Liberia: Sarpo Tribe Expresses Dissatisfaction Over being Left Out in the Design of New Liberian dollars Banknotes
MONROVIA – Some concerned and prominent citizens of Sinoe County, particularly of the Sarpo tribe have expressed dissatisfaction over the makeup and design of the new family of Liberian dollar banknotes in the country.
The group, through a communication sent to the Executive Governor of the Central Banks of Liberia (CBL), Aloysius Tarlue, indicated that their attention has been drawn to the new one thousand dollar Liberian banknote which carries the tribes leaving the Sarpo tribe out.
By Henry Karmo
“We the Eminent Sarpo citizens’ attention has been drawn on the newly printed one thousand bank note being advertised, and profoundly noted that there are sixteen human specimens therein as a representation of the sixteen tribes of Liberia. If this is truly your interpretation of the sixteen human specimen on the one thousand dollars banknotes, then we beg to differ and state categorically that this embodiment is a gross distortion, misrepresentation, and misplacement of historical and demographic facts,” the group stated in their communication to the CBL governor.
The group’s communication further stated that empirical evidence from the 2008 census of Liberia clearly indicates that Sarpo is the 17th tribe of the nation, thus, leaving Sarpo out was a complete disservice to the people of said tribe.
According to the group’s communication, tribal data are purely and solely dwelled on demographic and anthropological interrogations or findings and not predicating findings on political interpretations or mere histories of human memories.
The group indicated “as you may know, many of the writers of the early Liberian histories are not dialectologists and linguists and hence, there’re shortcomings and or inability to adequately understand and write about the early tribesmen and their contributions. Additionally, knowledge is provisional and therefore subject to change based on research and technology.”
The group also indicated in their communication to the CBL Governor that when the Bicentennial celebration was being launched, the Chair of the committee and former Chair of the Department of history at the University of Liberia, Professor Dr. C. William Allen made it publicly and unequivocal that owing to the 2008 population and housing survey conducted in Liberia, the nation now has recorded 17 tribes with their various population.
“Sarpo accounted for 1.2% of the Liberian Population with forty-three thousand, three hundred and twenty-seven (43,327). With this, Sarpo has been added as the seventeenth tribe of Liberia thus having population supremacy over the Belle and the Dei tribes of Liberia,” the group asserted.
Meanwhile, the group stated that as a consequence of all of the historical facts and evidence, the CBL should kindly and hastily adjust the human specimen of sixteen to seventeenth on the one thousand bank notes being advertised to vividly picture or embody the true demographic and historical representation as evidence and reflection of the 2008 population and housing census conducted in Liberia.
“Hon. Governor, please be informed, and as earlier mentioned, histories are not stagnant but dynamic, and left with men as time evolves to change the course of histories grounded on evidence and unfolding. It is in view of the foregoing, that we are seeking a modification to the new one thousand bank note been printed and or an amendment to reflect the true tribal representation of the nation,” the group concluded
Meanwhile, the group noted that it would soon be writing the Ministry of Education in order to update the country’s tribes from sixteen to seventeen and be thought in all schools across the country.