By By: Staff Writer
A public spat between Gbarpolu Senator Amara Konneh and Deputy Information Minister Daniel O. Sando has laid bare tensions inside government over Liberia’s drug fight.
The exchange followed President Joseph Boakai’s dismissal of the LDEA Director General and nomination of retired Maj. Gen. Daniel Dee Ziankahn, Jr. as new head of the agency. Konneh welcomed the appointment, citing Ziankahn’s security background and pledging Senate support. But he cautioned that a personnel change alone won’t solve the problem.
The Senator laid out three demands: “No Self-Policing” by compromised institutions, “Full Transparency” through an independent inquiry into senior officials linked to narcotics, and “Systemic Cleaning” beyond the top job. “A new director — regardless of respect or decorations — cannot hide the ongoing, high-profile drug investigations involving senior security and law enforcement officials,” Konneh said.
Daniel O. Sando, Deputy Minister for public affairs at the ministry of information believe the senator is overstepping and politicizing the ongoing cocaine Saga, asking the senator to chair a special committee that would be established by the president, since he was not pleased with ever action from the government in the ongoing fight.
he further urged the Legislator to return to the mosque and pray for forgiveness over what he considered as the senator’s decision to support the election of former president Weah in the 2017.
Konneh fired back, writing: “The lazy man blames the sun for the unfinished work!” He defended his criticism of the cocaine scheme as patriotic duty, adding: “I don’t need an unskilled sycophant riding on the back of an aging President to tell me to go to the mosques and pray.” Sando again responded by calling Konneh “that opportunistic fraud” who is “furious at losing the control he had as Sirleaf’s prime minister,” urging the public not to take him seriously.
Sando’s dismissal of Konneh reflects the administration’s stance that critics are politicizing the issue. Konneh, however, framed his intervention as accountability, not partisanship: “I speak out because I love my country and worked hard to bring in this UP government with the promise to rid our nation of drugs. Silence would be complicity. I am doing my job.”
With Ziankahn’s confirmation pending and public pressure mounting, the Boakai administration faces scrutiny over whether the LDEA shake-up produces prosecutions or just optics. Konneh closed: “The fight against illicit drugs will only be taken seriously when no official — regardless of rank — is above true accountability. Everybody wins!”
