Published: September 1, 2025
MONROVIA – Former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has denied claims circulating on social media that she donated $15,000 and thousands of bags of cement to help the opposition Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) rebuild its headquarters.
In an unfiltered phone interview with journalist Julius Jeh on OK FM, Sirleaf, speaking from her farm, called the allegations “nonsense” and “damn stupid,” urging the media to report her denial exactly as she stated it.
“I am here on a farm. Been here for three days. Didn’t even know what’s going on in the city,” Sirleaf said. “But let me say this in response: those people who put this crap, this nonsense on social media, they must just love my name. They must just love me and can’t keep their mouth off me. What they have just said is damn stupid. Anybody who put that crap out there, they are damn stupid. Please repeat it just like I say, put it there in the media, let everybody hear exactly where it is. Then, maybe they’ll stop being damn lies”
The CDC, led by former President George Weah, has not publicly commented on the allegations.
Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female president and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, insisted no CDC official had ever approached her for assistance.
“Never. No CDC person has reached me for support. They have no reason to call me for support,” she said. “I’m busy with my things I do—with my center, with my farm. I’m out of their damn politics.”
The former president lamented what she described as Liberia’s toxic political culture, saying it is driven by sensationalism and falsehoods rather than substance.
“That’s why the politics there is so terrible. Because it’s so sensational. And it just makes people so tired,” she said. “People want to do the good things for the country. You want to promote the good part of the country. You want to be supportive to all the agencies of government. You want to support the president and everything he does if it’s in the interest of the country. And every day somebody come up with some nonsense or the other. It’s so doggone sickening.”
Sirleaf also issued a broader critique of Liberians’ work ethic, suggesting that idleness was fueling rumor-mongering.
“I just wish Liberian people would just get to work. They’re so bored with laziness that they can’t work. All they do is create problems with people, create tension in the country, trying to divide people when we’re trying to promote reconciliation,” she said.
The 86-year-old, who left office in 2018 after two terms, said her energy is focused on national development, her Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development, and agricultural initiatives—not partisan politics.
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