Eugene Nagbe, a former top official in George Weah's government, has alleged that people in authority are colluding with drug traffickers, saying the large cocaine shipments surfacing at Liberia's ports could not slip through undetected without inside help.
Speaking Tuesday on the Okay Morning Rush in Monrovia, Nagbe, who served as chief of office staff to the former president, said the recent seizures, including the Roberts International Airport bust and a newer case in the VOA Community, expose either a failure of border controls or the complicity of state officials. He questioned why the Boakai administration cannot explain how the narcotics reached the country.
"With all of the checks that usually happen at ports of entry, the Freeport and the RIA, how is it possible for these things to come in if there's no collusion with state authorities?" he asked. If ordinary citizens have their imported barrels opened and taxed, he argued, then containers carrying suspected narcotics should not be able to enter undetected.
His sharpest challenge was directed at the government's valuation of the June 8 seizure of 237.6 kilograms of cocaine at Roberts International Airport, which authorities put at about US$19.2 million. Nagbe called that figure inconsistent with the estimate assigned to a much larger seizure three years earlier.
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"In 2022, the amount of the 520 kilograms was 100 million, the estimate. Now, the weight of this current drug is 237 kilograms. If 520 equals 100, then 237 must equal what? It's got to be around 46 million. So how did it come at 19?" he asked.
Nagbe said the gap raises unanswered questions about the purity of the drugs, possible dilution or the method authorities use to assign street value, and he argued that the government's failure to explain its figures erodes public confidence in the anti-drug campaign. He was equally dismissive of the idea that the arrests show progress, contending that ever larger seizures signal a worsening problem rather than a tightening net.
"You start breaking down something, you say it's 19 million. As you break 19 million, they increase. Are you breaking it down, or is it growing?" he asked.
Nagbe drew a pointed contrast between the current cases and the 2022 operation that netted 520 kilograms of cocaine estimated at US$100 million, which he said was carried out with support from U.S. partners. That shipment, he said, was tracked from South America and deliberately allowed into the country as part of a controlled operation, stored in a warehouse and seized when those sent to collect it were arrested.
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Four people were indicted and tried at Criminal Court "C" on charges including criminal conspiracy, money laundering and the unlicensed importation of controlled substances. A jury acquitted them after finding that prosecutors had not proved the case beyond a reasonable doubt. Defense lawyers argued the wrong people had been arrested, while prosecutors relied on CCTV footage and testimony from the general manager of TRH Trading.
Nagbe faulted the judiciary, not the executive, for that outcome. "Unfortunately, the court system didn't do all of us justice and allowed them to go," he said, describing the collapse of the case as a blight on Liberia's justice system.
He maintained that Liberia cannot make headway against trafficking if its biggest prosecutions fall apart in court and if authorities cannot explain how narcotics enter the country or how their values are calculated.
