04/11/2025
The Boakai government has buried its conscience in the Black Sea:
PUNCH TV LIVE
What is happening with the PaviFort road concession is not a mistake. It is not an oversight. It is a conscious act. The Boakai administration has allowed a US$363.9 million national road contract to move through the Executive and the House with no feasibility study, no verified toll model, no proof of private financing capacity, and no demonstrated engineering competence from the contractor. This is not governance. This is abandonment of responsibility. The PaviFort Road Concession is living proof of this chronic abdication of responsibility.
The Liberian Presidency has permitted a company with no highway engineering experience to be positioned as the lead implementer of a national corridor. PaviFort has never designed or constructed a dual-carriage expressway. It has never raised project financing for its own infrastructure projects. Its completed projects are small urban patchworks that have already drawn public complaints for poor durability. Yet this administration is attempting to entrust the backbone of Western Liberia’s transport network to this same firm.
This is not ignorance. It is wilful negligence!
The Senate is holding public hearings on this matter and now has access to independent analysis showing that the toll revenue needed to break even is unrealistic. Nearly one billion dollars would need to be recovered through tolls in a country with limited vehicular traffic. The government would still bear 40 percent of the cost upfront while having no guarantee that PaviFort can raise its 60 percent share. This exposes the treasury, the Road Fund, and the national budget to significant fiscal shock.
The administration knows that Liberia is under an IMF program. It knows that Liberia cannot take on non-concessional debt without IMF approval. Yet it proceeded anyway. This is how nations lose macroeconomic stability. This is how debt crises begin. This is how sovereignty erodes.
What is most painful is not only the bad judgment. It is the shame. Liberia has qualified engineers. Liberia has firms that can design, supervise, and manage infrastructure with international consultants for quality assurance. A consortium of Liberian professionals could have been supported. But the presidency did not consider them. The House did not defend them. The officials who negotiated this concession did not even pretend to make space for Liberian expertise.
The message is clear. The political elite will continue to feed foreign contractors, intermediaries, and brokers while Liberian talent is ignored. This is the same formula that has kept the country weak, broke, and underdeveloped.
A government that came into power on the promise of accountability is now walking us back into the same cycle of opaque deals and engineered poverty. The arrogance is startling. The indifference to national interest is offensive. The conscience of this administration has gone quiet.
We are watching the early signs of a government that is losing its moral center. A government that is slipping into the old Liberian habit where power becomes a tool for patronage, not development.
This PaviFort deal is not just a contract. It is a signal. It tells us who this administration is becoming. And it is not becoming the government the people voted for.
The Senate must reject this contract or it will share the guilt and shame!
