Published: August 14, 2025
MONROVIA – The family of slain President Samuel Kanyon Doe has accused the Liberian government of “selective justice” and has given President Joseph Nyuma Boakai a two-week deadline to enforce a 2019 ECOWAS Court ruling and settle more than thirty years of unpaid benefits owed to the late First Lady Nancy Bohn Doe.
In an exclusive August 10 letter obtained by The Liberian Investigator, the Doe family’s estate administrator, Veronica Mamie Doe, warned that ongoing inaction would not only continue decades of what she describes as state-sanctioned neglect, but could also threaten the life of Doe’s sick son, Samuel K. Doe Jr., who desperately needs a kidney transplant.
While other ECOWAS judgments have been honored, the Does state that their case, related to the violent 1990 assassination of President Doe and the subsequent confiscation of family property, has been ignored by successive governments. They claim that political interference, including a demand from a senior official to reconcile with an unrelated senator before payment, has prevented the ruling from being enforced, deepening a 35-year dispute they see as reflective of Liberia’s inconsistent approach to justice and reconciliation.
A Case Frozen in Time
The ECOWAS Court ruled in the family’s favor on February 28, 2019, ordering the Liberian government to address claims over seized properties, withheld pensions, and other state benefits. But according to Veronica Doe, more than six years later, not a cent has been paid, even as similar rulings for other litigants have been swiftly implemented.
“This is not merely neglect; it is selective justice. And selective justice is no justice at all,” Veronica wrote. “Will you rise as the change you wish to see in Liberia, or will this stain of injustice remain under your watch?”
Veronica stated that under Boakai’s administration, their legal team was told by then-Minister of State Sylvester Grigsby that their case would not proceed unless they reconciled with Senator Zoe Emmanuel Pennue, a condition she says was “manipulative” and “offensive,” with no grounding in the ECOWAS judgment.
Pennue, she added, has long been a source of contention for the family, notably after allegedly attempting to seize her parents’ caskets in Zwedru, an incident she described as “shamefully indefensible.” The Liberian Investigator has not been able to independently verify the allegations against Pennue.
The Human Toll
Samuel K. Doe Jr., who Veronica says stood “loyally by [Boakai’s] side since 2017 and lost his job in the process,” is gravely ill. His kidney failure has left him unable to eat solid food since March, surviving on liquids while his weight has dropped by 75 pounds.
The family’s letter makes clear that without a formal payment plan by late August to fund his treatment abroad, they will consider the government complicit in his death. “It will be as if you have placed your signature on his death certificate,” Veronica warned.
History and Irony
In her letter, Veronica recalled that her father, as president, personally ensured that former First Lady Victoria Tolbert, widow of slain President William R. Tolbert Jr., received all her benefits and properties without resorting to the courts.
She noted that former First Lady Clar Weah, a foreign national, receives “fully inflated benefits and a whole lot more without hesitation” from the Liberian state, while Nancy Bohn Doe, who served as an advocate for market women and orphaned children, died without ever receiving her pension.
Alleged Sirleaf Directive
She accused former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of issuing an “unspoken order” to deny the Doe family justice, an order Veronica claims even the late Chief Justice Johnnie Lewis acknowledged but said he could not reverse.
Since her father’s death, she wrote, the family has faced “illegal confiscation and occupation of family properties and businesses,” eight unresolved court cases frozen for nearly two decades, and systematic exclusion from state recognition.
From Pleading to Confrontation
Veronica warned that if the government does not act within two weeks, the family will go public internationally, “engage every platform, invoke ECOWAS enforcement, rally the local and international community, and call upon the advocacy of human rights organisations, the European Union, and the United States.”
“I could not save my mother, and that wound will never heal,” she wrote. “But I will summon every breath in my body… to save my little brother.”
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