Bong County Development Officer Sedekei Kromah told the public that Sen. Prince Kermue Moye never promised to personally finance the renovation of the Wainsue Clinic in Electoral District 3. A video obtained by The Liberian Investigator shows the senator saying precisely the opposite.
In the footage, Moye tells residents gathered at the clinic that the project would not go through the county's budgetary process at all.
"We are not going to the county account, we are men, Bong County has men," the senator declared. "We are going to LACE from the district development funds that are supposed to impact all districts across the country, to take US$25,000 to renovate this place. Another US$25,000 will come from LACE to build a guest house here."
LACE, the Liberia Agency for Community Empowerment, is a government institution established in 2004 to implement community-driven development and poverty-reduction initiatives nationwide, including clinics, schools, roads, and community facilities, funded through legislative support and donor contributions.
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Despite Moye's on-camera assurance that LACE district funds would cover the renovation, county authorities have since included the Wainsue Clinic project in Bong County's proposed US$3.94 million development budget, which is currently before the County Council for approval. Kromah, in defending this inclusion, stated that the senator had only pledged to lobby the administration to prioritize the project through formal budgetary channels -- a claim that the video directly contradicts.
The discrepancy has intensified longstanding concerns that Bong County's development planning system is increasingly functioning as an extension of Moye's political agenda rather than as an independent, community-led institution governed by the Local Government Act.
Elijah Cooper, a resident of Wainsue, expressed concern about the budget allocation, raising a key question of fairness. "If Senator Moye already promised to renovate the clinic through his own arrangement, why should the county administration now include it in the county budget when there are many other clinics needing attention?" he asked.
The question carries added weight against the backdrop of a collapsing county health infrastructure. Bong County Health Officer Dr. Dianue Paye Zwuogbae recently disclosed that only 11 of more than 40 health facilities across the county are currently in good condition, making the selection of any single clinic for priority rehabilitation a consequential decision.
When journalists pressed Kromah on whether the county administration would similarly renovate other clinics in deplorable condition, he said that responsibility primarily rests with the Ministry of Health -- a position that sits uneasily alongside his confirmation that the Wainsue project, publicly claimed by the senator, has already been written into the county's budget proposal.
Jesse Cole, Human Rights Lead at the DELTA Human Rights Foundation, said the pattern violates both the letter and the spirit of Liberia's decentralization framework. "Development must emanate from the local people as required under the Local Government Act," Cole said. "The law calls for an inclusive participatory development formulation process and not unilateral project decisions influenced by politicians."
The clinic controversy is not an isolated incident. At the opening of the May Term of Court in Bong County, Moye publicly disclosed that the county administration had already allotted budget funds for the construction of a magisterial court -- an announcement political observers say ordinarily falls within the purview of the county superintendent, not a sitting senator.
Kromah himself has accumulated a record of contradictory public statements. Earlier this year, he told the public that a newly constructed building at the Superintendent Compound would house senior county officials including himself, the County Finance Officer and the Administrative Officer -- directly contradicting the project's initial billing as a guest house for visiting dignitaries. When confronted, Kromah claimed his remarks had been misunderstood.
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For civil society actors and political observers monitoring Bong County, the accumulation of these contradictions points to a governance problem that extends beyond any single clinic or budget line. Critics argue that Moye's repeated public pronouncements on county-funded projects -- and the administration's apparent willingness to retroactively align its priorities with those announcements -- represent an unusual and troubling concentration of political influence over local governance.
Under Liberia's decentralization framework, county development priorities are required to emerge through structured consultations involving communities, district representatives and county authorities before being incorporated into county budgets for Council approval. The process is designed specifically to prevent the kind of top-down, politician-driven project selection that critics say has become the norm in Bong County.
