Monrovia-President Joseph Boakai has suspended the board of commissioners at the Liberia Telecommunications Authority with immediate effect and has written the General Auditing Commission to conduct a comprehensive audit of the entity.
The suspension comes in two days, just after the Board of Commissioners won a legal battle against President Boakai’s administration, where the Supreme Court nurtured government legal counsel that they proceeded wrongly.
In a communication to the commissioners, President Boakai highlighted “questionable” financial dealings and the controversy surrounding the over 4.6 million U.S dollars headquarters project in which over 2 million was spent since last year with little to show for it
President Boakai’s decision comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling nullifying Boakai’s appointments to tenured positions citing procedural errors.
FrontPageAfrica recently informed the public that some key individuals around the President, are craving to replace the suspended LTA Board of Commissioners divulging that said the decision was already in the making as an alternative to get rid of the current Board of Commissioners, following the government’s legal defeat in four tenure positions cases.
In a statement issued in Monrovia a day after the Court’s ruling, the Executive Mansion welcomed the ruling and committed to following the rule of law.
Meanwhile, President Boakai has appointed an acting Board of Commissioners at the LTA while the suspended commissioners undergo investigations.
Those appointed are Abdullah Kamara, Chair, Patrick Honnah, Clarence Massaquoi, Angela Bush,, and Ben Fofana.
It can be recalled that former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in 2009, asked the LTA board of commissioners to resign or get dismissed for their contribution to the 2008/2009 budget shortfall. President Sirleaf later suspended the entire board and subjected them to investigation.
Similarly, in June 2020, former President George Weah suspended the then Chairperson of LTA Ivan Brown for “administrative reasons” among other things and asked him to turn over the entity’s assets in his possession.
In both cases, none of those suspended Commissioners in 2009 and 2020 returned following their separate investigations.