I was betrayed

By Bridgett Milton

Bong County Electoral District #6 Representative Moima Briggs Mensah comes out crying about being ‘betrayed’ by House Speaker J. Fonati Koffa after allegedly supporting his speakership bid.

After the internal legislative election on Capitol Hill on Monday, 15 January 2023, Mensah told journalists that she had supported Kofa’s bid for the position of House Speaker and that she was given assurance to get his support for the Deputy House Speaker slot.

But a few minutes after she was not nominated for the Deputy Speaker election, Mensah took to the media informing the public that she was betrayed by her colleague.

According to her, she did not back off from the Deputy Speaker race, but people that she believed in and trusted did not nominate her. She said she could not nominate herself to be one of the candidates.

During the camping period for the Speaker and Deputy Speaker elections, Mensah said she wholeheartedly supported Cllr. Koffa’s bid for Speaker and she was assured of being nominated for the Deputy Speaker position.

According to her, she was told that Montserrado County District #6 Representative Samuel Enders would have made the motion nominating her for that position, but that did not happen.

“It all started when the Speaker-elect called for a 20-minute break after the Speaker Election. I started to receive calls from my colleagues that I should step aside and let Rep. Thomas Fallah go. But my question to them was why I should step down?” Mensah explained.

She said no one could tell her anything, and she insisted that she was not stepping down.

“When we got to the chambers for the Deputy Speaker election, the nomination process opened and Rep. Enders did not nominate and even the female Representatives could not nominate me,” she lamented.

“The most interesting part of it is that a lawmaker from Bong County was even rushing to close the nomination process,” she added.

According to Briggs Mensah, she was so down-hearted that Rep. Koffa told her all the good things and she supported him, but he couldn’t speak for her.

Mensah indicated that she knows that her colleagues were bought, and she doesn’t have money to buy anyone to vote for her.

She lamented that what she has to offer her colleagues and the Liberian people is her service and not money.

The Bong County lawmaker explained that from the way she was treated by her colleagues, she don’t feel safe to even sit with them anymore.

Mensah did not take part in the voting process for the Deputy Speaker election. She said the two candidates in the race, Rep. Musa Bility of Nimba County Electoral District #7, and Lofa County Electoral District #1 Thomas Fallah, were not the best choice for the Liberia people because they did not mean well for the country.