MONROVIA – Former Minister of Finance and Development Planning Samuel D. Tweah has publicly questioned President Joseph Nyuma Boakai’s claims on road construction and maintenance made during the 2026 State of the Nation Address (SONA), warning that inaccurate figures risk misleading the public and undermining national credibility.
In a post issued following President Boakai’s address to the National Legislature on Monday, January 26, 2026, Tweah took aim at the President’s assertion that his administration increased Liberia’s paved roads from under 12 percent to at least 20 percent while maintaining more than 780 kilometers of roads.
“We increased Liberia’s paved roads from under 12% to at least 20% and maintained more than 780 km of roads,” Tweah quoted President Boakai as saying during the address.
Tweah countered the claim by laying out what he described as a factual breakdown of road development under successive administrations. According to him, paved road coverage under former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf stood at 5.7 percent, representing approximately 745 kilometers of paved and maintained roads.
He further stated that former President George Manneh Weah added 3.4 percent to the national paved road ratio, bringing the total to about 9 percent by 2023. Tweah said this equates to roughly 450 kilometers of roads paved under the Weah administration, bringing Liberia’s total paved roads to approximately 1,119 kilometers as of December 2023.
Based on these figures, Tweah questioned how President Boakai’s administration could credibly claim an increase from 9 percent to 20 percent within its current tenure. “Are your people telling you that your government added 11% to this 9% pavement number?” Tweah asked.
He argued that such an increase would imply that the Boakai administration paved more than 1,430 kilometers of roads, about 11 percent of Liberia’s estimated 13,000 kilometer road network, a claim Tweah described as implausible.
Tweah suggested that the discrepancy may stem from confusion or misreporting by presidential advisors, warning that inaccurate data presented at the highest level of governance damages public trust. “Or did they get confused by the numbers and reported this non-truth to you?” he wrote.
In a pointed remark, the former finance minister said political motivations may be driving the alleged misrepresentation, to the detriment of the President and the country. “Because of politics your people are unfair to you Mr. President and this is not good for the country,” Tweah stated.
While declining to engage the President’s claim that 70,000 jobs were created under the Unity Party-led government, Tweah said he would leave that assertion “for the public to decide,” describing it as beyond his professional scope.
Tweah concluded by cautioning that presenting what he termed “impossibilities” in a national address weakens the integrity of public discourse and governance. “Just wanted to share with the public the impossibility your advisors made you to read to the Liberian people,” he wrote, adding that honest national dialogue remains essential for Liberia’s development.
