Published: September 1, 2025
When President Joseph Nyumah Boakai removed the leadership of the Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency (LDEA) earlier this month, the country anticipated a reset. The agency had become paralyzed by internal feuds and scandals at the very moment Liberia is being consumed by its most dangerous social crisis in decades: the spread of narcotics that are killing young people in ghettos, homes, and streets nationwide.
Into this fragile moment stepped Deputy Commissioner of Police Fitzgerald Biago, appointed interim head of the LDEA. Instead of opening his tenure with a plan to pursue cartels or overhaul operations, Biago’s first act was to impose a sweeping confidentiality agreement on his officers. He has ordered staff to sign nondisclosure pledges and warned of “severe sanctions” against those who leak information.
The timing and intent of this measure cannot be ignored. In a country where the drug trade is widely believed to be shielded by political and judicial figures, silencing officers risks shielding the very corruption that makes Liberia’s drug crisis so entrenched.
Confidentiality is essential in sensitive operations. No enforcement agency can function if officers are free to leak details of raids or expose informants. But this is not what Biago is asking for. His pact comes against a backdrop of whistleblowers being punished rather than protected.
Only weeks ago, Gwee Porkpah, then the LDEA’s deputy director for administration, declared publicly that officials in all three branches of government were implicated in narcotics trafficking. Days later, he was dismissed. Around the same time, leaked recordings suggested that the LDEA’s operations chief intervened to free his daughter caught with drugs in a ghetto. That revelation embarrassed the agency but also exposed the kind of internal compromise that has long undermined enforcement.
These disclosures, painful though they were, did not weaken Liberia’s drug fight. They clarified why the fight has failed because insiders, sometimes at the highest levels, protect traffickers. By threatening officers into silence, Biago risks ensuring that such truths never reach the public again.
The LDEA is not crippled by too much transparency. It is crippled by too little accountability. Liberia’s drug crisis is fueled not only by traffickers but by the impunity of officials who protect them. Each generation of LDEA leadership has promised reform. Each has failed. Abraham Kromah arrived with a reputation for toughness; Anthony Souh targeted street-level peddlers while kingpins prospered. The cycle is one of disappointment and erosion of trust.
What Liberia needs is not another round of secrecy, but leadership willing to act on evidence, apply rules consistently, and confront corruption even when it implicates the powerful. Discipline in a law enforcement agency comes not from gag orders but from clear standards, enforced impartially and transparently.
By announcing his confidentiality pact through the media, Biago made his first miscalculation. Instead of projecting strength, he signaled insecurity. Real leadership does not fear exposure; it demonstrates through actions that there is nothing to hide.
This crisis extends beyond one agency. It is a test of President Boakai’s credibility. He campaigned on a promise to take decisive action against drug trafficking and abuse. If his administration resorts to silencing those who expose wrongdoing rather than dismantling the networks that profit from it, his pledge will ring hollow.
The dismissal of whistleblowers like Porkpah and the adoption of confidentiality pacts will not inspire confidence. They will confirm suspicions that the government prefers to protect itself rather than the public. Boakai’s legacy is at risk of being tarnished early, not by the scale of the drug crisis, which no one underestimates, but by the perception that his government lacks the courage to confront it honestly.
Liberia’s narcotics epidemic is no longer a distant problem confined to ghettos. It is unraveling families, draining communities, and threatening the country’s future workforce. The young Liberians lost to kush and spark are not statistics, they are the visible casualties of institutional failure.
The LDEA cannot afford another round of cosmetic reform. Biago’s mandate must be measured not by how well he silences leaks, but by whether he dismantles trafficking networks, prosecutes those complicit, no matter how connected, and restores professional discipline rooted in fairness.
Secrecy will not solve Liberia’s drug crisis. Transparency, accountability, and impartial justice will.
The Liberian Investigator, in pursuit of truth and integrity, maintains that a confidentiality pact that shields wrongdoers is not reform. It is surrender. Liberia cannot afford surrender.
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