- By Patrick S. Tokpah
– Staff call out Board Members’ slide into management positions
A governance crisis has erupted at the Central Agricultural Research Institute (CARI) after two sitting members of its Board of Directors—former Margibi County Senator Oscar Cooper and former CARI Director General Dr. Walter Wiles—assumed senior management roles while still serving on the Board, which staff say violate CARI’s establishing law and basic conflict-of-interest rules.
The flashpoint was an internal memo dated July 28, 2025, inviting all staff to an “official introduction ceremony” for an Acting Deputy Director General for Research and an Assistant Director General for Finance and Administration, to be presided over by Agriculture Minister J. Alexander Nuetah, who also chairs CARI’s Board. The event was scheduled for July 30 in the institute’s conference room. Staff say the “introductions” were in fact the back door through which Cooper and Wiles took up those posts—without resigning from the Board and without an open, competitive recruitment.
“This is a complete violation of our laws,” a staff member told the Daily Observer, accusing the pair of trying “to be players and referees at the same time.”
The CARI Act is explicit about how the top management posts are to be filled. Section 8 provides that “The President shall appoint the Chair and members of the Board and the Board shall approve competitively recruited Director General and Deputy Director General for Research…”
The Act also codifies conflict-of-interest safeguards for Board members. Section 13 states that a Board member with a conflict “shall recuse herself/himself from participating in the deliberations of the Board in respect of that matter.”
Separately, the Act defines the Director General as “person appointed by the President as Chief Executive Officer of the Institute answerable to the Board,” underscoring the line between governance (Board) and management (DG and deputies).
Staff and governance observers argue those provisions, taken together, foreclose any path for sitting Board members to quietly morph into management—let alone to do so without a competitive process and presidential appointment where required.
Inside CARI, several employees say the maneuver is a bid to sideline Director General Dr. Arthur Bob Karnuah, whom they credit with “lifting CARI” since his presidential appointment. One senior researcher alleged: “This looks like a strategic power grab designed to place Board members over the DG, contrary to the Act.”
Notably, former Agriculture Minister and current Board member Dr. Moses Zinnah has refused to accept any administrative position while serving on the Board, calling such an arrangement unprecedented in his professional career—drawing praise from staff as “professionalism and maturity.”
Under the Act, the Board sets policy, governance and oversight—including establishing HR and financial policies, approving budgets and ensuring annual external audits by the GAC. It does not run day-to-day operations. Section 9 tasks the Board with “general governance and strategic direction,” and with approving the institute’s organizational chart and policies—not with occupying the offices defined by those policies.
The Act’s organizational diagram makes the separation plain: Board of Directors at the apex; Director General beneath; Deputy Director General and directors below the DG—i.e., management is accountable to the Board, not merged with it.
Employees are calling on President Joseph Boakai to intervene—specifically, to halt the contested appointments and remove Cooper and Wiles from the Board if they will not step back from management roles. Some staff have threatened peaceful protest if the situation isn’t reversed, arguing that the arrangement compromises research integrity and fiscal governance at an institution central to food security and rural livelihoods.
Attempts to reach Cooper, Wiles, and Minister Nuetah for comment were unsuccessful by press time.
