Filed in by Olando Testimony Zeongar
Monrovia– President George Weah has appointed Thomas Doe-Nah, as Commissioner General of the Liberia Revenue Authority (LRA), replacing Elfrieda Stewart-Tamba, whose tenure expired recently.
Protests marred Tamba’s departure
Statutorily, outgoing LRA Commissioner General Tamba’s tenure expired June this year, but the strong headed financial expert did not just leave without her departure leaving behind a cloud of controversy.
The week for the expiration of her tenure at the LRA witnessed a standoff between two groups of protesters, one against Tamba’s reinstatement by President Weah, and another group calling for her reinstatement following the expiration of her tenure
Anti- Tamba protesters staged a week-long peaceful protest both at the Paynesville head offices of the LRA and at President Weah’s Foreign Ministry offices, calling on the Liberian leader to refrain from reappointing the internationally acclaimed financial expert.
Followed by another group of protesters in support of Tamba’s reinstatement, which took up position just a stone’s throw from where the anti-Tamba protesters were protesting at the Foreign Ministry.
Both groups, it was believed, were being financially induced to carry out their protest actions, but the anti-Tamba faction opined at the time that they were campaigning against her reinstatement because they claimed among other things that she was responsible for the hike in prices of basic commodities on the Liberian market based on the high importation of tariff. While the supporters of the outgoing LRA boss chanted slogans insisting that she was the best for the job because she is a woman of very high integrity.
Controversial Commissioner-General
Throughout her stay at the LRA as its founding Commissioner General, Madam Tamba was always in the midst of controversy; if not for the wrongful dismissal of employees, then it would be a brawl between she and her co-workers over her excessive principle mindedness or a standoff between she and the court or members of the Legislature.
In April, the House of Representatives ordered LRA under Tamba’s leadership to reinstate 31 dismissed employees of the agency, who it was reported she dismissed illegally and refused to listen to their plea of unjust treatment meted out against them.
The House also ordered Tamba and the Liberia Revenue Authority to settle salary arrears in the tune of some US$712,800, to the dismissed employees for the period they have been out of work, indicating that the LRA was wrong to retire the aggrieved workers due to financial constraints and prevailed on it to reconsider its decision by allowing the employees to return to work when the authority’s financial status improves.
Tamba, in November 2015, also came into conflict with the law, when the Supreme Court ordered her arrested and incinerated.
The Supreme Court’s arrest order stemmed from what the High Court viewed as Tamba’s continued refusal to have reinstated 10 employees of the LRA who were transferred from the Ministry of Finance to the LRA after the Court gave her a 30-day ultimatum to do so.
The High Court, at the time, speaking through Justice Kabineh Ja’neh said the arrest order against Tamba and other top-level officials of the LRA was also due to their failure to have honored a Notice of Assignment filed against them by the dismissed employees.
At the time, Tamba and co also failed to appear before the Court, resulting in Justice Ja’neh ordering them arrested and detained.
Legal luminaries weighing in on the saga involving Tamba and the LRA against the Supreme Court described the outgoing Commissioner General’s action as being totally unacceptable and disrespectful to the High Court.
Season financial expert
All said and done, take whatever you want from Tamba, but one thing you cannot take is her level of qualification and the depth of professionalism she brings to the job.
Tamba, a graduate of the Cuttington University College and an American-trained economist, well-schooled in Accounting and Management at New York’s Columbia University, she returned home to serve, and first landed at the Liberia Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI), and rose to the post of Accountant General.
Following a period of creditable service in that post at the LBDI for several years, former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf appointed her to head the country’s Revenue sector at the Ministry of Finance as Deputy Minister for Revenues, a position she outstandingly performed and remained in for years before being called among several other top-notch Liberian financial experts and some foreign tax experts to have worked together for the creation of the Liberia Revenue Authority (LRA), for which she became its first Commissioner General.
As Commissioner General, no doubt, Tamba performed excellently, leading the drive for the raising of a huge chunk of revenue in the tune of millions of dollars
Indicative of her splendid performance at the LRA, outgoing LRA boss was given a high profile international recognition, when United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, last year appointed Tamba to the UN Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters.
As a member of the UN Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters, Tamba is expected to work with 24 other members on the Committee for a tenure of four years. The Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters comprises 25 members nominated by their governments but acting in their personal capacity.
Tamba and her colleagues were selected from a pool of 60 nominations received by the UN. The Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters is a subsidiary of the UN Economic and Social Council responsible to deal with a number of major tax issues. These include keeping under review and update as necessary the UN Model Double Taxation Convention between Developed and Developing Countries and the Manual for the Negotiation of Bilateral Tax Treaties between Developed and Developing Countries.
Tamba’s replacement
Well, Tamba is out of LRA and the man appointed by President Weah to fill her shoes is Thomas Doe-Nah, who has spent the past 10 years of his life fighting corruption and advocating for systems that promote accountability and transparency in the public and private sectors.
The co-founder of the Center for Transparency and Accountability in Liberia (CENTAL), Doe-Nah, who since 2008, has served CENTAL as its executive director, is educated at the University of Liberia and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Prior to his nomination by President Weah, Doe-Nah was recently hired by the international nongovernmental organization Carter Center, to lead its efforts to advance accountability, transparency, and the right of access to information (ATI) in Liberia.
He has also previously served as National Coordinator of the Coalition for Transparency and Accountability in Education (COTAE).
He is a former employee of the United States Embassy in Monrovia, where he worked in the Economic and Commercial Section. During that period he analyzed the economic and commercial transactional issues in the political economy of Liberia for the United States Government and was an active participant in key economic governance initiative.
Doe-Nah participated on the Technical Team of the Governance Economic Management Assistance Program (GEMAP) as well as the Steering committee of the Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (LEITI).
Doe-Nah, who once served as Vice President at the International Bank Liberia Limited and Loan Officer at the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment is also credited with eight years of progressive work in Liberia’s banking sector.
