Published: May 13, 2026
MONROVIA — Youth and Sports Minister Cornelia Kruah toured Rivercess County, met with hundreds of young people, and left without telling the lawmaker who chairs her oversight committee she was coming. Now, that lawmaker wants answers before the full House of Representatives.
Rep. Steve Tequah of Rivercess District #2, who also chairs the House Committee on Youth and Sports, publicly accused Minister Kruah of bypassing county lawmakers during her recent nationwide youth engagement tour, calling her conduct disrespectful and threatening a formal plenary complaint when legislators return from their current break.
Kruah shot back without apology.
“Am I supposed to seek permission from lawmakers before going to a county? Is that the procedure?” she told The Liberian Investigator when contacted for comment. “I didn’t seek permission from any lawmaker to visit any of the 15 counties. I am not supposed to.”
Tequah argued that courtesy and coordination, not just constitutional procedure, were owed to county lawmakers whose approval powers fund the ministry’s operations.
“So for you to come in the two chairpersons’ county and without any notice to say, ‘Oh chairman, I will be in your county by this time,’ she never did it, no regard to our office that we provide oversight,” Tequah said during a town hall citizen-legislative engagement organized by the Center for Media Studies and Peacebuilding in Cestos City. “The money that she used, we approved it.”
According to the lawmaker, several legislators pushed to strip an additional US$500,000 from the Ministry of Youth and Sports allocation and redirect the funds to the military. Tequah says he personally lobbied colleagues to protect that funding in the interest of Liberian youth. The minister’s failure to acknowledge that effort, he suggested, compounded the slight.
“But that coordination and the respect are lacking,” he said.
He accused Kruah of conducting a tour that offered broad promises to youth in other counties while saying nothing of substance about programs for Rivercess specifically, a county he notes falls under the oversight jurisdiction of both the House and Senate committees responsible for the ministry.
“What is the definite program for Rivercess young people? CADET? That is something that is way out of style now,” Tequah said. “You went to other counties, you are telling them about scholarships, you’re telling them about this, and you’re telling them about that, but you’re saying nothing about Rivercess young people when we provide oversight for the Ministry of Youth and Sports.”
The lawmaker called for youth empowerment programs that deliver faster, more tangible results. “We need some speed, we need to press the accelerator to move faster so that young people will be able to benefit,” he said.
He vowed to follow through with formal legislative action. “When I get back to Monrovia, there will be a communication inviting her to give reason why she had to sideline us, downplay us, disrespect us, disregard us to come to our district without informing us,” he declared.
Min. Kruah, however, maintained that her tour was conducted uniformly across all 15 counties without seeking the approval of any lawmaker
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