In every year, the most important part of the Message to the People of Liberia is that of thanking Our Creator for all conditions of life. This is what forms the basis for the words Ngala Kpor Ga in the Kpelle language, the most widely spoken Liberian language, meaning God Bless All of Us.
By Togba-Nah Tipoteh, [email protected], Contributing Writer
Having thanked Our Creator, let us look at the prevailing conditions of living and observe what actions are being taken to make them better, especially for the oppressed people of Liberia. Nearly all Liberians remain poor, having access to at most less than LD300 a day while the National Legislators have access to at least LD150,000 a day and their foreign partners, in the commercial sector alone, have access to at least LD300,000,000 a day (Annual Reports of CBL, LISGIS, MFDP, MCI, WB, IMF, ADB and UNDP).
There are calls by the State managers for the flow of resources without their realization of the fact that the most important resource is the human resource. Within these calls, State managers paid LD75,000,000 to a Consultant from England but they were unwilling to pay a better Consultant from Liberia LD7,500,000 for work done in Liberia. State managers in Liberia continue to consider the natural resource and the financial resource as more important than the human resource.
It is this consideration of the natural resource as being more important than the human resource that has led the State managers in Liberia to promote poverty generation rather than poverty alleviation, as seen in the production of raw materials for export without any prioritization of Value Addition. Logs are exported from the poorest parts of Liberia, where the dust from the transportation of the logs gave life threatening diseases and clinics are rarely found, not forgetting the non-availability of schools in many places. Most frustratingly, the education and health systems remain american-oriented, where the people of Liberia do not know themselves and, therefore, can not solve their problems. State management promotes this americanization and this explains the continuous existence of longstanding and widespread poverty in Liberia.
Witness how State management received USD106 million recently from the World Bank and stated that Liberia is headed in the right direction, indicating that the Millennium Challenge Corporation challenges have been met. But 80 per cent of the people of Liberia insist that Liberia is headed in the wrong direction because of prevailing poverty generation in Liberia instead of poverty alleviation (Afrobarometer, 2020). The Truth is that Liberia is headed in the wrong direction because poverty generation is wrong and poverty alleviation is right, as seen by the glaring and overwhelming facts.
The great danger is in the fact that poverty has become the pretext for violence, which, at times, takes on the forms of coup d’etat and civil war. It is the experience of the people of Liberia in the coup d’etat in Liberia and the civil war in Liberia that led the people of Liberia to conclude correctly that Liberia is headed in the wrong direction. Witness how the coup d’etat in Liberia took at least 200 lives and injured many more lives while the civil war in Liberia took the lives of at least 300,000 people and injured at least a million people, not forgetting the displacements internally and externally.
How will Liberia move into the right direction? Liberia will move into the right direction when the people who love Liberia continue to work together through the Rule of Law to transform the UNFAIR electoral system into the FAIR electoral system. It is only through this non-violent transformation that persons with good records will get elected to move Liberia from poverty generation into poverty alleviation when Justice, the only ingredient for peace and Progress in Liberia and in any other country prevails.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!