Sierra Leone votes in a fiercely contested general election, with President Julius Maada Bio seeking a second term amid a crippling economic crisis that sparked deadly riots last year. The deeply poor West African nation was battered by a brutal 1991-2002 civil war and the Ebola epidemic a decade later, and further pummelled economically by the Covid pandemic and the fallout from the war in Ukraine. "I hope and pray that everybody complies and votes peacefully," says voter James Kanu. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES