Monrovia – Mrs. Margaret Tucker Siakor and her team of 20 workers at the abandoned Unity Conference Center make it their duty each and every morning to pray, a regular devotion they hope will lead to an answered prayer – that the once marquee facility will get a facelift.
Report by Rodney D. Sieh, [email protected]
“Everything is still intact,” she said Tuesday, March 27, as she gave a visitor a tour of what used to be the coffee shop in the corridors of the center.
“I don’t think it will take much to revamp this place, probably a million bucks or two,” Mrs. Siakor said.
Last January, the General Services Agency (GSA) launched a clean-up campaign to give the Unity Conference Center (UCC) a facelift.
The campaign followed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of State for Presidential Affairs transferring the management of the Unity Conference Center and other Executive infrastructure to the GSA.
Madam Mary Broh, head of GSA, said everything is being done to keep the landmark area and facility in tact, including exploring opportunities for private investors to restore the value of both the hotel and the conference center.
“The Feast”, a sculpture by noted Liberian Architect, R. Vahnjah Richards is still in pretty good shape as is the flooring, roofing and strong foundation of what is inarguably one of Liberia’s landmark facilities constructed by Riches and Blythin Partnership, a UK-based construction company located in the Southend of London.
Pointing to a gallery room once used by journalist, Mrs. Siakor said: “This is where the press used to sit, as you can see some of the old equipment is still here.”
Located in the northern Monrovia suburb of Virginia, this is where, some 39 years ago, leaders from 48 African nations and 3,000 delegates assembled for the 16th Annual Summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU).
A Tolbert Legacy in Ruins
Even long after his death, in a bloody coup d’etat, William R. Tolbert’s legacy remains entrenched in this facility.
After all, it was the last major international conference before he met his untimely death.
The OAU summit was widely remembered not just for the assembly of leaders gathering on Liberian soil, just three months after a much-heralded rice riots; but also because of the stance of Tolbert, who was chair of the OAU at the time.
The former Liberian President was instrumental in overseeing the rejection from the conference of a delegation from Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, the expulsion of two rival delegations from Chad and the shelving of a proposed Pan-African peacekeeping force.
Those were the days when thorny issues as Tanzania’s alleged role in the toppling Uganda’s Idi Amin, the dispute between Morocco and Algeria over the Western Sahara, and conflict between North African Arabs as a result of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty dominated the headlines and showcased Liberia’s leading status as Africa’s oldest and most respected nation.
Little did anyone know that Tolbert was in the midst of his peers for the last time. Many credited him at the conference for achieving the impossible, reconciling with the progressives after the now infamous riots in April 14, 1979, which killed 412 Liberians while injuring hundreds more and inflicting an approximate total of US$50 million fix bill for the administration at the time.
The riots marked the biggest test of Tolbert’s seven-years in office but would later proved to be the lightning rod for what was to come, a year later when the April 12, 1980 coup came knocking.
Intricacies aside, Tolbert was hailed amongst his peers for playing a key role in fixing the feud between Guinea, Ivory Coast and Senegal.
For Tolbert, the conference of 1979 was a major achievement and his administration invested heavily, spending a reported US$25 million on the conference center and a hotel complex to house the delegates.
Not much has changed since in terms of the politics and the thinking of Liberians. Many criticized Tolbert at the time for spending too much on the conference, while most Liberians were living in abject poverty, a complaint that has lingered for years and led to a bloody civil war.
After all, this was the argument that was a driving point of contention that triggered the rice riots which was organized by the Progressive Alliance of Liberia (PAL), headed by the late political activist Gabriel Baccus Matthews against the backdrop of a proposed increase in the price of a 100lb bag of rice from $22 to $26.
For Tolbert, the conference had been long in the making. Liberia, under President William V.S. Tubman, had only 20 years earlier, hosted the late Kwame Nkrumah from Ghana and Sekou Toure from Guinea in the northern Liberian town of Sanniquellie, Nimba County, the centerpiece of an era when several African states were agitating for independence from colonial rule.
This was long before the formation of the OAU in Addis Ababa, four years earlier, in 1963.
With the memories of the OAU ’79 conference fast fading into the doldrums of history, much of the area surrounding the center is being threatened by sea erosion.
A Once-5-Star Hotel Now a Scary Sight
At Hotel Africa, a few meters from the center, Thomas Samar, one of the caretakers can be seen cleaning up what used to be a five-star hotel adjacent the beach in the Blessing Road Community.
In the old days it was one of the best in Africa. Nowadays, Samar laments, squatters are just trying to hold it all together.
“We just trying to keep the place clean, perhaps one day some one will come and revive the hotel and the beach and give some of us jobs,” says Samar, who laments that he and others receive not even a stipend from government but call the beachfront facility a home.
These days, the beach may be ranked out of contention for a star but still has a lot of potential despite the threat of sea erosion lingering on the fringes of the community.
The irony of time has come full circle.
The current administration trumpets change for hope and a pro-poor policy as its mantra, in hopes of alleviating poverty and restoring hope to many languishing at the bottom of the economic ladder, a feat administrations’ before, and a lengthy civil war have failed to achieve.
Weah Jumpstarts Legacy
On Monday, the current President George Manneh Weah toured Bali Island, which is situated in the middle of the Mesurado River.
At the end of the tour, Mr. Weah spoke of his intentions of transforming the Island into the New Monrovia commencing with the construction of a state-of-the-art International Conference Center and other standardized structures.
The construction of the conference center, which will be named Mahatma Ghandi Conference Center, will be funded by the Government of India. It will have a 4000-seated capacity.
For Weah the Bali project would mark a life-long dream.
“While coming up as a child; growing up in Clara Town, on Bushrod Island; playing just across the shores of the Stockton Creek; I often looked into the direction of the Bali Island, viewed an undeveloped tourist attraction,” President Weah recounted.
“I wondered what was going on there,” President Weah would ask and went on to say: “I did not know anyone who knew what was going on there. There was no road, no bridge, or ferry to get over here.”
The President envisions skyscrapers, office buildings, shopping malls, banks, insurance companies, night clubs, beautiful lights and magnificent colors on the Island. He said, similarly he saw a happy and prosperous people, going about their businesses, meeting and greeting each other.”
‘New City’ Declared a Wetland
Critics are, however, unsure, raising issues of the environment and the site’s declared status as a wetland area in the same vein that the Unity Conference Center and Hotel Africa are being threatened by sea erosion.
The Bali Island, the area adjacent Providence Island designated the President’s “new city” has been designated a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance.
The Convention on Wetlands, called the Ramsar Convention, is an intergovernmental treaty that provides the framework for national action and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources.
As the heart of the Mesurado Wetlands, the island is one of five areas in Liberia under the Ramsar Convention that the GOL received funding for to protect.
“It is not to be inhabited. Liberia is a signatory to the Ramsar Convention.
It was further ratified and is law. Unless that was reversed, we are in contravention as a nation. The convention entered into force in Liberia on 2 November 2003.
Liberia currently has 5 sites designated as Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar Sites), with a surface area of 95,879 hectares.”
The other areas previously declared forbidden are the Gbedin Wetlands in Nimba, the Kpatawee Wetlands in Bong County which hosts the Kpatawee waterfalls, the Marshall Wetlands in Margibi County and the Mesurado Wetlands the future “New City” of Monrovia.
Experts say the Mesurado area provides a favourable habitat and feeding ground for several species of birds including the African spoonbill Platalea Alba, Common Pratincole Glareola nuchaltis and Curlew Numenius arquata.
“It also hosts the vulnerable African dwarf crocodile, the Nile crocodile and the African sharp-nosed crocodile and plays an important role in shoreline stabilization and sediment trapping.
The site is currently used for fuel wood collection, as a dumping site, for car washing, and fishing, with fish and crustaceans sold to the population of Monrovia.
An additional threat comes from unregulated fishing, as well as from pollution from the industries around the site, including an oil refinery and paint factories.
No management plan currently exists, but there are plans to put it under a protected area management network once it has been successfully designated as a Ramsar site.”
Liberia has been a member of the Ramsar convention since 2003 – a year after the country first deposited its instrument of accession with the Director General of UNESCO in January 2002, with the designation of the first Ramsar site, Lake Piso.
It is still unclear how the President’s advisor came to the conclusion that the site toured by the President Monday was the best available option his vision of a new city. But the ramifications and implications are many.
No one would have predicted some 39 years ago that the Unity Conference Center and Hotel Africa would today be threatened by sea erosion.
Environmentalists say, tomorrow, an unborn generation could be swimming in a sea of what ifs if nothing is done to halt President Weah and his government’s effort from defying the experts’ caution.