Liberia: Expelled Montserrado District 10 Lawmaker Who Vowed Never to Beg Pres. Boakai Now Calls for Reconciliation

Liberians who have watched him for years know better than to bet on the obvious. This is a man who has been an ally, a critic, an exile from his own seat and a mystery, sometimes within the same year. Whether Sunday brings a handshake, a new fight or a surprise nobody has predicted, the oath is the part the country will remember

MONROVIA — In Liberian public life, a man’s word is currency, and a man’s oath is something close to a mortgage on his name. Yekeh Kolubah took out a heavy one. Now, with a press conference set for October 11, the expelled lawmaker is being asked whether he is about to default.

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***By Selma Lomax, [email protected] ***

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‘The Street General’

Long before he held a legislative seat, Kolubah was a man of the street. His brand was never polish. It was volume, defiance and the ability to put a crowd where he wanted it. Politicians courted him for that reason, and none more usefully than Joseph Boakai.

By Kolubah’s own telling, the call came from Boakai’s farm. Former President George Weah was about to announce a political movement, and Boakai wanted the street answered. “Yekeh, you need to get into the streets,” Kolubah recalls being told. He says he went, and in 2023 he helped carry Boakai and the Unity Party past Weah.

Then, he says, the favor was forgotten. “Today, they have turned around and made me their enemy,” he complained in remarks he made while still in the House. He claimed that people who had worked with him were told to “go and support Joseph Boakai,” and he asked a question that has hung over the feud ever since: “Does President Joseph Boakai even know my true value?”

A quick turn

The honeymoon was short. Within four months of the new government taking office, Kolubah had become one of its loudest critics, accusing it of failing to fight corruption and repeating the vices it had condemned under Weah. The ruling establishment came to see him as a nemesis. The opposition, especially members of Weah’s Congress for Democratic Change, embraced him.

He then did something few expected: he publicly apologized to Weah, saying he had not known Boakai was “more corrupt.” He promised to help ensure that Boakai and the Unity Party do not win in 2029. It was the language of a man not just leaving a political marriage but burning the house down behind him.

April 17

Almost three years into his second term, the House voted. On April 17, 2026, 49 lawmakers expelled Kolubah, following controversy over remarks attributed to him about the Liberia-Guinea border dispute. It remains one of the most debated decisions of the 55th Legislature.

For Kolubah, the explanation was never about a border. He blamed Boakai for using the Legislature to engineer his removal, and the opposition backed that reading, calling it punishment for criticizing the presidency. Government officials rejected it flatly, saying he was removed for wrongdoing. Kolubah took the fight to the Supreme Court, where the full bench has yet to rule and his District 10 seat remains vacant.

The word “delete”

Expulsion did not soften him. After appearing before the Supreme Court on April 29, he told reporters he would “delete” President Boakai. He never said what he meant or what he planned to do. He also called Boakai and Vice President Jeremiah Koung “former leaders,” as though the offices had already changed hands.

Then he went on the road. He toured almost all of Liberia’s 15 counties, and along the way he was widely reported to have sworn the oath that now defines the story: that the day he reconciles with Boakai, it is he who killed his mother. The exact wording has circulated in different versions, but the weight of it is not in dispute. In Liberian culture, few vows go deeper.

The turn

Then, three weeks before his announced return, a Facebook post from his media consultant said the former lawmaker was set to reconcile with the President. It cited his frustration with the “disintegration and unseriousness” of the opposition. His PRO, Samson Moseray, reportedly confirmed that a meeting with Boakai was being planned, saying Kolubah had chosen to “mend fences and put Liberia first.”

Kolubah fed the speculation by promising to return to the country on October 10 and address the media. It was classic Kolubah: a date, a stage and a mystery.

Two interviews, two moods

His two interviews this week offered very different readings. On Sunday, the Spoon TV show asked him bluntly whether he was coming home to beg the President for forgiveness. Kolubah’s opening line was that he regrets his relationship with Boakai. Peacemakers rarely begin that way, and that there was little softening as the conversation went on. On the border dispute, Kolubah did not retreat, maintaining that the land Liberia occupies belongs to Guinea.

On Tuesday, before appearing on OK FM’s Morning Rush, he posted his message. “There is nothing wrong with reconciliation,” it began. It spoke of division as one of the reasons the country remains where it is, of healthcare, roads, infrastructure and education, and of choosing “peace, dialogue, and national development over division.” It did not name Boakai.

On the program, host Clarence Jackson asked whether he was ready to reconcile with the President. “Anything is possible in this world,” Kolubah said. Asked about the oath, he deflected: “Wait for the press conference on Sunday, October 11, and see the outcome.”

Nothing is settled. No agreement has been made public, and the President has not given his account of any talks. All that is known is that on October 11, Kolubah has promised to speak.

Liberians who have watched him for years know better than to bet on the obvious. This is a man who has been an ally, a critic, an exile from his own seat and a mystery, sometimes within the same year. Whether Sunday brings a handshake, a new fight or a surprise nobody has predicted, the oath is the part the country will remember.