Sensee Morris, ex-deputy managing director of the Liberia Water and Sewer Corporation, says he is still being victimized for calling out corruption.
It’s been four years since Sensee Morris took the brave decision to call out corruption. It’s a choice very few Liberians make, according to transparency advocates, because of the dangers involved. And Mr. Morris has paid a heavy price.
By Joyclyn Wea with New Narratives
As a deputy managing director of the Liberia Water and Sewer Corporation, Mr. Morris, 46, had helped secure $30 million from the World Bank to build water infrastructure in central Monrovia. When his colleagues withdrew $US80,000 of the funds without his knowledge, Mr. Morris reported the corruption to authorities (also known as “blowing the whistle”). It was a decision, he says, that cost him his job, his reputation, and his family’s stability.
“I have not been able to get a job for my family. Even in some places, I go to find means to make a living, people are afraid to do business with me,” Mr. Morris said in an interview.
In 2022 when Liberia’s Legislature passed two laws to protect whistleblowers Mr. Morris thought his courage would finally be recognized. But three years on, his hopes have been dashed. Though the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC), the government agency that implements the Whistleblower Act, cleared Mr. Morris of wrongdoing and found six individuals guilty in March 2024, he has not worked in formal employment since. He received threatening messages, that forced him to go into hiding inside Liberia in 2021.
It has been frustrating that a young man of my time will do what I did. I cannot even be recognized. What kind of country do we find ourselves in? How can we fight corruption?
While the Whistleblower Act and Witness Protection Act promised protection and rewards for those who expose corruption, advocates say implementation remains weak, leaving whistleblowers like Mr. Morris vulnerable to retaliation, including job loss and threats of physical violence to them and their families. The LACC has consistently complained of underfunding through the Boakai administration, in office since January 2024. In its last available quarterly report it said the Legislature appropriated just two thirds of the $4.5 million it needed.
Liberia remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world with graft undermining government delivery of public services in every sector and discouraging investment, according to experts. The latest Transparency Perceptions Index, issued February 2025, ranked Liberia 141 out of 180 countries for perceived corruption.
Mr. Morris’s experience is commonplace say experts. When those who see corruption pay a heavy price for calling it out, there is nothing that will stop it.
In his case, disbursements of the World Bank funds had to be endorsed by Mr. Morris. Instead he says his signature was forged by subordinates and his boss, Duannah Kamara, managing director, who had hired them.
Mr. Morris says he first reported his concerns to the Liberia Water and Sewer Corporation’s board of directors, documenting everything meticulously. Soon after Mr. Morris and Mr. Kamara were suspended in a publicly humiliating press release issued by the Executive Mansion, quoting then-president George Weah, saying he had personally taken the action “following reports of disturbances”. Mr. Kamara was reinstated after a few months. Mr. Morris remained suspended.
Mr. Morris says he wrote letters detailing what he had experienced to several officials, starting with the Corporation board, then headed by newly appointed chair, Kebeh Collins. She declined to comment saying Mr. Morris’s case predated her time at the Corporation.
After the LACC’s found him guilty Mr. Kamara entered a plea bargain agreement to repay US$39,000. He had paid back $10,000 of that amount by March 2024 according to a LACC release. He kept his job despite the conviction and was only removed with the change of government in January 2024. Five other Water and Sewer Corporation officials were found guilty and ordered to pay back $41,000. The march 2024 release said co-defendant, George Nyenkan agreed to serve as a state witness. The other four co-defendants were still at large. The LACC refused to provide an update on the case or the status of repayments saying they could not comment on a case that was before the courts.
Under a provision of the news laws designed to encourage people to reveal corruption, Mr. Morris is due US$4,000 – 5 percent of the $80,000 diverted to private hands. He says he has not received any of that money. Neither has he received any protection from retaliation or security threats. The LACC did not respond to numerous requests for comment as to why.
The failure of the laws in Mr. Morris’s case was no surprise to Anderson Miamen, executive director of the Center for Transparency and Accountability in Liberia, a leading transparency advocacy organization. He says the laws are good but they’re toothless without funds and enforcement to back them up.
“The Law is there, but we have it doing not to put the mechanism in place to deal with that,” says Mr. Miamen. One provision of the law says security will be provided for witnesses and even to take them to safety outside the country, but none of that has been made available by the government. “So it’s almost like the whistle-blowers are left to the mercy of God in terms of whether or not they are caught, or their identities are disclosed.”
Anderson Miamen, head of the Center for Transparency and Accountability in Liberia says the laws need financial backing
Threats, Unemployment, and Death: Whistleblowers Pay a Heavy Price
No organization keeps an official database of whistleblowers. In 2023, New Narratives documented twelve cases of government whistleblowers in the previous 14 years. Four lost their jobs, and seven died in circumstances their families said raised questions of whether they were silenced.
Six whistleblowers died under the Weah administration, including auditors inside ministries. In all cases their families rejected government findings that the deaths were not murder. In addition to Mr. Morris, three more people fled the country or went into hiding.
Two whistleblowers died under the administration of former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
The stories discourage others says Mr. Morris. “We all heard about the auditors who died. Some of us started receiving threats, and people coming after us. On three occasions, I was missed. People told me strange men went vising my home. I believe I survived to this day because of God.”
Other experts argue that the laws’ financial incentives are insufficient. Aloysius Toe, a Liberian lawyer who has provided legal representation to whistleblowers at no cost, suggests the current five percent reward for whistleblowers who help recover stolen funds should be increased to 30-40 percent. “That would incentivize people to report cases,” Cllr. Toe says. “Anyone stealing from the public will not give his underman 30-40 percent.”
In some countries rewards for reporting fraud range between 15-30 percent of the recovery. For instance, the Nigerian website Economic Confidential reported that in 2024 Nigeria’s whistleblowing policy helped the federal government recover US$609 million, while South Africa in 2020 recovered $62 billion under its Protected Disclosure Act, according to Shepstone and Wylie, a top South African law firm.
Power Protects Impunity
Frances Grieves, former national chairperson of the National Civil Society Council, the umbrella institution for all civil society organizations in the country, attributes the challenges in implementing the law to deeply rooted power dynamics in Liberian society.
“Power corrupts. But in Liberia, we don’t have just power, we’ve got absolute power,” Madam Grieves says. “The only way you will get to know the errors or wrongs they are committing is by someone present.”
Madam Grieves says the lack of public awareness about the law compounds the problem. “Our people in the interior don’t have that knowledge. The bill needs to be popularized.”
Image of Sensee letter from the LACC clearing him of wrongdoing
Justice remains elusive for Mr. Morris. Despite his clearance, he hasn’t received salaries and benefits for the time he was being suspended and investigated, now he says the amount totaled US$137,000.00. He’s now taking the government to court. It’s a shocking position for someone who thought he was doing the right thing.
“That is something that I never thought of doing because this government should even be appreciating me for my effort,” he says.
Mr. Morris says change must start with President Boakai. “Only the head of state can ensure that people are given the courage to do what some of us did,” he says. “If the head of state is not affecting the laws in the book, then people will be afraid.”
This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the “Investigating Liberia” project. Funding was provided by the Swedish Embassy. The funder had no say in the story’s content.
