Liberia: Tarjuowon “Peace” Conference: Why I Will Not Sit At Your Table

By Sherman C. Seequeh

Before the microphones are arranged in Monrovia—let me declare that I will not be at your table. Folks must be shameless, faceless and conscienceless to expect me to sit with them. Nine months ago, on our own soil, in my own grandfather’s town, I and others were threatened with death.

Nine months have passed, and from that day to this, not one of you now rushing to Monrovia, nor those residing here in Monrovia, coming together for a so-called peace process has asked me a single question. Not “how did you survive?” Not “what happened to you on Tarjuowon soil?”

Not even the small, cheap courtesy of expressing remorse. And now you want me to come and sit, and smile, and reconcile — as though nothing happened. You wanted me harmed, eliminated, in my own grandfather’s town. Not a single person has reached out to me in nine months.

And now you want me to embrace you. No. I will not. And I owe it to you, and to all Tarjuowon people, to say exactly why, because I know reckless falsehoods will rain down like tornado in the wet season.

1. SUMMARY OF MY POINTS
2. a) I am boycotting the Monrovia “peace” conference, and this letter says honestly why:
3. b) What they did. On 11 February 2026, they organized and drugged a band of thugs who overran our Silver Jubilee at Unification — tearing down our tent, flashing cutlasses, singing war songs, threatening death. We had to trade our celebration for our survival.
4. c) Who was behind it? Former Senator J. Milton Teahjay is the chief mastermind of it — and he confessed it among us at the traditional shaving of Bestman Town people after the late Napolean Kingston’s death that he was the one — while Andrew Jaysay’s property, TAPA, and Teahjay’s thug Robert Jebboh fronted the threats; Superintendent Pobleh reported it all to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, now Ministry Local Government.
5. d) No grudge — and the biggest lie. Teahjay and I were never enemies; I voted for him, rode with him to Tarjuowon on the eve of the last elections, and deferred to him for years. His claim that he secured me my CDC job is the greatest lies of all time, false and self-contradicting — by his own charge I placed others in that government in 2018, so I hardly needed him to place me.
6. e) A man at war with everyone. There is scarcely a prominent son or daughter of Tarjuowon, or a leader of Sinoe, living or dead, with whom Teahjay has not quarreled. This is the man we are asked to gather peacefully around. How many people do you know at home and here in Monrovia I have been at odds with? But check it out in the pages that follow to see all those he has had beef with.
7. f) The house they seized is mine. The very TAPA now wielded against us is my own creation — I founded it and funded its first elections, before it was reduced to a one-man show. The records are there, clearly!
8. g) The insult of silence. In nine months, not one of you asked how we survived, or said sorry — yet now you summon the victim to “reconcile.” Before this day, there have been no prior mediation efforts. No prior contact whatsoever was made with those believed to be in conflict? Boom! All must assemble for a peace meeting. Who does that?
9. h) A table rigged to fail. The same people in conflict are appointed to mediate it; there is no impartial broker to cool the tension these old wounds are bound to reopen.
10. i) My one condition. Reconciliation begins with a confession, not a conference. First the truth; then the table. Until then my chair stays empty — the house will not be rebuilt upon a buried crime.

Now here are the details:

2. WHAT HAPPENED ON OUR SILVER JUBILEE

Let us go back to the eleventh of February, 2026. It was to be a double day of honor — Liberia’s Armed Forces Day, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Tarjuowon Statutory District, our Silver Jubilee. The morning broke like any other in Unification: dust rising from the road, elders arriving in their pressed lappas, young people setting out chairs beneath a white tent. It should have been a day of memory and gratitude.

Instead, arrogance and thuggery arrived early. And hear this, for it tells you everything: the very tent those men sat under that morning had been torn down the night before by the same hands, and rebuilt by tired citizens so the anniversary could go on. They sat beneath what they had broken.

They filled the front seats meant for elders. One rested his boot on the very chairs we were sitting in. A knife was flashed and hidden again. They sang war songs, smiling, and one of them said, in the open day, “Today nobody will be honored here unless we say so.”

I was there. I saw it with my own two eyes — the glances toward the bush, the bulge beneath a shirt, the confidence that does not come from numbers but from instruction, from the certainty of men who know they have been sent and believe they are protected. And I saw our people’s answer, too: mothers holding their children close, elders lowering their eyes, our youth clenching their fists and keeping them closed. Representatives of the National Kru Congress cut the ceremony short — not out of fear, but to save lives. We traded our celebration for our survival. That is what was done to us.

3. WHO DID THIS, AND WHY

And let no one pretend it was a sudden, leaderless anger. The Tarjuowon Statutory District Administration has formally accused former Sinoe County Senator J. Milton Teahjay of masterminding the intimidation and the vandalism.

The reason was not principle. More often than not, these things come down to a grudge, and so it was here. Teahjay had been denied the directorship of the Port of Greenville — a decision of President Boakai — and he laid that disappointment at the feet of two of our own sitting senators, Augustine Chea and Crayton Duncan, who were to be honored that very day. A private bitterness was carried, like kerosene, into a public gathering.

The trail is not hidden. Teahjay’s protégé, Robert Jebboh, is reported to have carried a warning to Superintendent Annie Pobleh herself — that the program would be disrupted unless the two senators’ names were struck from the honors list.

His associate, Andrew Jaysay, the self-styled chairman of the so-called Tarjuowon People’s Association, presumed to issue a statement “cancelling” both a national holiday and our Jubilee — as though any private association on this earth may cancel the calendar of the Republic. The threats were ignored, as they should have been. And then the thugs came.

Superintendent Pobleh did not whisper her complaint into a corner. She wrote formally to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, alleged that the acts were carried out under Teahjay’s instruction, and begged for security before our citizens were killed. That is a matter of record, not of rumor.

And Teahjay himself? Given the fact that men like him rarely leave a paper trail, hear how we came to know his hand for certain: he confessed it. Not in a courtroom — among us. At the traditional shaving our Bestman Town citizens held in Monrovia after the death of the late Napoleon Kingston, Teahjay said, with his own mouth and in his own words, that he was the one who authorized the thugs “to chase them out of Tarjuowon with cutlasses.” I did not read that in any newspaper. It was spoken among our own people.

4. THE TRUTH BETWEEN TEAHJAY AND ME

Before anyone in that hall rises to call this a personal feud between Milton and me, let me put the truth on the table, for it is the very opposite of what they imagine. Milton Teahjay and I never traded bitter words — not from a distance, and not to each other’s faces. When he stood for election in 2023, I walked that long, punishing mud all the way home to Sinoe to cast my vote for him — and I did. On the very eve of that election, he and I traveled together to Tarjuowon. It is because of Milton that I have registered to vote in Sinoe, faithfully, since 2014.

It is out of deference to him that I have never once declared an interest in any elective office in Sinoe County. In his 2014 race, my week-old car was wrecked on those same cruel roads as I campaigned for him; and when he lost, we grieved with him. So let no man dress this up as a quarrel between two enemies. It is not.

Our roads parted honestly, and only in 2023. In the runoff, Milton chose to throw his weight behind Joseph Boakai — this after pledging himself to George Weah not once but twice: first when the former President visited Unification City in Sinoe, and again when the National Kru Congress endorsed its 2023 slate, Milton and Weah among them.

That was his right, and I begrudge him none of it. But I, too, had a duty of my own — to stand by President Weah, the man who had given me a prominent job, and who lifted two other sons of Tarjuowon besides: Rufus Darkoteh to the African Development Bank, and Johnny Duaryenneh to a senior post in the Liberia National Police.

Which is exactly why his latest claim collapses under its own weight — the claim that it was he, Milton Teahjay, who secured me my job in the CDC government. That is a lie from the belly of Satan. By the very role I played in the 2018 elections, I stood closer to the decision-makers of the CDC than he ever did; I needed no man’s hand to find my own place. And here is the contradiction that exposes the whole fiction: in the very same breath, he accuses me of singlehandedly drawing up the list of Tarjuowon citizens appointed under that government.

So let him choose one story and keep it. If I truly had the power to place other men in that government, are we now to believe that I could not place myself? He would have you picture a man who sits down, writes out a list of nominees, and carefully leaves his own name off it. Totally childish.

5. A MAN WHO HAS QUARRELED WITH EVERYONE

And if any doubt still lingers that this is about conduct and not about me, then look past me altogether, and consider how this man has dealt with everyone else. To the best of my recollection, is there a single prominent son or daughter of Tarjuowon with whom Milton has not, at one time or another, picked a bone? Isaac Gbonneh. Edwin Kumon. Moses Duaryenneh. Chancy Bolo. Bestman Duaryenneh. Myer Wiah. Martha Duaryenneh. The list runs on and on — nearly every notable name our small district has produced.

Step outside Tarjuowon, into the wider county, and the story only repeats itself among the leaders of Sinoe, the living and the dead alike. Which of them has escaped Teahjay’s quarrel? Is it Nagbe? Is it Nyensuah? Is it Sloh? Is it Chea? Is it Duncan? The superintendents, the local leaders, one after another — the list is long, and it is telling. This, my people, is the man we are now being asked to gather peacefully around. This is the man we are talking about.

6. THE HOUSE THEY SEIZED WAS MINE TO BUILD

And now let me say a hard thing that few in that hall will have the courage to say for me. The Tarjuowon People’s Association — the very TAPA whose self-styled chairman now fronts this campaign against us — is my own brainchild. It began with me.

When the coming of GVL split our people, and those opposed to the company, backed by national and international NGOs, raised the cry of government imposition and overreach, I did not answer noise with noise. I answered it with an institution. I helped form the first all-embracing, Tarjuowon-based body ever built to seat our home citizens at the table and speak for them with one voice. With my own resources, I sent a Tarjuowon National Congress team home to work with the local administration, to mobilize our people and register them to vote.

Again, at my own cost and at the risk of that long road, I carried a team of TNC technocrats to Tarjuowon to conduct the very elections that gave the body its first leaders. And where were today’s loud men then? Many of them were snoring in their mounds of lethargy while the work was being done.

Today that same organization has been reduced to a one-man show. And when its rightful leadership was pushed aside, a handful of citizens ganged up against us. So let no one in that hall presume to lecture me about TAPA. I did not inherit it. I birthed it.

7. NOW, LET ME TELL YOU WHO I AM

Let me say, too, who it is that writes these words to you, so no one mistakes me for a stranger or a latecomer to Tarjuowon’s troubles. When the honest history of our home is finally written, my name will stand on the gentle side of it — from the very founding of the Tarjuowon Statutory District to this day.

Even in the thick of the GVL crisis, I did not run from my people. When our citizens, ground down by hardship close to the old stone age, cried out for the company and the work it promised, I stood with them — and I stood at real risk, with threats hanging over my own head, because the majority of our people genuinely needed that chance.

When the agreement was finally signed, I did not fold my arms and walk away, though I knew full well that companies are prone to exploit and subjugate. Instead I helped build a bridge — the engagement we called the Retreat, where the company, the people and the local government sat together over the hard and lingering questions. At least five of those meetings pulled us back from disasters that were already hanging in the air.

And understand this about the whole of my service: I have never once come to the people of Tarjuowon asking a personal favor. From the Tarjuowon Youth Organization to the Tarjuowon Sports Association, from the Tarjuowon United Development Association to the Tarjuowon People’s Association, I have served without an eye on personal gain, and without ever reaching for an elected office.

Among my peers I can say it with a clear conscience: I have built Tarjuowon institutions, backed our organizational leaders with my own skills and resources, and carried the agendas of our citizens onto the national stage.

Since the civil war, I have made more private journeys home, from Monrovia to Tarjuowon, than any son I can name — wanting nothing for myself, going again and again only to settle the standing quarrels between our people and the outsiders who deal with them. There are many educated sons and daughters of Tarjuowon alive today. Let them answer honestly: how many of them have done the same?

And yet — mark this well — when the threats and the attacks came, when thugs directed by Jaysay and Teahjay fell upon us, not one Tarjuowon citizen, at home or abroad, opened his mouth. Not a word to them. Not a word to us. That silence, too, I have not forgotten.

Ask yourselves, then, one honest question: when I stepped back from that work, who filled the space? Inasmuch as I wish I could point to a worthy successor, what we see today is a scramble for personal pocket and private gain, while the ordinary people wobble in uncertainty. So when I speak of Tarjuowon, understand this — I speak as one who built, not as one who broke.

8. A TABLE WITH NO HONEST BROKER

And there is a question about this conference that no one seems willing to ask, so let me ask it plainly: who, exactly, is to mediate at that table? I have glimpsed the draft agenda, and what I saw defies all reason. The very people who stand on opposite sides of the quarrel are the same people appointed to reconcile it. TUDA against TAPA. The “No to GVL” camp against the “Yes to GVL” camp. The contenders and the referees are one and the same people.

Whoever heard of such a thing? When I think back on how uproarious these conflicts were, I know, as any honest person knows, that fresh wounds are bound to be torn open and old tensions bound to flare.

And when that tension rises in the room, who will cool it? Who stands above the fray to weigh the contending issues with a clean and impartial hand? No such person is named. A gathering that makes the combatants their own peacemakers is not built to heal anything. It is built to fail — or worse, to wound us all a second time.

9. A PEACE THAT BURIES A CRIME IS NOT PEACE

Now hear the heart of my case. I am not against peace. Frankly, no son of Tarjuowon has given more of himself to its quiet than the man writing to you now. But understand clearly what is being offered in Monrovia, and what is not.

You cannot tear down a man’s tent, flash a cutlass in his face, sing war songs over his head, and send him fleeing four hundred miles to Monrovia under threats of death — and then, nine months later, with not one word of sorrow and not one name called to account, summon that same man to a hall to “reconcile.” That is not reconciliation.

That is a cover-up wearing the fine clothes of peace. Reconciliation begins with a confession, not with a conference. First the truth; then the table. Bring forward the men who sent the thugs, let them stand and say what they did, and then — only then — may we honestly speak of peace. Until that day, your process is asking the victim to bless the crime.

10. WHY MY CHAIR WILL BE EMPTY

So let my absence speak where my presence cannot. I will not lend my face to a gathering built to honor the silence of nine months. I will not help anyone pretend. It is not in my nature to answer thuggery with thuggery — we proved that in Unification, when we swallowed our rage to save the lives of our mothers and our children. But neither will I sit politely by nor watch a lie harden into the history of our home.

If my chair stands empty at your conference, let no one wonder why. I have turned my back — not on peace, but on the counterfeit of it. And I will say to all Tarjuowon what I have said before: let us choose peace before arrogance tears down the very house we must all live in together. But let no one mistake me on this one thing. That house will never be rebuilt upon a buried crime.