for peacefully handing power to the opposition APC when the SLPP lost elections.
Kabbah is widely credited for playing a major role in ending the 11-year civil war in the country. About 50,000 people died in the war and many had hands and feet chopped off.
Sierra Leone's former military leader - Brigadier Julius Maada Bio who handed over to Kabbah on March 28 1996, told Trumpet Media Group in a telephone chat that the country has lost "a great man who served the country."
"Death is the inevitable end of every man. I initiated peace forces in the country, but he implemented it. We have lost a great leader," he added.
Kabbah who was born on February 16 1932 in Pendembu, Kailahun District was Sierra Leone's first Muslim President.