President-elect Joseph Nyumah Boakai, Keep the Ball Rolling. Audit the Outgoing Weah Administration. Sanction Them!

Posted December 25, 2023
by Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh

This is the season of sanctions.

It is an ongoing process that has former officials of the Weah administration on edge as they look around and behind themselves wondering who’s next to be publicly shamed and sanctioned for their alleged crimes against their people, the Liberian people.

When you are weak, dependent, poor, and lack the funding and the political will to go after those who allegedly violated you and your people and stole everything entrusted in their care to care for you, you look to and embrace any help from within or the outside that comes your way to find justice.

It doesn’t matter how old you are as a person or a country, you accept the help and then you publicly thank the person, country, or group that came to your rescue in times of unparalleled suffering that has taken its toll on you and your people over the years.

So, the argument that Liberia is too old as a country to not be able to take care of itself and continue to look to the outside world, especially the United States, for help to punish those who inflict harm on their people, is a moot point.
If you can’t, no shame, allow others to help you.

Between the week of December 8-12, 2023, (at least, the Liberian people found some justice) when five of George Manneh Weah’s top officials were put on the official sanction list of the US Department of Treasury, a repeat of almost the same charges in 2022 that were levied against another group of President George Manneh Weah’s inner circle of cabinet officials that have Liberians shouting ‘hallelujah’ and cringing their teeth about the president’s men and women, and who could be next?

Drip by drip, these corrupt government officials – sadly, indigenous Liberians, or proud scions of the ‘soil’ whose rise from rags to riches to naked ambitions, political power, and influence are infamously tied to the centuries-old crimes of oppression, corruption, and exploitation that the much-hated Americo-Liberians historically inflicted on their people, are themselves being charged, exposed, and put on public trial for the crimes they allegedly perpetrated against their Liberian people, when they served in government.

Before Samuel D. Tweah, Jr., Minister of Finance, Development Planning, Jefferson T. Koijee, Mayor of Monrovia, Albert Chie, President Pro-Temp of the Liberian Senate, and Emmanuel Nuquah of the Liberian Senate, were sanctioned and charged by the US Department of Treasury with “significant corruption by abusing their public positions,” another of President George Manneh Weah’s officials including Nathaniel McGill, Minister of State for Presidential Affairs, Bill Tweahway, Managing Director, National Port Authority, and Sayma Syrenius Cephus, Minister of Justice and Solicitor General, Republic of Liberia, was also sanctioned in 2022, for their involvement in public corruption in Liberia.

These individuals are not mere acquaintances of President Weah but a bumbling potpourri of sycophants, opportunists, reliable enablers, and trusted aides who had his ears, and back, and had immediate access to influence his thinking and activities in a government that seemed not to function from the top, but from the bottom to keep him in power, and keep themselves in office through their shenanigans causing significant harm to the country’s image, growth and economic development.

The damage that George Manneh Weah and his men and women caused the country was enormous and apparent as good governance took a back seat to personal connections and patronage in government, which brewed ineptitude, massive public sector corruption, and underdevelopment.

The Weah administration was a painfully corrupt, clueless, and reticent one that thrived on meaningless flattering, stealing, shameless deification and blasphemy, and dereliction of duty, which continued through the president’s six years in office until he was unceremoniously booted out of office in the 2023 presidential election.

As the lame-duck Weah administration prepares to leave office, Samuel D. Tweah, Jr., the disgraced Minister of Finance, Development Planning, who is on the US sanction list, and Senator-elect Amara Konneh, former Minister of Planning in the Sirleaf administration, (who’s wrestling with his own Achilles heels involving charges of his alleged past with corruption as an official in the Sirleaf administration, continue to amuse us with their back-and-forth finger-pointing and schoolyard fight about corruption in the mining sector that flourished on Mr. Tweah’s watch.

The story of deception and corruption involving ArcelorMittal and the twisted concession contract involving the American mining company, HPX's committed $37m contract to transport Nimba rail from Guinea through Liberia came to light only after Tweah’s president and his CDC political party lost the 2023 election and after Tweah was publicly sanctioned and shamed for his gross violation of the Liberian people.

There are other shady contracts that the Weah administration signed and buried under Weah’s customized - stylish suits and shoes in the Executive Mansion that only Mr. Weah and his inner circles of crooks are proud to label as their accomplishments - one of which is the Ghana-based Lone Star Air, an airline ‘established in partnership between the Liberian government and Ghana carrier, Goldstar Air’ supposedly meant to benefit the Liberian people.

The Liberian people are watching the incoming Joseph Nyumah Boikai administration and watching and holding on to every word from his mouth about auditing the outgoing Weah administration.

The US Treasury Department started the process of charging those corrupt Liberian government officials with sanctions, for which the Liberian people thank them.

It is your turn, President-elect Joseph Nyumah Boakai.

Keep the ball rolling.

Audit the outgoing Weah administration.

Sanction those corrupt officials, confiscate their stolen wealth, and prosecute them if they are found guilty of economic crimes against the Liberian people.

dorbioh@hotmail.com
www.theliberiandialogue.org