By Wonderr Koryenen Freeman, Attorney, CFCS

Twenty-two years ago, I wrote an essay titled: On behalf of the “book people”. Book people is standard Liberian term for [college] degree holders, professionals, the formally educated, etc. The article was written to rebut a trending and dangerous theory that was circulating in our political culture. That theory held that the educated class had failed Liberia and that maybe, just maybe, it was time to give the uneducated a turn at the presidency. I argued then, systematically and with evidence, that the theory was wrong. I traced the presidencies of Barclay, Tubman, Tolbert, Doe, Taylor, and Sawyer.  I demonstrated the pattern was unmistakable: where learning was present at the top, governance was comparably better; where it was absent, the country suffered badly.

The theory that book people failed Liberia did not die after I wrote that essay. It went into a brief coma — and then it came roaring back in 2017 on the back of a football and a hope. Liberians, in their endearing tendency to punish themselves with beautiful delusions, elected George Manneh Weah as their 25th president. And now that his six-year presidency is done and dusted, and the receipts are all in, it is my solemn duty to update the record. George Weah’s presidency proved — with clinical, empirical, and devastating finality — everything I argued in 2004. An uneducated president is a danger to Liberia.

The Anti-Education Wave That Carried Him to Power

Let us be honest about what happened in 2017. Liberians did not simply elect a president. They made an ideological statement. George Weah ran not just against Joseph Boakai — he ran against the “book people”. His candidacy was a referendum on expertise, on credentials. His rallying cry, refined across three election cycles, was essentially this: the “book people” have had their turn, and they have failed you. Now let a man of the streets lead. It was a seductive argument. It was also equally a fatal one.

Weah’s educational profile is worth examining directly, because it goes to the heart of this debate. He did not finish secondary school in Liberia. He obtained a high school diploma from Continental Academy in the United States in 2007 — a distance-learning program — while already a celebrated international footballer. Before that, when he first ran for president in 2005, he claimed a degree from Parkwood University in London. Parkwood University, for those who need to know, is what is politely called a diploma mill — an institution that issues certificates without requiring study. His supporters dismissed all talk of credentials. They said credentials were the weapons of the elite. George Weah, they said, understood the people because he was of the people. The streets of Gibraltar in Clara Town were his curriculum. The football pitch was his university. King George needed no book to lead. He would use his “good” heart to govern Liberia.

“With all their education and experience, they have governed this nation for hundreds of years. They have never done anything for the nation.” — George Weah, 2005

That line — which Weah delivered with maximum rhetorical effect — was the intellectual foundation of his political career. It was also, as history has now shown, a catastrophic misdiagnosis. The problem was never that the educated governed. The problem was that Liberia’s political culture, across administrations, had consistently rewarded the wrong incentives and punished the right ones. Weah’s presidency did not fix that culture. It became the latest and most spectacular exhibit of it.

Six Years of Squandered Promise: The George Weah Record that Cannot Be Washed Away So Easily

On January 22, 2018, the crowd at the Samuel K. Doe Sports Complex roared. George Weah was inaugurated as Liberia’s president. The symbolism was intoxicating: a boy from the slums of Monrovia, a man who had dazzled the world on the football pitch, now returning to lead his broken country. In his inaugural address, Weah was unequivocal: “It is my belief that the most effective way to directly impact the poor and to narrow the gap between rich and poor is to ensure that public resources do not end up in the pockets of government officials.” He added: “I have been given a mandate to end corruption in public service. I promise to honor that mandate.” He did not honor it. He did not come even close to honoring that solemn pledge. Mr. Weah, as President, would go on to say (i.e., in relation to fighting corruption) that we are all related—in effect, that the fight against corruption was a fight against one’s own family.

Within months of his inauguration, Liberia was rocked by one of the most spectacular corruption scandals in its post-war history. Shipping containers arrived at Roberts International Airport carrying newly printed Liberian dollar banknotes — a combined equivalent of over USD 100 million — and the money, once in-country, simply went missing. Investigative teams, including the international risk consulting firm Kroll, were commissioned to find the cash. Neither the government’s own Presidential Investigative Team nor Kroll could account for all the newly printed currency. The scandal triggered mass protests — the “bring our money back” demonstrations of 2018 — the largest civic uprising Liberia had seen since the end of the second civil war. Three officials resigned. No one was prosecuted. Not one person went to jail for it. This was business as usual.

As if one banking scandal were not sufficient, a second followed almost immediately. The government injected USD 25 million into the economy in what was called a “mop-up exercise” to address currency depreciation and inflation. An audit by the General Auditing Commission subsequently found significant discrepancies in how those disbursements were handled and accounted for. Once again, the money trail went cold. Once again, accountability was a performance rather than a practice. Another business as usual!

By 2022, the situation had become embarrassing enough that the United States Treasury Department intervened. It imposed sanctions on three of Weah’s most senior officials: Nathaniel McGill, his Minister of State for Presidential Affairs; Syrenius Cephus, the Solicitor General; and Bill Twehway, the Director General of the National Port Authority — all for what the Treasury described as “ongoing public corruption.” The president’s chief of staff — the man who sat at the nerve center of his administration — was sanctioned by a foreign government for corruption while still in office. Weah suspended them. He did not fire them. He certainly did not prosecute them. The CDC, his own party, subsequently ran two US-sanctioned officials as legislative candidates in the 2023 elections. By now, George Weah was fully indoctrinated into the corrupt practices that he promised to end.

Weah promised to ‘weed out the menace of corruption’; however, greed and graft became the hallmarks of his presidency.

The economic record is equally damning. Liberia’s budget grew from approximately USD 570 million in 2018 to USD 783 million in 2023 — but the growth was a mirage. The lion’s share went to recurring expenditures: government salaries, fuel subsidies, phone cards for legislators, and the operational costs of a bloated executive. Liberia’s currency depreciated sharply under Weah’s watch. Inflation surged. The government’s mismanagement compelled Liberia to submit to IMF-backed austerity measures — euphemistically called “harmonization” — that slashed civil servant salaries across the board. The people who suffer most when governments fail are not the politicians. They are the teachers, the nurses, the junior clerks who had already been waiting years for salaries that meant something. Under Weah’s harmonization, they worked harder, waited longer and earned less.

There was also an even darker turn from a rule of law perspective. A Supreme Court Justice, His Honor Kabina Ja’Neh was impeached under circumstances that independent observers found deeply troubling. The allegation was that Weah had conspired with members of the legislature and the judiciary to remove a dissenting voice from the highest court — an accusation that, if true, would represent one of the most naked assaults on judicial independence in Liberia’s post-war history. And then there were the auditors who died under mysterious circumstances during his tenure. A cache of USD 100 million worth of cocaine was intercepted in 2022, and the drug dealers were let go. A large container of arms was found at the Freeport in 2023 and no one pay the price, legally. And shortly before the elections that year, Weah’s administration was negotiating a carbon credit deal with a Dubai-based firm that would have effectively pawned ten percent of Liberia’s territory — in contravention of multiple domestic laws. Over USD 122 million in covert intelligence funds disbursed by his NSA director, Henric Pearson II, in at least 227 individual cash transactions at the Central Bank of Liberia — not one cent of which was ever publicly accounted for. That figure, for those keeping score, came out in the post-Weah audits. The administration that promised to end corruption had, by the evidence, industrialized it. Today, Mr. Weah and his wife, Clar Weah owned multimillion dollar properties in Liberia, courtesy of the Liberian people misguided trust in a con artist.

The Verdict of the Ballot and the Verdict of History

To be fair to Weah, some things did get done. His free-university-tuition policy benefited thousands of students. Some roads were paved. Some health facilities were built. These are real, if modest, achievements. But in the calculus of national governance, scattered infrastructure gains cannot offset the systematic looting of public funds, the collapse of institutional integrity, and the deliberate weakening of the oversight bodies whose entire purpose is to hold power accountable. Any government can build a road, but undermining the independence of the Supreme Court and integrity institutions is far more damaging to Liberia’s development.

The deeper problem is what the Weah presidency revealed about the Book-People-Failed-Liberia theory itself. Its advocates always presented it as an argument about class and access — about the arrogance of the elite and the exclusion of the masses. And there is truth in that grievance. Liberia’s educated class has plenty of sins on its ledger. I haven’t come to sugarcoat their vices. But the theory’s fatal flaw is that it conflates access with competence, and popularity with capacity. George Weah was genuinely beloved. He was genuinely from the people. And he was genuinely, demonstrably, catastrophically unable to govern a complex state. No amount of recycling George Weah can solve this problem. Governance is a delicate and technical matter.

This is not personal. It is structural. Running a government is not like being a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. It is not like scoring 34 goals in a debut season. It is not like dribbling past defenders and planting the ball in the net. It requires the ability to read a budget document and find the lie buried in it. It requires knowing which section of the Public Financial Management Act has been violated and by whom. It requires understanding that when a minister signs a procurement contract without following the law, that is not a technicality — it is a felony. George Weah did not have those tools when he took office and, as the evidence shows, he did not surround himself with people who would wield them on his behalf.

What Liberians Must Finally Accept

I write this updated essay not to gloat. I write it because Liberia’s political culture is preparing, even now, to repeat the same mistake in a different costume. The anti-intellectualism did not die with Weah’s election loss. It has simply gone underground, waiting for the next charismatic figure from the streets, the next footballer or preacher or celebrity with a compelling story and an empty policy platform. The “book people failed us” crowd is not retired. They are regrouping.

Let me be direct about what the evidence now demands we accept.

First: educational credentials are not sufficient for governance. An MPA from DeVry does not guarantee wisdom. A PhD does not guarantee integrity. The educated class of Liberia has its own catalogue of crimes and failures, and I have never argued otherwise. What I argue is that the absence of formal education and governance experience is a disqualifier — not because book people are morally superior, but because governance is a technical profession and technical professions require technical training. You can’t properly run a government with just “good heart”. You absolutely need technical know-how.

Second: popularity is not competence. George Weah was — and remains — the most beloved Liberian who has ever lived. His football career was a gift to a nation that had almost nothing else to be proud of during its darkest decades. That love was real and it was deserved. But love does not read a budget. Love does not detect a procurement fraud. Love does not protect a Central Bank from its own directors. Love alone does not compel compliance with the law. The Liberian people gave Weah their hearts in 2017. He owed them competence in return. He could not deliver it; he had no capacity to deliver. No amount of recycling Weah will give him capacity.

Third: the Book-People-Failed-Liberia theory is not just wrong. It is dangerous. Every time it gains traction, Liberia pays for it in stolen public funds, depreciated currency, collapsed institutions, and six million people held hostage to the learning curve of an unqualified administrator. The theory does not empower the poor. It exposes them. Because when a trial-and-error president fills a government with his friends and his football associates and his political harlots, it is not the elite who suffer. It is the rural teacher waiting for a salary. It is the JFK patient waiting for medicine. It is that farmer in the village who cannot bring his produce to the market because there are no roads. And there are no roads because incompetent people are in charge of the government.

Four: Liberia must develop — and demand — a culture of meritocracy. Not elitism. Meritocracy. The difference is critical. Elitism is about birth and connection. Meritocracy is about demonstrated capacity and appropriate preparation. A young person who grows up in West Point and earns a law degree or an engineering degree through sacrifice and study is not an elite. These are book people that Liberia can benefit from. And they are exactly the kind of person Liberia needs running its institutions. Most people who know book today in Liberia are from the grassroots. They are not elites. Liberia would do well to embrace its book people and stop demonizing them in the name of politics. castigating book people is how George Weah and CDC damage politics in Liberia. And when they were given the opportunity, they failed miserably.

Conclusion: The Goal That Actually Mattered

George Weah scored some of the most beautiful goals in the history of world football. But Liberia did not need a footballer. It needed a president. And those are not the same thing — not even remotely the same thing. Over Weah’s six years, hundreds of millions of USD in government funds went unaccounted for. Liberia’s Central Bank that was treated as his personal ATM. The US Treasury Department slammed sanctions on Mr. Weah’s cabinet officials. The Liberian people became poorer and poorer. The goal that actually mattered — improving the living standard of Liberia’s six million people. That was the one goal George Weah could not score. And it is no coincidence that it was also the one goal that required something football never taught him: the capacity to govern a state.

In 2004, I said that when a doctor fails, a patient is crippled. When a lawyer fails, an innocent person suffers. But when a president fails, an entire nation is destroyed. And the book people are always the first group called in to pick up the broken pieces. The miserable failure of George Weah’s presidency vindicated the book people and show that both education and patriotism are absolute essentials for proper governance of a state. A good president must have both, not one or the other. In retrospect, under Mr. Weah’s tenure, his dismal failure shows again that Liberians must take education into consideration when choosing leaders. Other qualities matter too, like competence, vision and experience. If anything, George Weah’s presidency proved once and for all that you can’t do away with books, and you can’t do away with book people.