Liberia: Boakai Was Right to Veto Port Bills – Let’s Build a Smarter Path to Regional Port Revival

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In a country where decentralization has become the favored mantra of reform, it is tempting to embrace every policy branded as modernization. But President Joseph Nyuma Boakai’s veto of the Liberia Ports Authority Act and the Liberia Sea and Inland Ports Decentralization and Modernization Act was a necessary intervention to arrest legislative overreach disguised as innovation.

The twin bills, passed by both houses of the 55th Legislature, proposed to dismantle the National Port Authority and create a decentralized network of autonomous port boards under a new regulatory agency. In theory, the plan promised equity: regional ports in Buchanan, Greenville, and Harper would no longer play second fiddle to Monrovia’s Freeport. In practice, however, the legislation was riddled with contradictions, legal redundancy, and institutional confusion.

Boakai was right to pull the brakes.

The bills, crafted with surprising carelessness, sought to clone regulatory authority already vested in the Liberia Maritime Authority, an agency governed by the 2010 Maritime Law and tasked with enforcing international maritime standards. Transferring those same functions to a new Sea and Inland Ports Regulatory Authority, without nullifying or amending the existing legal mandates of LiMA, was reckless.

Worse still, the legislation carried within it a quiet but aggressive attempt to override existing laws. One clause proposed amending the Executive Law to effectively strip LiMA of its oversight powers. There was no public consultation, no transitional framework, no due process. It amounted to a legislative coup against a functioning maritime regulator.

That the bills passed both chambers of the Legislature with little resistance says more about the rush to decentralize than the merits of the policy itself. The haste reflects a disturbing trend: lawmakers mistaking structural disruption for progress. As Boakai pointed out in his July 15 letter to the Senate, reform cannot be built on legal contradiction and administrative disorder. Liberia cannot afford another layer of bureaucracy that duplicates, confuses, and fragments an already fragile regulatory environment.

Supporters of the bills argue, correctly, that the current centralized structure has starved regional ports of development. But they conflate decentralization with disintegration. Effective reform requires clarity of function, unity of purpose, and institutional readiness. None of these were evident in the bills as passed.

President Boakai’s veto is a statement of principle. It signals that Liberia’s development path will not be paved with legislative shortcuts or institutional guesswork. The president has not ruled out reform. He has simply asked the Legislature to do better.

And it must.

What Must Happen Now

The problem the bills attempted to solve remains real. For too long, the Freeport of Monrovia has absorbed the lion’s share of investment, technical upgrades, and revenue flow, while Greenville, Harper, and Buchanan languish in a state of economic neglect. These ports hold untapped potential to transform the economies of the southeast and other coastal corridors, ease traffic at Monrovia’s port, and diversify trade routes.

What Liberia needs is not a rushed dismemberment of existing institutions, but a deliberate, technically sound port revitalization strategy. That should begin with a full performance audit of the National Port Authority, specifically, its investment distribution, revenue allocation, and operational efficiency across all ports. The findings should inform a strategic plan, backed by legislative action, to create special investment zones around regional ports with fiscal incentives for logistics and shipping companies.