Stakeholders’ confidence in the operations of Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (LEITI) has been “undermined”, a leading Liberian anti graft campaign group, CENTAL has warned.
CENTAL, the Center for Transparency and Accountability in Liberia, is urging President George Manneh Weah “to Reverse Illegal Appointment LEITI’s Head of Secretariat.”
But when he made the appointment after taking office in January 2018, President Weah said he had done nothing wrong by appointed Montserrado County Representative Gabriel Nyenkan to this post and that he has not violated any law.
But in a statement released in Monrovia on Tuesday, CENTAL said the continuous negative developments at the Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (LEITI) that have undermined the independence of the institution and lowered stakeholders’ confidence in its activities and processes.”
Since the appointment of the current leadership, against Chapter 6.3d of the LEITI Act of 2009, CENTAL says LEITI has been engulfed by controversies and gross underperformance.
According to the Liberian anti-corruption NGO, the illegal change in leadership and institutional brain drain, caused by undue significant changes in personnel, resulted to the institution’s failure to publish its report for the fiscal period ending June 2016 within the 1 July 2018 deadline.
As a consequence, Liberia’s membership with the Global Movement was suspended in September 2018.
“Disturbingly, also, at a recent news conference, a visiting Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) delegation said Liberia risks being delisted from the group’s process if “significant corrective measures” are not implemented in a timely manner to revive the institution and improve governance of the Extractive sector,” CENTAL says in its statement.
Meanwhile according to CENTAL, if President Weah reverses the illegal appointment of Mr. Gabriel Nyenkan as Head of Secretariat, this will allow the Multistakeholders Steering Group (MSG) to independently recruit the head of Secretariat and other key staff to help restore the institution’s sanctity and declining image.
LEITI has been and remains a key pillar of Liberia’s integrity system and must be allowed to independently play such critical role, moving forward, the CENTAL statement concluded.