Liberia: Bong County Representative Marvin Cole Threatens Female Political Researcher

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was first published on September 28, 2022, but has been updated due some factual errors that needed correction.

GBARNGA – Faith Blapooh is a Liberian human rights activist, and a development practitioner. Since July 2022, her life has been in danger because of her involvement in a DAI/ USAID project called the Liberia Civil Society Activity.

As a segment of this project, she conducted a Political Economic Analysis of Liberia’s health and Education sectors. She along with other team members, civil society organization implementing partners (Center for Transparency and Accountability- CENTAL in Liberia and National Youth Movement for Transparent Elections- NAYMOTE), and expatriates from the DAI home office in the US.

This team worked in Liberia’s four most prominent and politically charged counties: Bong, Nimba, Lofa, and Grand Bassa. She led the health PEA team in Bong and Nimba counties as they conducted focus group discussions and Key Informant interviews among civil society activists, superintendents, County Health Officers, County Legislators, District Health Officers, Nurses, Doctors, OICs, etc. The PEA report lay emphasis on the below scope of interest.

• Decentralization policy and political will
• Sources of revenue, sectoral funding and revenue sharing for service delivery
• Accountability for Health Service Delivery
• Inclusive Decision-making for Health services
• Service Delivery: Monitoring & Evaluating Quality
• Access to and sources of information

Based on these questions above, 75 % of the interviewees pointed to Bong County lawmaker Hon. Marvin Cole and his political party the NPP as the spoiler of the health system in the county. Currently, faith has been targeted by Bong County District 3 lawmaker Hon. Marvin Cole. Honourable Marvin Cole is the NPP party’s most vocal and primary legislator in Bong County. He has the biggest hospital within his district, and he controls over 11000 youths in the county.  

Based on my involvement in the PEA process, his perception was that I brought “white people” to spy on him and to gather the information that would spoil he and his political party’s re-election bid. Representative Cole fears being sanctioned or reported to the US government for his involvement in corruption and human rights violation. He also complained that she would share the information with her oldest sister, and his jurisdiction over the biggest hospital in Bong County would be stopped. Moreover, he will lose connection with the hospital staff.

Representative Cole fears he would also lose authority over the county’s social development fund, which he corrupts the hospital funding by sending 50% to his savings. Faith Blapooh oldest sister is a government appointee and serves as the County Health Officer of Bong County.  He further asserted that miss Blapooh connection as a human rights and diplomacy professional and her connection with global human rights institutions could be leveraged at international conferences at the United Nations and other international organizations or functions to bring his corruption and deeds to light. As of current, Representative Cole is determined to harm faith and her close family members. Her life is seriously threatened. She managed to escape two attacks from torts, one of which was rape and almost stabbed on the 15 of September.

The guys who came to attack her claimed to come from the lawmaker Marvin Cole. She was also subsequently attacked on September 25, damaging her car’s windshield. Her sister’s life and job as CHO has been threatened numerous times because of her attachment to Faith. Faith also had to resign from her job for fear of being accused by Representative Cole of unveiling his rampant corruption and mismanagement of the hospital. She believes her safety is at risk and Representative Cole is targeting her life.