The former head of state is no longer hiding his ambition to return to power. He is working on a strategy for the presidential elections planned for 2029 and is trying to reorganize his party along with a few figures who, for the most part, served in his administration.
He never truly left the Liberian political scene. Since his narrow defeat in the presidential elections of November 2023 against Joseph Boakai, former President George Weah (2018-2024) has been honing his strategy and mobilizing his troops with a view to winning back power at the next elections, planned for October 2029.
Sometimes known as “Mister George”, the former head of state left the presidency with a record tarnished by particularly corrupt mining arrangements. These practices were closely monitored by Washington, which had levelled targeted sanctions against some of his closest colleagues. Nevertheless, taking advantage of the Boakai administration’s lack of concrete results, Weah is attacking on all fronts.
Between visits to Ghana, a country he visits regularly and where he has a home, and the Liberian capital Monrovia, where he has again become increasingly visible, Weah, along with his most faithful supporters, is trying to get a grip over goings-on in his party, the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC).
He is moreover using his past as a football star to bolster his reputation at the highest levels of the sport’s global body FIFA and internationally. In political circles, Weah’s activities attract particular attention from Boakai supporters.
At the beginning of September, one of the former president’s Monrovia residences was set on fire at a time when Weah was in the city. The previous month, the CDC’s national head office was evacuated by security forces.
This expulsion was followed by a demolition at the request of the civil courts, which faults irregularities in the property deeds, something which is contested. This action caused anger among Weah supporters, who denounced it as an abuse of power, as did the CDC acting chair, Janga Kowo.
In post since March 2024, Kowo was briefly imprisoned in June because he is suspected of orchestrating movements protesting against the arrest of the former House of Representatives Speaker, Jonathan Fonati Koffa. This Weah ally was suspected of being involved in acts that led to the parliament fire last December. He is now one of the senior members of the CDC charged with managing the construction of a new headquarters, planned for 2026.
Unchanged inner circle
These upheavals come at the time of a much-needed reorganization of the party, marked by the departure of several figures and the collapse of alliances with other parties in the coalition. The National Patriotic Party (NPP) and the Liberia People Democratic Party (LPDP) both feel they were given little consideration at the heart of the CDC and have thus distanced themselves over recent months.
To contain the discontent and departures on the fringes of his party, Weah has turned first and foremost to the figures who have given him closest support and advised him when he was president. Take, for example, his former minister of foreign affairs, Dee-Maxwell Saah Kemayah, who has been mobilized for the gestation period of Weah’s candidacy, as well as other members of his former government. Some of them are suspected of corruption and the embezzlement of public funds by the Liberian courts and the US authorities.
Weah is thus betting on past support to carry him back to power in 2029. Apart from his head of diplomacy, the ex-president, and his wife Clar Weah, still align themselves with his former all-powerful chief of staff and minister of state for presidential affairs, Nathaniel F. McGill.
McGill remains part of Weah’s inner circle and at the highest levels of the CDC. He continues to be the target of US sanctions introduced in 2022 and 2023, as is former finance minister Samuel D. Tweah Jr, and the former mayor of Monrovia Jefferson Koijee.
However, the most faithful support comes from the man also considered to be the most strategic among his supporters, his current chief of staff, Lenn Eugene Nagbe.
Nagbe served as the Minister of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism from 2016 to 2020 and then headed up the Liberia Maritime Authority (LiMA) for four years. He is the right-hand man and eminence grise behind the CDC’s political strategy for a return to power and the party’s necessary revitalization.
A true old friend, Weah consults Nagbe on decisions big and small. He appreciates his analysis and understands the value of his contacts in the region and the United States where Nagbe has in the past contracted several lobbying firms on behalf of the state. Nagbe often accompanies Weah when he travels and advises him on international strategy.
Waning networks abroad
Weah intends to use his sporting reputation to get himself a hearing outside Liberia. He has recently once again accepted an ambassadorial role in world football, this time as the leader of the “Players’ Voice Panel”, an initiative to combat racism and all forms of racial discrimination. This panel is an initiative of FIFA’s president, the Italian Gianni Infantino, a relationship with whom Weah much values.
The Liberian thus hopes to continue to obtain financial and infrastructure support for the Liberia Football Association, which is led by the influential Mustapha Raji, an executive member of the Confederation of African Football (CAF). Weah maintains a direct link with the CAF president, the South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe, whose campaign for re-election at the beginning of the year he supported. The former head of state counts on using football and football bodies to spin a web of contacts abroad and maintain his popularity among the Liberian youth.
This is all the more tempting given that his standing among Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) leaders has lessened considerably since his defeat in the presidential elections.
Several heads of state who had supported him during his political career were surprised at his failure to secure a second term. He has since become isolated from these former counterparts. Nor has his succcessor, Boakai, made much of an effort to work with other regional leaders, not setting much store by diplomacy in West Africa. It was only courtesy that led the Ivorian president, Alassane Ouattara, to meet with Weah in August.
The former president of Liberia was in Ivory Coast for the marriage of the daughter of his friend and political and financial supporter, the entrepreneur Ousmane Bamba. It was Bamba who obtained the audience at the Ivorian head of state’s residence. As he has with certain Ghanaian businessmen, Weah confessed his presidential ambitions to Ouatarra and obtained an agreement in principle.
- Africa Intelligence
