Regional army and police chiefs in Mr Koroma's home town of Makeni told him last week that his guards, numbering in their dozens, were being replaced with another contingent.

Mr Koroma says he received no prior warning and called the move "suspect, faulty and disrespectful".

But Information Minister Mohamed Rahman Swaray has dismissed the complaint as "much ado about nothing" and merely a "routine change" as part of the guards' "all-round career development".

"He is without guards not because the state has refused him one. It is of his own choosing - that he does not want the guards assigned to him," Mr Swaray adds.

It comes amid tension between the ruling SLPP party and the opposition APC which Mr Koroma still leads. Three judge-led commissions of inquiry are investigating allegations of state plunder under Mr Koroma's APC, which the party rejects as politically motivated.