Summary
- Gbowee said the poor performances of the Weah and Boakai governments make the administration of fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, appear “a diamond”
- Gbowee saod leaders need to “love people more than their foreign bank accounts”
- Boakai government hit back saying Gbowee’s comment is “absolutely unrealistic and completely out of order”
By Anthony Stephens, senior correspondent with New Narratives
In a surprising concession, Leymah Gbowee, Liberia’s internationally renowned peace activist, has said that she was wrong in her prior criticisms of the government of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who left office after two six year terms in 2018. In an exclusive interview with Front Page Africa, Gbowee, who shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with Sirleaf for their work progressing women’s rights, said she now believed Sirleaf’s government was “emphatically” better than the subsequent governments of George Weah who left power in 2024 and current President Joseph Boakai, who had served as Sirleaf’s vice president.
“She did exceptionally well,” said Gbowee. “We have two other governments to measure her government with, and they make her government look like a diamond.”
The peace activist broke with Sirleaf in 2012, resigning from her appointment as head of the Peace and Reconciliation Commission. At the time Gbowee said Sirleaf she had failed to fight corruption and improve the living conditions of ordinary citizens.
Gbowee conceded that she knew her comments would anger members of the two subsequent administrations. “I know that when you play this, it will cause noise, but I don’t care.”
Gbowee’s anger was particularly directed at the corruption that she said engulfed the administrations of Weah – which saw several put on US Treasury sanctions lists for corruption – and the new administration of Boakai.
“I believe that if we begin to elect leaders that love the people more than their foreign bank accounts, we’ll begin to see progress,” she said. “I still find it heart wrenching to see that there are districts and places in Liberia where you have schools and the children sitting on the ground in the lawmakers from those countries are driving $45,000 cars. It shows that there’s a systematic problem. Most of them live in these communities, and they were seen as individuals who cared about the community, and once they get elected, they forget that these are the very people.”
Gbowee pointed to numerous examples of what she said was better under Sirleaf’s government. “You go to JFK, for example, whilst maternal health was not 100 percent, there were systems and structures in place to deal with some of the issues,” Gbowee said. “They had programs at JFK for teen mothers, young girls who were giving birth, and those programs, at the end of the day, brought their mothers together with them. And across the country, there were different things happening for women and girls.”
Liberia did make some progress on maternal mortality under Sirleaf’s government but a 2016 report from the United Nations Children’s Agency, Unicef, said “Liberia’s maternal mortality ratio is one of the highest in the world, with 1,072 maternal deaths for every 100,000 births.
Progress continued under Weah at first but numbers are rising again acccording to a 2024 United Nations joint mission visited the country which highlighted an “urgent need for action to combat the high burden of increasing maternal and newborn deaths in the country,” as 1100 women and 8510 newborns die annually during childbirth.
Gbowee said President Sirleaf “wasn’t an angel. But this fight for government jobs was not as bad as it is. Now everyone sees government as the place to get rich.” Gbowee said there were inflated salaries in the Sirleaf government but instead of fixing them the Weah administration exacerbated them.
She said that has continued under President Boakai.
“It is a serious matter that people come to government with nothing,” said Gbowee. “In less than a year, they have built mansions for themselves. Everyone sees government as a place to get rich.”
Gbowee did praise the Boakai administration for some things. She cited road construction and improved electricity services, which she attributed to Monie R. Captan, a former chief executive officer of the Liberia Electricity Corporation. Gbowee also hailed the Liberia Water and Sewage Corporation and Mo Ali, its head.
The Boakai administration immediately hit back at Gbowee’s comments.
They were “absolutely unrealistic and out of order and I think that is due to the fact that she is not in touch of many of the good things that are happening in the country,” said Daniel Sando, Liberia’s deputy information minister for public affairs. “There are scores of officials that have been suspended for time in definite for corruption and turned over to the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission for investigation. I think that is leadership by example.”
Boakai, has suspended many officials of his government over corruption allegations, but critics say prosecutions remain slow, and in some instances, have not happened at all. Liberia has made “marginal progress” in fighting corruption, according to the 2024 perception index. But the report said, “impunity for corruption remains high.”
A Weah spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.
For decades, corruption has been a major issue in Liberia, including under Sirleaf. Liberia was ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world by the time she left office seven years ago, according to a perception index by Transparency International. Salary disparities were also a major issue under Sirleaf, with some officials earning as much as $US30,000 a month. Under Weah’s government, officials also earned salaries that were comparable to those in rich countries despite Liberia being one of the poorest countries in the world.
A number of senior Weah officials, including Nathaniel McGill, Bill Tweahway and Syrenius Cephus, were sanctioned by the U.S. government for public corruption. Weah suspended the three. McGill is now Senator of Margibi County. Tweahway is a senator of River Cess County.
Gbowee, who won her Nobel prize for leading a non-violent women’s moment that pressured warring parties to sign a peace agreement that eventually ended the country’s civil wars nearly 22 years ago, also criticized the Boakai administration’s slow progress on the country’s War and Economic Crimes Court.
She urged the president to prioritize the economics crimes court and use money seized to fund the War Crimes Court. She recommended the president immediately hold a meeting with the court Office and “reinforce his commitment to war and economic crimes court in Liberia publicly and set it as a top priority of his agenda.”
“Impunity has taken a glorious seat in this nation,” she said. “Yes, there are people who took guns and killed us, but there are also people using their pens and bank accounts to murder thousands by denying them basic needs.”
Gbowee announced plans to resume screenings around the country of her award-winning documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell. The movie chronicles events of Liberia’s civil second war and shows the bravery of women to demand an end to the war.
Gbowee called for awareness raising of the executive order that created the Office and to give it “a gender lens.”
“In the absence of knowledge, people cannot function,” said Gbowee. “What does this document say? How is it relevant to women? How it relevant to peace? How is it relevant to reconciliation?”
This story is a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project. Funding was provided by the Swedish embassy in Liberia. The donor had no say in the story’s content.
