Bility May Sue to Force Audit of Liberia’s Legislature

Published: September 2, 2026

MONROVIA — Nimba County District 7 Rep. Musa Hassan Bility says he is considering going to court to force an audit of the Legislature, telling a radio audience the institution took US$272 million from public coffers between 2018 and 2023 and has never accounted for it.

By Masefane Konneh

Bility said Tuesday on Voice of Liberia that he has written more than four letters over two and a half years seeking financial accountability at the Legislature and has gotten nowhere. He said he will write House Speaker Richard Nagbe Koon again, and that litigation is his next option if that fails.

“Between 2018 and 2023, the Legislature took $272 million United States dollars from the public coffers. There’s no account for that money,” Bility said.

“I will do it again. I’ll write the Legislature again. I’m now thinking about going to court,” he said.

Bility said lawmakers cannot demand transparency from ministries and agencies while refusing the same scrutiny of their own spending, and that the public is entitled to know how appropriations for salaries, operations, stationery and other expenditures are being used.

“In a very, very hypocritical way, we want people to be accountable. It is disgraceful. As long as we cannot be accountable, nobody will take us serious when we talk about accountability,” he said. “We have to audit the Legislature.”

He drew a distinction between a financial report, which he said lawmakers should receive showing how legislative resources are spent, and an independent audit, which examines those transactions from outside. He said the General Auditing Commission has not completed an audit of the Legislature despite earlier indications that preparations were underway, and he put the responsibility on the institution’s leadership.

“If it’s not done, then they are responsible,” he said.

Bility said he maintains a good relationship with Koon despite their political differences. He rejected the argument that auditing the Legislature would breach the constitutional separation of powers, saying the principle does not exempt any branch of government from accountability.

He also said Nimba District 7 has not received what he considers its share of district development funding, and that he has heard other Nimba districts have received theirs, though he could not substantiate that. He said he had also heard the development funds in the current budget may already be exhausted, but called that a rumor he intends to verify.

Bility said he has kept financing roads, schools and electrification in the district himself. Road work resumes in October, he said, along with a solar program meant to give households lighting and phone charging so children can study at night. On schools, he said his approach is to demolish badly damaged buildings rather than patch them.

“You see a dilapidated building, a student going to school, sitting down on the floor. And rain falling,” he said. “So we go there and demolish everything, remove the structure, everything and put a new one there.”

Of three schools targeted, one at Zigler has been rebuilt after storm damage about three months ago, a second at Napa is finished but needs benches, and a third at Gokang is 60% to 70% complete. Three more are planned for the next dry season. Buildings alone will not solve the problem, he said, putting the share of teachers in the district working as unpaid volunteers at about 80%.

He named education, healthcare and security as his constituents’ three main problems. He said he won a doubling of the budgets of two health facilities serving the district, only for the increase to be cut after his bloc lost influence in the House leadership.

On the prosecution of former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor, Bility said the government has the authority to bring charges but questioned whether prosecutors have tied her to the wider trafficking allegations. “The people who should have been arrested, the government has failed to arrest them,” he said.