Published: October 1, 2026
Monrovia – The 5,000 bags of Saudi-donated rice that prosecutors say never reached Gbarnga left the General Services Agency warehouse on 10 signed gate passes, a former GSA official on trial over the rice told jurors Wednesday.
Edris Bility, former deputy director general for operations at the GSA, presented the passes at Criminal Court ‘C’ as evidence that the rice left through a documented process rather than being secretly removed. He said they covered all 5,000 bags.
“I did not steal and could not have stolen a grain of rice,” Bility told the jury.
He said the first pass was issued on April 12, 2023, and the last on April 26, 2023. The documents carry signatures and contact information for GSA warehouse personnel, security officers, National Disaster Management Agency representatives and drivers, with drivers’ licenses attached, and list the destination as the NDMA’s Gbarnga Regional Hub, he said. The court marked them as 2D/1-in-bulk, containing 22 sheets.
The amended indictment alleges that Bility worked with Augustine Tamba, former NDMA deputy director for operations, in connection with the 5,000 bags, which prosecutors say were released from the GSA warehouse for pre-positioning in Gbarnga but never reached the hub. Bility called the allegation baseless, false and “diabolical,” and said it was a calculated attempt to destroy his reputation.
He told the jury that the GSA’s role was limited to warehousing, storing and facilitating the authorized release of government property. After receiving the NDMA’s request on April 12, 2023, he said, he informed then-Director General Mary T. Broh, who instructed him to make sure every bag leaving the warehouse was recorded and accounted for. The GSA then released the rice in separate consignments under a gate-pass system, he said.
Bility compared the system to a bank savings account, saying rice could not leave the warehouse on an informal request and that an authorized representative had to sign for it before it left the premises.
The Ministry of Justice and the Assets Recovery and Property Retrieval Task Force are prosecuting the case. Bility is among several defendants charged with theft of property, economic sabotage, misuse of public money, property or records, illegal disbursement and expenditure of public money, misapplication of entrusted property, abuse of office and criminal conspiracy.
Bility broke down in tears on the stand as he described how the case had affected his 4-year-old daughter. He said that because the proceedings had run long, he had gone about a week without picking her up from school. When he arrived one day around 6 p.m., two hours after the school closed, she told him that someone at school had explained his absence by saying he had been taken to court for “stealing rice”.
He said he “broke down in tears” in front of the child.
Bility said he and other defendants were made to walk through Monrovia with their reputations damaged, even though he had taken steps to document the rice before it left the warehouse. He said the case reinforced a perception that young Liberians entrusted with public responsibility cannot be trusted, and questioned what more young officials could do if those who set up systems to track government property could still be accused of stealing it.
He told the jury he believed the evidence would show that he and the other defendants did not exceed their official authority, and that they would be found not guilty.
Prosecutors maintain the allegations and are expected to challenge Bility’s testimony on cross-examination. The trial continues before Assigned Circuit Judge Ousman F. Feika.
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