-By James M. Fromayan

My response to allegation levied against me by three staff members of the Liberia National Commission on Small Arms stating that I “illegally” authorized the deduction of their allowances will be made at the appropriate forum. However, I deem it necessary to give a picture of the Commission that I inherited as Chairman and the endless fighting and disrespect that these staff continue to point at me. Below is a narrative of the state of affairs at the Commission when I became Chairman.

I was nominated by former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as Chairperson of the Liberia National Commission on Small Arms (LINCSA) in August 2013. The 53rd Senate Committee on Defense and Security confirmed me in September and I was appointed by President Sirleaf the same month.

Prior to my appointment as Chair of LINCSA, Mr. Conmany B. Wesseh, now Senator of Rivergee County was Chair of the Commission from 2006 to August 2013. He was Chair of the Commission at the same time Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and later Minister of State without Portfolio.

The Secretariat of the Commission that I Inherited was 99% Mr. Conmany  Wesseh’s  family members and relatives cranked up in a filthy Assistant Minister’s suite at the ground floor of the Foreign Ministry Building. Members of the secretariat were not selected through any semblance of competitive process.

The only employment letter in each staff’s file was the one written and signed by Mr. Conmany B. Wesseh. There is no mention made of salary in those letters. In the letters, the former LINCSA Chair said that the Commission didn’t have money to pay the staff. He concluded the letters by saying that whenever the Commission secure funding for a project, and said project was executed, they would then be compensated on a case by case basis.

There were two requests that I made to the head of the Secretariat upon taking office. The first was an inventory list of all assets of the Commission. Secondly, I asked for the payroll since they were paying themselves contrary to their appointment letters. On the asset list, a white Nissan 4×4 jeep that was donated by ECOWAS to the commission in 2010 was conspicuously omitted from the asset list.

It was through an outside source that I was informed that Mr. Commany B. Wesseh looted the jeep belonging to the commission and sprayed it to conceal its identity. When I confronted the head of the secretariat, a Wesseh’s loyalist about the status of the ECOWAS donated jeep, she refused to comment. Sierra Leone and Cote d ‘Ivoire received similar NISSAN jeeps from ECOWAS the same time as Liberia for their respective commissions use. The two countries still have theirs. Let me state here that I did question Mr. Conmany B. Wesseh on the jeep issue along with other issues raised in this piece. He did not deny taking the jeep away unilaterally.

On the question of the Payroll, what I saw in September 2013 was nothing but a fraudulent payroll that included a ghost name. The payroll had no origin. It was never signed or approved by a responsible authority at the Commission.  It didn’t take qualification into account, the closer your relationship to Mr. Conmany B. Wesseh, the higher your allowance. It was at best a cartel like operation at LINCSA.

For instance, Mr. Boye Wesseh, a nephew of Mr. Conmany B. Wesseh was on LINCSA’s payroll as a driver when the record shows that Mr. Boye Wesseh had been a commercial driver in Rivergee County all along. There was also a huge discrepancy between the July 2013 payroll and that of August 2013 when my nomination was announced.

For example: Mrs. Gbarlee Wesseh Ricks (Daughter of Mr Conmany B. Wesseh) had USD 600.00 gross allowance in July 2013. In August of the same year, she was given USD 200.00 increment in August thus making her allowance USD 800 without any document to explain the increment. Mr Boye Wesseh who was not in the employ of LINCSA was paid USD 350.00  in July 2013 as a driver. In August 2013, he was paid USD 600.00. There are many more examples of the fraud that was associated with the payroll which compelled me to make the wrong right in establishing the Commission’s payroll taking qualification and experience into account. Of the total of 31 staff at the Commission, the three so-called aggrieved staffers are Mr. Wesseh’s daughter and two other relatives of his who are students and nothing more than liabilities to the institution.

Not satisfied with the qualification of staff at the secretariat upon assuming the Chairmanship, I sought permission from President Sirleaf to restructure the secretariat by advertising top positions as vacancies.  The President did not interpose any objection but advised that if I wanted to carry on changes at the secretariat, I needed to do so through the CSA. That is exactly what I did. That move upset Mr. Commany Wesseh.  He tried in futility to have President Sirleaf dismiss me as Chair of LINCSA. At some point last year, the three along with some family members were jubiliating that President Sirleaf was about to dismiss and replace me with Hon. A. B. Kromah

As I indicated earlier, I inherited a commission that was obscured and housed in a dirty suite on the ground floor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Window curtains, rugs were all filthy. As Chairman, I had to share a tiny room as office space with two other persons: Commissioner Benoni Knuckles and the Technical Advisor to the Commission. There was only one restroom that catered to 18 staff members at the time. The ECOWAS Ambassador to Liberia and the current Speaker of the House of Representatives visited the Commission during that period and can attest to what I am saying. When I opted that we identify a better and bigger building to house the Commission, Mr. Conmany Wesseh secretariat informed me that the building that was occupied by Mr. Robert Sirleaf was renovated by UNDP for the Commission’s use. They suggested that I go to Mr. Sirleaf and ask him to turn the building over to LiNCSA.  I told them that I did not know the circumstance under which Mr. Sirleaf moved into the building in question hence it was not proper for me to discuss any building issue with him.  Additionally, I told them that it was Mr. Robert Sirleaf who recommended me to President Sirleaf for the Chairmanship of LiNCSA, so I won’t be ungrateful to him especially when I had no idea how he moved into said building. Later on, Commissioner Knuckles found a USD 30,000 (Thirty Thousand United States Dollars) receipt issued by the head of the LiNCSA Secretariat to the office of the Senior Advisor to the President (OSA) which seems to suggest that there was a quid pro quod interaction. The receipt is dated May 20, 2011 signed by the Administration and Finance Officer appointed by Mr. Conmany B. Wesseh.

Although Mr. Conmany Wesseh and his people gave me the impression that Madam Sirleaf coerced them to give the said building to Mr. Sirleaf, I did not believe them. Madam Sirleaf as someone who has worked in the UN System would not ask for a building renovated by donor funds to be used for an entity of government to be turned over to her. As a result, the Conmany Wesseh Commission did a serious disservice to Liberia by subjecting the country to public ridicule at ECOWAS Small Arms Commissions’ meetings. Each time I attended a meeting of ECOWAS Small Arms Commission, someone from the Small Arms Unit will remark that ECOWAS renovated a building for use of LiNCSA, but the Government of Liberia had commandeered the building. It was always an embarrassment to the Liberian delegation. I am grateful to Madam Sirleaf for addressing the issue by providing a bigger building that LiNCSA so conveniently occupies with 10 (Ten) office spaces, a Conference Room,   5( five) wash rooms and an IT room.

I am also obliged to indicate that US$60,000.00 was provided to the Conmany Wesseh Commission for the conduct of a baseline survey on Small Arms and Light Weapons by ECOWAS. That survey was never conducted as far as LINCSA is concerned. Like the case of the renovated building, our delegations were always questioned in an embarrassing manner about the baseline survey. It is only quite recently that the Commission was able to access funding from the Japanese Government to conduct the survey jointly with the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Center (KAIPTC). The report will shortly be published.

Our partners including ECOWAS are very pleased with the new LiNCSA’s Headquarters and its productivity.  We are determined to continue working for Liberia through the Commission putting personal interest aside.