Monrovia – The Monrovia City Court has issued a writ of arrest for two men accused of falsely presenting themselves as senior managers of Global Tracking and Maritime Solutions (GTMS) Liberia Incorporated and of threatening anyone who stood in their way.

The writ, issued Thursday, October 8, 2026, by Stipendiary Magistrate L. Ben Barco, names Presley Tenwah and Elvis D. Johnson as defendants. They are charged with Impersonating Official and Menacing.

The complaint was filed by private prosecutrix Aminata Bangura. It alleges that Tenwah and Johnson presented themselves as General Manager – Liberia and Public Relations Executive & Operations Manager, respectively, of GTMS Liberia.

According to the complaint, the two men said they had been appointed to those positions by Sahr H. W. Ngegba, who allegedly claims to be a Director of GTMS Liberia. The complaint states that Ngegba is not part of the company’s corporate structure.

The complaint further alleges that when Bangura questioned the defendants, they warned that “anybody who stand in their way will be destroyed, kill and harm in anyway.” It also accuses them of spreading claims that they have taken over the company and that businesses should deal with them, which it says has harmed the corporation.

The writ says the alleged acts violate Chapter 14, Section 14.25 and Chapter 12, Section 12.35 of the Revised Penal Law of Liberia.

The court ordered Captain Augustine T. Forleh of the Magistrate Police, or his deputy, to arrest the defendants and bring them before the Monrovia City Court at the Temple of Justice to answer the charges. The writ was drafted by Atty. Alex Hawkins S. Younge and signed by Clerk of Court Abel Kalay.

The allegations have not been proven in court, and the defendants are presumed innocent. FrontPageAfrica’s efforts to reach Tenwah, Johnson, and Ngegba for comment were unsuccessful.

Monrovia-Five of the 19 defendants indicted alongside former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor in a drug trafficking and money laundering case have been arrested, brought before Criminal Court “C” at the Temple of Justice and subsequently taken to the Monrovia Central Prison, where they are being held pending trial.

By Willie N. Tokpah

Among those arrested are Gerald Foley Smith, former Deputy Director for Administration of the National Security Agency, NSA, Jammel V. Jallah, Christian L. Nyantee, Cayce L. Nelson, Albenigo Janior and Sekou, according to information surrounding the court proceedings.

Mark Quiah, former Deputy Director for Operations of the Liberia Civil Aviation Authority was initially arrested late Wednesday night, October 7, and taken to the Monrovia Central Prison, making the number of arrest six, since the indictment.

The development followed a writ of arrest issued by Criminal Court “C” on October 7, 2026, ordering the Montserrado County Sheriff, Major Austine Seinavula, or his deputy, to arrest the defendants named in the indictment and bring them before the court to answer to the allegations.

The defendants have not been arraigned.
They were arrested and brought before the court pursuant to the writ and have since been taken to the Monrovia Central Prison pending further judicial proceedings.

11 Serious Criminal Charges

The indictment contains a range of allegations, including unlicensed possession of controlled drugs or substances; unlicensed importation of controlled drugs or substances; unlicensed exportation of controlled drugs or substances; unlicensed sale, trading, administration, dispensation, delivery, distribution, dispatch in transit and transportation of controlled drugs or substances; illicit trafficking; criminal conspiracy; criminal facilitation; criminal solicitation; money laundering; possession and sale of physical objects for lethal use; and possession of physical objects for lethal use.

The allegations represent some of the most serious criminal charges contained in the indictment, which has drawn former government officials and other individuals into the ongoing investigation and prosecution.

Court Orders Arrests

The writ of arrest, signed by J. Amos F. Gbowah, Clerk of Criminal Court “C,” commands the Montserrado County Sheriff to arrest the defendants and “forthwith” bring them before the court to answer to the charges contained in the indictment.

GBARNGA, Bong County — The competition starts before the first lesson. Pupils arriving each morning at Chief Compound Public School look first for somewhere to sit: a chair, a gap on a broken bench, anything. Those who come after the seats are gone have one option. The floor.

By Selma Lomax|  selma.lomax@frontpageafricaonline.com

The school, which enrolls more than 1,500 pupils, is not in a remote village beyond the reach of government. It stands in Gbarnga, the administrative and political capital of Bong County, within easy reach of the government offices and education authorities charged with the welfare of the county’s children.

Inside some classrooms, children sit for hours on bare concrete, balancing exercise books on their knees as they try to follow lessons. Others crowd onto broken benches, squeeze onto whatever furniture is still usable, or bring chairs from home.

What they are asking for is modest. Not computers, air conditioners or science laboratories — just chairs and desks that would let them sit properly, write comfortably and concentrate.

“We are in the city, not somewhere that people cannot reach,” one pupil said. “Our school is here in Gbarnga, and the people who are responsible for education are also in this city. We see government offices and other important people around us, so sometimes we ask ourselves why we have to sit on the floor to learn. We are children, and all we are asking for is a chair so that we can sit properly, write our lessons and concentrate. We want to believe that somebody will hear us.”

FrontPageAfrica is not identifying the pupils interviewed for this story because they are minors.

The distance between the school and the offices that could help it can be counted in streets. The distance between the problem and a solution, the pupils suggest, is far greater.

For the children, the shortage is not a policy abstraction. It greets them every morning — and, they say, it may be keeping some of their classmates away altogether.

Friends who stopped coming

Pupils spoke of friends who no longer attend school, and they tied those absences to money: parents who could not afford to buy a chair.

FrontPageAfrica could not verify the claim against attendance records, and its scale is unknown. But it reflects a pressure familiar to many Liberian households. When income is thin, every expense competes with every other. A chair is not food. It is not medicine or transport fare. In the hard choices poor families are forced to make, a chair can lose.

The pupils spoke of their absent classmates less with anger than with a sense of loss, the way people talk about a friend who has moved away. What they want, they said, is for everyone to learn together.

A desk in the doorway

The staff room tells its own story. Its floor is pitted with holes, and a handful of chairs sit clustered in one corner. During a visit by FrontPageAfrica, a female teacher searched for somewhere to set down her lesson notes. She later carried pupils’ exercise books to the classroom doorway — the only place with enough light to read them.

Teachers who improvise this way keep the school running, but the improvisation has a cost. A teacher straining to read a child’s handwriting in a doorway is more likely to rush her feedback, and it is the child who loses.

An admission from the county

Asked by FrontPageAfrica about conditions at the school, County Education Officer David Boakai said he had not been aware of them. His office, he said, would need to look into the situation, particularly the learning environment and the shortage of chairs and other basic facilities.

His candor offers a clear starting point — and a commitment against which progress can be measured. But it also exposes a gap. Chief Compound is not hidden beyond a river crossing. It sits in the county seat and serves well over a thousand children. If its condition had not reached the county’s top education official, then somewhere between the classroom and his office, the system’s ability to notice has broken down.

A proper assessment would not be complicated: count the pupils and the usable seats; separate what can be repaired from what must be replaced; inspect classroom space and the condition of the buildings. Those figures would give parents something to hold on to — and officials something to answer for.

What a chair carry

It is tempting to treat a shortage of chairs as a small matter beside Liberia’s larger struggles. But small things can carry large meanings. A chair holds up a child’s body so that the mind can do its work. It marks out a space that belongs, however briefly, to one pupil. It tells a child that the school expected her and made room.

Take the chair away, and the message reverses. The child becomes someone to be accommodated by improvisation, someone whose comfort is optional. The pupils at Chief Compound have noticed. What they ask in return is neither grand nor unusual: equal treatment, a seat beside their friends, and an end to writing on their knees.

Who will stand up?

The pupils have done what they can. They have described their classrooms, named what they lack, and trusted a visiting reporter to carry their words further than they could.

The responsibility now lies with others. The county has promised to look. Parents could organize. Donors, civic groups and local leaders could each take a share. However, the response takes shape, it will be judged by a simple test: whether, one morning soon, a child in Gbarnga walks into a classroom and finds a seat waiting.

Until then, the children of Chief Compound will keep adapting, as children do. The question is how long the school system intends to rely on their patience.

MONROVIA – When officers raided a compound on Cement Road in the VOA Community on July 21, they found 3,971 “plates” of the drug, packed in 157 bags and valued at about US$317 million.

By Rodney D. Sieh

Two foreign men were arrested on the spot. Eleven weeks later, the State has gone much further. A 55-page indictment now names 20 people, among them senior security officers, an aviation official and the woman who was once a heartbeat from the presidency, former Vice President Jewel Howard Taylor.

But a close reading of the document tells a messier story. Dates shift from page to page. Payments grow or appear out of nowhere. The indictment gets Taylor’s own term of office wrong, and the court that filed it is not the court that ordered the arrests.

Taylor’s lawyer, Cllr. Gbawou Kowou, says the case against his client rests on the word of one man, co-defendant Sheik Bashiru Kante.

“The entire indictment of Jewel is nothing more [than] the same ‘Sheikh say,'” Kowou told FrontPageAfrica, playing on the word “hearsay.” The government’s evidence, he said, “as referenced and narrated in Numbers 12, 29 through 31 of the indictment, clearly show[s] the same ‘Sheikh say’ reliance on which the case against Jewel is built.”

He also accused prosecutors of lumping strangers together. The State, he said, “placed everyone in one group, most of whom are not connected or known to each other.”

None of the allegations have been tested in court, and every defendant is presumed innocent.

An office she no longer held

The State’s theory is simple. In 2021, it says, Taylor agreed to use her power as Vice President to protect a cartel moving cocaine through Liberia to Europe. In return, money flowed to her and to her charity, the Jewel Starfish Foundation.

On that theory, she faces seven of the 11 counts: conspiracy, importation, transportation, trafficking, exportation, facilitation and money laundering.

The trouble starts with the calendar. The indictment says she served as Vice President until January 2023. In fact, the Weah–Taylor government left office on January 22, 2024. And nearly everything the cartel is accused of actually doing in Liberia happened after that date: the aircraft bought in August 2025, the beach scouting at Marshall that September, the land at Royesville, the May 2026 convoy and the July seizure.

Nowhere does the indictment say what protection a former Vice President could offer in 2025 or 2026. It does not describe a single phone call, order, or favor she gave the network at any time. “High-level political assurance and cover” is the phrase it uses, again and again, without saying what that cover was.

Even the story of how she was recruited changes. In one paragraph, two cartel men meet her at her Congo Town home in October 2021, and she flies to Dubai to meet their boss that November. In another, the introduction happens “in 2022,” and she is already called the “former” Vice President, though she was then in office. A third paragraph moves the Dubai meeting to November 2022.

The money moves too. A US$27,000 travel payment and a US$75,000 gift to her foundation appear early. A US$45,000 “shopping-gift bag” turns up only in the money-laundering count, 52 pages in. The 2021 payments are called “proceeds of the cocaine,” though no cocaine deal before them is described.

There is also a question of law. The 2021 conduct is charged under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act of 2023. Liberia’s Constitution, in Article 21(a), forbids punishing anyone under a law that did not exist when the act took place. Prosecutors may answer that a conspiracy is a continuing crime. That argument is much harder to make for the other counts.

One export charge even ties her to a cocoa shipment that left the Freeport of Monrovia on October 12, 2021, weeks before the Dubai meeting at which she was supposedly recruited. No cocaine was ever reported found in those containers.

Only the 2021 shipment and Dubai meeting fall inside her term. Everything else the indictment describes came after she left office.

The tapes, and the man in the middle

The newest evidence against Taylor is a set of WhatsApp voice notes she allegedly sent Kante on August 31, 2026. That is six weeks after the cocaine was seized and the first arrests made.

On the recordings, as quoted by prosecutors, she sounds like a politician short of cash. “You know things are really crazy on our end,” she says. “So please ask Nicholas if he could send me some help.” She thanks Kante for US$15,000, worries about a child’s school fees, and talks of party conventions and campaign vehicles across the 15 counties.

What she never mentions is drugs. The talk of “the 19 kilos” and “19 million or whatever that was” is put in Kante’s mouth, not hers. Her most suspicious-sounding line, “So maybe [they are] being hidden somewhere until a better time,” carries two words in brackets that the prosecution added.

The law asks more than whether she took money from Ivancic. For money laundering, the State must show she knew or suspected the money came from crime. The indictment says she knew who sent it. It does not say how she knew where it came from.

Nor does it explain how the recordings were obtained, or from whose phone. One of the files is even labeled an “Image,” though it is described as audio.

This is where Kowou’s “Sheikh say” argument bites. Read paragraphs 12 and 29 to 31, the ones he cites, and Kante is everywhere. He meets the cartel men in a Dubai nightclub. He promises them protection from top officials. He brings them to Taylor’s home, travels in her Dubai delegation, and receives her voice notes.

The indictment lists only three witnesses, all police officers, plus unnamed documents. It names no one outside the defendants who saw Taylor agree to anything. If the 2021 story rests on Kante, a man charged in the same case, his credibility will decide much of it.

Kante arranged or attended every meeting Taylor is accused of. The indictment never says she met, called, or paid anyone who ran the 2025–26 operation, which is the heart of Kowou’s complaint that strangers were lumped together.

A document at odds with itself

The problems are not confined to Taylor. The indictment itself was filed before Criminal Assizes “A” and Judge Roosevelt Z. Willie. The writ ordering the arrests came from a different court, Criminal Court “C” under Judge Ousman F. Feika, which describes the case as its own. The writ also misspells the former Vice President’s first name as “Jowel.”

The grand jury’s sign-off raises its own questions. There are 11 counts but only six “True Bill” endorsements, with no word on which counts they cover. The closing paragraph mentions only one crime, illicit trafficking. And on the copy FrontPageAfrica reviewed, the date beside the foreman’s signature appears to read 2025, a year before the seizure.

Perhaps the most striking gap is the cocaine itself. Drug charges in Liberia are graded by the type and amount of the drug, yet the indictment never gives a weight. It counts “plates” in one place and “bags” in another. It calls the substance lab-confirmed cocaine on one page and “suspected cocaine” on others.

The smaller details wobble too. One defendant is said to have “lived in” the Royesville house until his arrest, though he was arrested at a different address, on Cement Road. Former NSA official Gerald Folley Smith is paid “millions” in one paragraph and “more than US$80,000” in another. One co-defendant’s conduct is dated 2015, six years before the conspiracy began. Three NSA agents are described as knowingly escorting cocaine for cash, yet none of them is charged.

Each pair comes from the same 55-page document. May 30, 2026, was a Saturday.

What happens next

None of this means the cocaine was not real or that no crime took place. Two men were caught with the drugs, and the case against them looks direct. For the rest, prosecutors’ strongest ground is the conspiracy count, which needs only an agreement and a single act by any member.

The other charges against Taylor are harder to square with the text. They accuse her of importing, moving and exporting cocaine, but describe nothing she did beyond meetings in 2021 and money she received. Expect her lawyers to press on the dates, the 2023 law, and the two courts as soon as the case is called.

MONROVIA — The long-running trial involving the alleged misappropriation of Saudi-donated rice has entered its final stage, with the prosecution and defense scheduled to deliver closing arguments before the jury on Friday, October 9, 2026, at 8:00 a.m.

By Willie N. Tokpah

The development followed Wednesday’s sitting before Criminal Court “C,” where the prosecution presented its final rebuttal witnesses, bringing the evidentiary phase of the trial to a close.

With no further witnesses expected, the court ordered both sides to proceed to final arguments on Friday.

The court also directed the prosecution and defense to submit their respective post-trial memoranda to the Clerk of Court, outlining the legal authorities and citations they intend to rely upon in support of their positions.

Both parties and their legal counsel have been ordered to appear for Friday’s proceedings.

The transition to final arguments marks a critical juncture in a case centered on the handling and distribution of 29,412 bags of 25-kilogram rice donated by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to Liberia.

The prosecution has alleged that a substantial portion of the donation was unlawfully diverted, while the defense has challenged the State’s accounting of the rice, its movement among government institutions and the alleged criminal responsibility of the accused.

A Trial of Conflicting Accounts

Throughout the trial, prosecution witnesses sought to establish how the Saudi donation moved from its receipt into government storage and subsequently to various institutions and beneficiaries.

The State has maintained that 25,054 bags were at issue in the indictment after accounting for quantities it considers to have been legitimately supplied, placing the alleged value of the disputed rice at approximately US$425,918.

The defense, however, has questioned the State’s calculations and the evidentiary basis for some of the quantities presented during the proceedings.

A central issue has been the movement of the rice from the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) to warehouses operated by the General Services Agency (GSA).

Former Internal Affairs Minister Varney A. Sirleaf, who also chaired the NDMA Board, previously testified that the transfer was an institutional decision and rejected suggestions that former Foreign Affairs Minister Dee-Maxwell Saah Kemayah directed him to move the rice.

Former GSA Director Genera Mary T. Broh, who also testified during the trial, provided evidence concerning the involvement of various government agencies in the movement and distribution of the commodity.

Kemayah Maintains His Defense

Kemayah, one of the defendants, has consistently denied the allegations against him.

Testifying in his own defense, the former Foreign Minister said he did not steal any of the Saudi-donated rice and maintained that his involvement was connected to his role in facilitating the donation between Liberia and Saudi Arabia.

His testimony challenged the prosecution’s characterization of the movement of the rice, particularly the role of government institutions responsible for receiving, storing and distributing the commodity.

The defense has argued that administrative decisions involving the rice should not, by themselves, constitute evidence of criminal conduct.

Prosecution Gets Final Rebuttal

Wednesday’s sitting provided the prosecution its final opportunity to respond to the defense through rebuttal evidence before both sides rested their cases.

With the evidentiary phase now closed, neither side is expected to present additional witnesses when proceedings resume Friday.

Instead, the focus will shift from testimony and exhibits to legal and factual arguments, with each side expected to present its interpretation of the evidence before the jury.

The prosecution is expected to argue that the evidence presented during the trial establishes the offenses charged and links the defendants to the alleged wrongdoing.

The defense, meanwhile, is expected to challenge that conclusion, pointing to what it considers inconsistencies, evidentiary gaps and unanswered questions in the State’s case.

Court Seeks Post-Trial Legal Arguments

The court’s order requiring post-trial memoranda is expected to further narrow the legal issues arising from the evidence presented during the trial.

The memoranda will contain the legal authorities and citations on which the respective parties intend to rely as the court moves toward the next stage of the proceedings, including jury instructions.

For the jury, Friday’s final arguments will provide the prosecution and defense with their last opportunity to directly interpret the evidence and make their respective cases before jurors are instructed by the court and retire to deliberate.

The case has therefore moved beyond the competing accounts presented by witnesses on the stand.

The central question now is whether the evidence presented throughout the trial, measured against the applicable law and the State’s burden of proof, is sufficient to sustain the charges against the defendants.

Criminal Court “C” has ordered all parties and their respective legal counsel to be present at 8:00 a.m. Friday, October 9, for final arguments.

The defendants remain presumed innocent unless proven guilty according to law.

GTMS Liberia Inc. has disowned Presley S. Tenwah and Elvis D. Johnson, who it says have been posing as its General Manager and Public Relations Executive. The company says the two were appointed by a self-styled “Director,” Sahr H. W. Ngegba, who has no position in its corporate structure. It insists it has no ties to GTMS-UK, a firm it says is in liquidation and under investigation in Britain, and has warned the public not to deal with the two men. It has also instructed its lawyers to pursue civil and criminal action.

Monrovia – Global Tracking & Maritime Solutions Liberia Inc. (GTMS Liberia Inc.) has publicly disowned two men who have been presenting themselves as senior officials of the company. The company says their appointments were made by a person who holds no position in its corporate structure.

In a press release issued Wednesday, October 7, GTMS Liberia said it had learned that Mr. Presley S. Tenwah and Mr. Elvis D. Johnson had been named General Manager-Liberia and Public Relations Executive & Operations Manager, respectively. The appointments were reportedly made by a Mr. Sahr H. W. Ngegba, who claims to be a Director of the company.

GTMS Liberia said it has no one by the name of Sahr H. W. Ngegba on its staff list or in its corporate structure, “let alone any position of Director held by such person.” The company described the appointments as “wishful thinking.”

Link to UK Firm Denied

At the center of the dispute is GTMS-UK, which GTMS Liberia says is currently in liquidation in the United Kingdom. The Liberian company said it is neither a partner nor a subsidiary of GTMS-UK.

In its release, GTMS Liberia alleged that the appointments were “a brazen attempt to mislead the public” and to conceal what it called administrative failings and financial fraud at the UK entity. The company claims British authorities are investigating GTMS-UK. It also accused the UK firm of trying to use the GTMS Liberia name “to shield itself from accountability.”

Lawyers Issue Formal Disclaimer

In a separate letter dated October 7, AFDASA Global Consultancy Inc., which says it has been retained by GTMS Liberia, wrote directly to Mr. Tenwah. The letter accuses him of “an escapade of misinformation” by “parading” himself as General Manager-Liberia. It says his appointment letter was dated September 10, 2026, and signed by Mr. Ngegba.

The letter, signed by AFDASA’s Corporate Administrative Manager, Joseph Papie Mulbah, says Mr. Tenwah’s appointment was structured under GTMS-UK, an entity with “no direct connection, affiliation, or partnership” with the Liberian company. It calls the appointment “a complete figment of the imagination of Mr. Ngegba,” with no force or effect on GTMS Liberia’s operations.

AFDASA advised Mr. Tenwah and “your benefactors” to stop immediately any actions suggesting he is an official, agent or representative of GTMS Liberia. The letter warned that the company “will not take kindly to any youthful exuberance for undue publicity.” It said Mr. Tenwah should act “to avert future embarrassment and to avoid both civil and criminal liability.”

The letter was copied to Ms. Aminata Bangura, Managing Director of GTMS Liberia Inc., and Cllr. Sayma Syrenius Cephus, Global Lead Counsel.

Public Warned; Legal Action Planned

GTMS Liberia warned customers and the public not to do business with Mr. Tenwah or Mr. Johnson in the company’s name “in any form, manner or shape.” The company said the two men “should be regarded as imposters.”

The company said it has instructed AFDASA Global’s Global Lead Counsel to begin civil and criminal proceedings against both men. It accused them of misleading the public and creating “a serious corporate crisis” that has disrupted its operations over the past few days.

Summary

• Heavier and less predictable rainfall, intensified by climate change, is combining with clogged drains and construction in wetlands to worsen flooding across Monrovia’s low-lying communities.
• Nearly 20,000 families have been affected, displaced, disrupted schooling, lost income, illness and with 7 deaths as floodwater surrounds their homes and remains for days in two counties.
• Residents want blocked waterways reopened, while officials call for stronger forecasting, better drainage, wetland protection and increased disaster-response funding.

By Nemenlah Cyrus Harmon, climate and environment reporter with New Narratives

LOFA COMMUNITY, Montserrado County – Paulina Manloh knows the water is coming before she sees it. She has lived in the Lofa community since 2019, long enough to recognize the pattern: rain falls, and within hours the ground around her home disappears beneath brown water.

When the rain is very heavy things get even worse.   

“The water can get full until sometime entering the house,” she said, sitting near the swamp that has come to define six months a year of her family’s life. “So now we’re not able to get outside to go look for food or do other activities.”

Across Monrovia, seasonal flooding is becoming a persistent threat to thousands of families. An estimated 5,950 people in Lofa Community alone are affected by flooding, according to the community leader, while families face displacement, disrupted schooling, lost income, illness and death as floodwater surrounds their homes and remains for days. Scientists and government officials say climate change is bringing heavier and less predictable rainfall to a city already struggling with decades of unplanned growth, clogged drains and weak enforcement of environmental laws.

This year Kawi Badio, director for risk and early warning at the National Disaster Management Agency, the body responsible for coordinating disaster preparedness, emergency response and recovery efforts,  said 19,986  people have already been affected by flooding across Montserrado, and Grand Cape Mount with seven deaths recorded.

Authorities warn that the crisis will worsen unless the government acts. Anthony Saah Tengbeh, chairperson of the Department of Environmental Studies and Climate Change at the University of Liberia, said flooding in Monrovia and its environs is not caused by climate change alone. He said heavier rainfall is colliding with inadequate drainage, blocked waterways, construction on wetlands and poorly planned urban development, leaving fewer places for floodwater to go.

Some families are displaced for a week at a time. Children cannot reach school, and parents cannot reach work. In June, Harris S. Quoiduo, a block leader in the Lofa community estimates that flooding affects about 85 percent of the roughly 7,000 people living across the community’s four blocks. A four-year-old girl drowned after she was swept from a flooded bridge while crossing to find her mother.  

“It makes the community feel very, very sad,” he said. “Just imagine your child was not sick, you left the child home just to go and come back, and then you find out the child drowned.”

For Manloh, the consequences are immediate. She has five children, and when the water rises, their world shrinks to whatever dry ground remains. School stops. Errands stop. Sickness moves in. “It can really make me feel bad,” she said. “You struggle for money, pay your children’s school fees, but the water does not allow them to go to school.”

In Monrovia’s 13th Street community in Sinkor, Lansanah Mbawo, a 25-year-old teacher, described in July a newer version of the same problem. Water near his home no longer drains, he said, after a shop was built over what residents believe was the community’s drainage channel.

“We did not use to walk in water,” Mbawo said. “But now it is not really easy.” He said neighbors have fallen ill after wading through stagnant water to reach food, work or family.

Following repeated complaints to the Ministry of Public Works, the structure was eventually demolished.

A City Built on Water

Much of the damage can be traced to where and how Monrovia grew. “Monrovia was built not for the population that dwells in it today,” said Ansu V.S. Dulleh, the agency executive director. The drainage network installed decades ago was designed for a much smaller city.

As informal settlements expanded into wetlands and swamps, homes, shops and roads blocked the natural routes water once used to escape. “You know the water is very jealous,” Dulleh said. “Once the rain comes down, the water will try to find a way to its original inhabitants.” Until the city redesigns its drainage system and stops construction in wetlands, he said, flooding will continue.

Emmanuel Urey Yarkpawolo, executive director of the Environmental Protection Agency, put it more bluntly: “Monrovia is a sinkhole” – low-lying, where water naturally collects. The EPA can issue fines and enforce wetland protections, he said, but a land-starved population continues to push into swamps that flood every rainy season.

Enforcement is also constrained by limited resources.

Wetland destruction is part of the worsening flooding situation

Tengbeh said wetlands, (also known as mangroves because of the plants that grow there) act as natural storage areas for excess rainwater. But construction on top of them across the city is reducing their ability to absorb floodwater.

“When we build on the wetland, we build in the swamps, the swamp now will not play its role as a sponge.” Then the consequence: “And that excess water that should be absorbed by the swamp will now go to the dry land and now start to cause problem for us.”

But stopping construction in wetlands remains difficult. The EPA depends on police to carry out eviction orders, Yarkpawolo said, and officers can act only when they have sufficient manpower and logistics.

“Monrovia is overcrowded,” Yarkpawolo said. “The land space in Monrovia is not enough.”

Uncollected trash is also a major issue. With no money to hire heavy equipment, residents have tried to clear the clogged waterways themselves, sometimes with their bare hands and without gloves or boots. Quoiduo said the government should send two or three excavators to reopen the channel.

“That is the most important thing,” he said. “Giving an individual money will not help. They will give the money today, you use it, and the next day you experience the same thing.”

Rainfall Is Becoming Harder to Predict

Residents’ sense that the weather is changing is supported by government forecasters. Albert Momolu Sherman, director of meteorological services at the Ministry of Transport, said Liberia’s historical data shows rainfall becoming more intense even as its timing grows less predictable.

“What we used to experience previously, we do not have now,” Sherman said. “It is like two to three days of rainfall falling in a few hours.” Liberia’s drainage systems were not engineered for that intensity, he said.

Tengbeh said researchers at the University of Liberia are studying whether Liberia’s traditional understanding of two seasons still accurately reflects changing weather patterns.

He holds the view that Liberia has more than three seasons, “all we need to do is to take into consideration the climatic condition over a number of years and have consistent data to determine what is happening in our country.”

The country also lacks the computing capacity to model storms independently. Forecasters instead rely largely on international satellite data supplied through the African Union and European Union. That gives them about two or three days’ warning before a major storm.

That is enough time to issue an alert, Sherman said, but not enough to constitute a complete national early-warning system. He said the deeper problem is institutional. Liberia does not have a fully resourced national service. Responsibility for weather-related work is scattered across several ministries.

FrontPage Africa/New Narratives documented suspected corruption and a lack of capacity under the Weah administration that led to four-year delays in the US$10 million Climate Information System project, which was funded by international donors and intended to warn communities about hazardous weather.

The Boakai administration began the work to move the project forward, but it has faced obstacles. “That project also has its activities to make sure that the met service and the hydrological service go autonomous. We still have yet to see that project kicking off fully,” said Sherman.

Living With Standing Water

Still, the broader frustration remains: forecasts are issued, ministries meet and officials visit, but the same low-lying neighborhoods flood year after year. The disaster agency, created in 2016, coordinates the national response but relies on a small, mostly volunteer workforce.

Dulleh said only 30 to 40 volunteers serve nationwide, and the agency’s budget is too small for the scale of the problem. He is pressing the World Bank to help establish a national disaster trust fund.

Flooding is only one of the hazards the agency is tracking. This year, windstorms have also torn roofs from homes in Gbarpolu, Bomi, Bong and Nimba counties. When floodwater does not recede, Dulleh said, disease often follows, creating additional demands for health workers, food assistance and relocation support. “We cannot continue to go in a cycle,” he said. “Every time there is flooding, we move there.”

Residents Want Waterways Clear, Not Money

Residents living with the water say they are not asking first for relief packages or temporary compensation. They want blocked waterways reopened before the next storm.

“When they open the waterway, it will help us,” Manloh said. Residents repeatedly clear the channel near Lofa, she said, only to see it blocked again by new construction. “I want the government to help us open the waterway,” she said. “The main problem is the waterway.”

The worst may not be over. Dulleh said the seasonal forecast points to especially heavy rainfall through September, with Montserrado, Bomi and Lofa counties among the most exposed. Flash flooding has already affected West Point, Clara Town and Doe Community in Monrovia.

No deaths had been confirmed in those communities this season, he said, but families had been displaced and officials were preparing for disease outbreaks linked to standing water.

This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia Project. Funding was provided by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The funders had no say in the story’s content.

A Liberian court has ordered the arrest of former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor, ex-wife of convicted warlord and former President Charles Taylor, along with former security officials, police officers and several European nationals. The order follows a grand jury indictment on drug trafficking and money laundering charges, one of the highest-profile criminal cases in the West African country’s recent history. Howard-Taylor has denied the allegations.

By Willie N. Tokpah

MONROVIA – A Liberian court on Wednesday ordered the arrest of former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor and more than 20 others in a sweeping drug trafficking and money laundering case that also names former security officials, senior police officers and nationals of Croatia and Ukraine.

Judge Ousman F. Feika of Criminal Court “C” in the capital, Monrovia, issued an arrest warrant directing the county sheriff to take the defendants into custody and bring them before the court. The warrant follows an indictment returned by a grand jury in Montserrado County, which includes Monrovia.

The defendants face charges including illicit drug trafficking; unlicensed importation, exportation, sale and transportation of controlled substances; criminal conspiracy, facilitation and solicitation; money laundering; and offenses involving objects allegedly intended for lethal use.

Former Officials Named

Besides Howard-Taylor, the defendants include Gerald Foley Smith, a former deputy director of Liberia’s National Security Agency, and Mark Quiah, a former deputy director of operations at the Liberia Civil Aviation Authority. Two senior police officers, Deputy Commissioner Anthony T. Blaye and Assistant Commissioner Wadell W. Kwarbo, are also named.

Foreign defendants include Croatian nationals Nikola Ivancic and Mihovil Vrovac and Ukrainian national Taras Zadereiko. Others named include Srdan Seles, Johnn David Garces and Sheik Bashiru Kante. The warrant lists further individuals known only by first names or aliases and says others have yet to be identified.

The warrant does not set out the specific conduct attributed to each defendant, nor does it say whether any alleged offenses took place outside Liberia.

Arrested at the Airport

The case dates to August, when Howard-Taylor was stopped while attempting to leave Liberia at Roberts International Airport and taken to Liberia National Police headquarters, according to the Justice Ministry. The government also charged three foreigners in absentia for their alleged roles in the network: Ivancic, Vrovac and Zadereiko.

Howard-Taylor has denied the central allegation. “I don’t know them,” she told FrontPageAfrica, referring to the three foreign nationals.

A Political Heavyweight

Howard-Taylor, 63, served as vice president from 2018 to 2024 under former President George Weah, the ex-football star. She entered politics after her former husband, ex-President Charles Taylor, left office in 2003. Charles Taylor was later convicted by an international war crimes court for sponsoring atrocities in neighboring Sierra Leone, and is serving a 50-year sentence in Britain.

The case is widely seen as a test of President Joseph Boakai’s pledge that no office is too high for the law to reach.

Wider Crackdown

The indictment comes amid an intensified government push against international drug networks using Liberia as a transit point. In July, Liberia announced what it described as its largest-ever cocaine seizure — almost four tonnes, with an estimated value of about $317 million. Officials have stressed that the seizure and the case involving Howard-Taylor are separate investigations.

West Africa has long served as a transit route for South American cocaine bound for Europe, and authorities said the July seizure was believed to be headed there.

Next Steps

An indictment is a formal accusation, not a finding of guilt, and all defendants are presumed innocent. Once the warrant is served, the defendants are expected to appear before the court, where bail applications and the prosecution’s presentation of evidence will shape the next phase of the case.

Prosecutors will be required to prove each defendant’s individual responsibility through admissible evidence under Liberian law.

Judiciary sources expect a grand jury to indict the former vice president, but her defense says it has received no official word

By Willie N. Tokpah

MONROVIA – Uncertainty surrounded the case of former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor on Wednesday. Judiciary sources said a Montserrado County grand jury was expected to indict her, but her lawyer said there was no confirmation that any indictment had been returned.

Sources within the Judiciary told FrontPageAfrica that the grand jury is expected to return an indictment against Howard-Taylor as early as today, October 7, 2026. The specific charges had not been made public as of press time.

Howard-Taylor’s lawyer, Attorney Gbawou Kowou, said the defense had heard similar reports but could not verify them. He said the defense was told that a first panel of special grand jurors failed to reach a conclusion and was disbanded on Monday. A second panel reportedly reached a decision early Wednesday.

“The second set reached a conclusion around 5 a.m. this morning,” Kowou said. “Again, we are hearing this from sources that we believe are credible. We do not have any confirmation to that effect at this point, but we are waiting.”

Neither the court nor the Ministry of Justice had publicly confirmed the grand jury’s decision as of press time.

What an indictment would mean

If returned, an indictment would move the case beyond the criminal complaint and the proceedings so far held before the Monrovia City Court and Criminal Court “C.”

The Ministry of Justice has charged Howard-Taylor with unlicensed importation of a controlled drug or substance. She is also charged with unlicensed sale, distribution, transit and transportation of a controlled substance, and illicit trafficking. Additional counts include criminal solicitation, criminal facilitation, criminal conspiracy and money laundering.

She was arrested on August 19 at Roberts International Airport, where security officers stopped her as she attempted to leave the country. She was then taken to Liberia National Police headquarters and held while investigators pursued the case.

4.2 tonnes of cocaine

The charges stem from a wider national security investigation into an alleged international cocaine network. Authorities have linked the investigation to the seizure of about 4.2 metric tonnes of cocaine, which they estimate to be worth hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars. Three foreign nationals have been charged in absentia in connection with the network.

Prosecutors allege that the network operated in Liberia and other countries. They also allege that Howard-Taylor had dealings with people accused of involvement in the trafficking operation.

Howard-Taylor denies the allegations. Her lawyers maintain that she is innocent and have challenged parts of the government’s case and the way the proceedings have been conducted. They have also stressed that a criminal complaint, an indictment and a conviction are distinct legal steps.

First female vice president

Howard-Taylor served as vice president from January 2018 to January 2024 under former President George Manneh Weah. She became Liberia’s first female vice president after the Coalition for Democratic Change won the 2017 presidential election.

If indicted, she would formally stand trial on the offenses set out in the indictment. An indictment is not a finding of guilt, and the prosecution would still have to prove its case before a court of competent jurisdiction.

MONROVIA — Former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has made a candid admission that her administration failed to defeat corruption in Liberia, acknowledging that despite extensive institutional reforms during her 12-year presidency, the menace remains deeply entrenched and continues to confront the country today.

By Gerald C. Koinyeneh

“We did not succeed,” Sirleaf said Tuesday while delivering the keynote address at a Governance Commission symposium on good governance in Monrovia. The event marks the inaugural ceremony marking October as Liberia’s Month of Good Governance, an initiative declared by President Joseph Nyuma Boakai.

The former president said she wished her administration had won the fight against corruption but conceded that its efforts fell short.

“I wish that I could, with all these efforts, have won the corruption fight. We did not. And we are facing the same thing today,” she said.

Sirleaf’s admission comes nearly two decades after she famously declared corruption “public enemy number one” during her inauguration in January 2006, shortly after becoming Liberia’s first post-war president and Africa’s first democratically elected female president.

She served two constitutional terms, leaving office in January 2018 after peacefully transferring power to then-President-elect George Manneh Weah.

‘Audits Were Published and Then Forgotten’

Reflecting on the shortcomings of her administration’s anti-corruption campaign, Sirleaf pointed to weak enforcement, inadequate funding for integrity institutions and the failure to prosecute individuals accused of wrongdoing.

“I have said so before, and I will say it again. Audits were published and then forgotten. Too few cases reached the courtroom, and fewer ended in conviction,” she said.

She also acknowledged that some institutions were given broad mandates without the budgetary resources required to effectively perform their functions.

Sirleaf said the experience taught her that establishing institutions and passing laws, while important, were insufficient to defeat corruption.

“Institutions are necessary, but they are not enough. Accountability without consequence will only be a report on the shelf,” she said.

According to Sirleaf, laws provide the framework for accountability, but their effectiveness depends on leaders, citizens and institutions working together to enforce them.

Reforms, But Corruption Fight Fell Short

Sirleaf defended the governance reforms undertaken during her administration, recalling that her government inherited a country emerging from years of civil war, institutional collapse and widespread public distrust.

“We inherited a nation that had been looted by the people who had lost faith in government,” she said.

She said her administration understood that sustaining peace would require rebuilding public confidence in state institutions.

Among the measures undertaken, she cited strengthening the General Auditing Commission and establishing the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission.

Her administration also established the Public Procurement and Concessions Commission and reviewed concession agreements signed during the civil war, canceling some contracts it determined were not in the national interest.

Sirleaf also pointed to the National Forestry Reform Act of 2006 and the 2009 Community Rights Law, which she said strengthened legal benefits for communities.

Through the Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, she said Liberia became the first African country to meet the global standard for publishing information on what companies paid and what government received from the extractive sector.

Her government also passed the Freedom of Information Act in 2010, which she described as the first such law in West Africa.

The administration also secured relief of approximately US$5 billion in Liberia’s public debt, which Sirleaf said enabled the country to meet requirements for national reconstruction.

Yet, despite those achievements and the creation or strengthening of accountability institutions, she acknowledged that corruption remained unresolved.

‘It Starts From the Very Top’

Sirleaf said the responsibility for fighting corruption ultimately begins with political leadership.

“Accountability begins at the top, the very top, or it does not begin at all,” she said.

She argued that citizens are more likely to follow what leaders do than what they say.

“It’s not enough to make laws; enforcement is cardinal,” she said.

The former president stressed that public officials must lead by example and demonstrate integrity in the exercise of their responsibilities.

“It starts from the very top,” she emphasized.

She also called for Liberia’s integrity institutions to receive the full budgetary allocations required under the law, while challenging those institutions themselves to uphold the standards they are mandated to enforce.

Judiciary Must Enforce Its Decisions

Sirleaf also called for greater respect for the judiciary and implementation of court decisions, while warning against treating the courts as the sole solution to Liberia’s governance problems.

“The judiciary and our courts, yes, must be respected, and decisions rendered must be fully implemented,” she said.

But she added that the judiciary itself must be properly staffed with competent and highly principled officials capable of making decisions in accordance with the law.

“Waiting for the courts, waiting for the Supreme Court to take the lead to resolve the problem is not going to help us on this matter,” she said.

‘Exclusion Breeds Resentment’

Beyond corruption, Sirleaf used the symposium to place Liberia’s governance crisis within the broader context of the country’s history.

She recounted Liberia’s establishment by the American Colonization Society for the resettlement of freed Black people from the United States and the declaration of independence in 1847.

She noted that Liberia and Ethiopia were the only African countries to maintain their sovereignty during the period of European colonial expansion and the Scramble for Africa.

But Sirleaf said Liberia’s history was also marked by the exclusion of the indigenous majority from political and economic power.

She argued that the prolonged exclusion created resentment that eventually contributed to the 1980 military coup and the civil wars that followed.

“For more than a century, our Republic was governed and taught the school of loyalty, affirming the axiom that a government that answers only to a few will sooner or later serve only a few,” she said.

“This is what happened. Exclusion breeds resentment. Resentment bred the problems of 1980. And then 14 years of civil war that reportedly took 250,000 lives.”

She said the country’s years of militarism and civil war also destroyed infrastructure, weakened institutions and damaged Liberia’s democratic culture.

Accountability Is Not a Foreign Concept

Sirleaf rejected the notion that accountability and good governance are foreign concepts imposed on Liberia.

“Let us also be clear that accountability is not a foreign idea brought to us from outside,” she said.

She invoked the traditional Palava Hut system, where chiefs who abuse their authority can be challenged by elders and members of the community.

“Leadership is trust and can be withdrawn,” she said, stressing that public authority must be accompanied by responsibility and accountability.

For Liberia, she said, good governance should be viewed as a restoration of balance between government and citizens.

‘Freedom of Information Law Belongs to You’

Sirleaf urged Liberians to take greater responsibility for demanding accountability from their leaders and institutions.

She called on citizens to understand and use the country’s laws, particularly the Freedom of Information Act, as a tool for demanding transparency.

“To the citizens of Liberia, our Freedom of Information Law belongs to you as a democracy,” she said.

She also had a direct message for journalists.

“To our journalists, keep asking the hard questions,” Sirleaf said.

Analysts say her remarks at the Governance Commission symposium offered one of the clearest assessments of the limitations of her administration’s anti-corruption campaign, while placing responsibility for confronting the problem on Liberia’s current and future leaders, institutions and citizens.

Recognizing Sirleaf’s ‘Enduring’ Legacy

The event was convened by the Governance Commission in Monrovia and brought together government officials, diplomats, development partners, civil society leaders, media executives and governance stakeholders.

Alaric K. Tokpa, Acting Chairman of the Governance Commission, described Sirleaf’s participation as particularly significant because she was the first chairperson of the Governance Reform Commission, the institution from which the current Governance Commission evolved.

Tokpa praised Sirleaf’s political career and her role as Africa’s first democratically elected woman president, saying her journey from imprisonment to the Executive Mansion had helped challenge longstanding assumptions about women’s capacity to lead.

He also credited the establishment of the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development with extending her influence beyond her presidency.

“Your leadership example and great legacy” should continue to inspire women and young people across Africa, Tokpa said in welcoming the former president.

He said the Governance Commission considered Sirleaf’s presence at the inaugural Good Governance Month event especially meaningful because of her historical connection to the commission and Liberia’s governance reform process.

Tokpa urged Liberians and Liberia’s international partners to embrace good governance as a requirement for national renewal, peace, stability and socioeconomic development.

He identified transparency and accountability, effective government, public participation and inclusion, the rule of law, justice, equity and decentralization of power as essential pillars of good governance.