-At NBA Conference
Port Harcourt, Nigeria – Former Liberian President George Manneh Weah has warned that democratically elected leaders who undermine judicial independence pose as grave a threat to African democracy as military coups.
Speaking at the 66th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association in Port Harcourt, Weah told thousands of lawyers that “a tyrant with a certificate of return is still a tyrant.”
“The danger is not only that soldiers might seize power in the night,” Weah said. “It is also that a leader who arrives in office through a free and fair election can, over time and often gradually, begin to govern like the very dictators the ballot was meant to guard against.”
He described how such leaders achieve this: leaning on the judiciary until it bends to their will, and pressuring the legislature until it becomes “an echo chamber rather than a check on his power.”
“Democracy, properly understood, does not end on election night,” Weah added. “It is tested every single day afterward, in how power treats the courts and the parliament that exist to restrain it.”
The former president drew on his own experience to illustrate the standard he said African leaders must uphold. In November 2023, when provisional results showed he had lost Liberia’s runoff election, Weah conceded before the count was complete.
“There were those around me who suggested patience — who argued that a sitting president owes it to himself to contest every figure until the very last vote is certified,” he recalled. “I chose otherwise. I chose to concede while the counting was still underway, because I have always believed that the will of the people must stand above the ambition of any one man in a democratic setting.”
Weah, who rose from the slums of Monrovia to become a global football icon and later served as Liberia’s president from 2018 to 2024, commended the Nigerian Bar Association for its role as a guardian of democracy.
“When the Bar is silent, courts become easier to be captured,” he warned. “When the Bar speaks with one voice, as guardians of the bench, the executive branch think twice before even dreaming of interference.”
He catalogued what he called an “unsettling pattern” across West Africa since 2020: soldiers stepping over constitutions, judges dismissed by presidential decree, and special courts created “not to deliver justice but to secure political outcomes.”
“We have seen nations where a judiciary’s own budget must first pass through the executive it is meant to hold accountable,” Weah said, warning that no country — not Nigeria, not Liberia — is immune.
“Democracy cannot survive on strong men. It survives on strong institutions,” he said, echoing the words of outgoing NBA President Afam Osigwe.
More than 23,000 lawyers have gathered at the Yakubu Gowon Stadium in Port Harcourt for the conference, hosted by Rivers State Governor Sir Siminalayi Fubara. The NBA, Africa’s largest and oldest bar association with over 150,000 members, has itself recently faced tests of institutional independence, including a dispute with the Attorney General’s office over the association’s autonomy regarding its internal elections.
Weah urged the legal profession to defend the principle that a citizen’s rights should not depend on who holds office.
“The rule of law is not an abstract phrase for law school lecture halls,” he said. “It is the practical guarantee that a citizen’s rights do not depend on who is in office or what favor they can secure — that a journalist, a trader, or a student in Port Harcourt, Monrovia, or Bamako has the same protection under the law as a minister or a general.”
The conference, themed “Beyond Limits,” continues through the week with discussions on judicial reform and constitutional governance across Africa.
