Monrovia – Liberia’s Ambassador to the Republic of Kuwait, Konah K. Blackett is dead. Reports say Ambassador Blackett died in the commercial Nigerian city of Lagos on Wednesday, March 29, 2017.
Sources within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, confirming his death, said he had been hospitalized in Lagos for over 10 days prior to his death.
Ambassador Konah becomes the second Liberian Ambassador to die while serving during President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s administration which runs out in about nine months’ time.
Fifteen months earlier, Rudolf P. Von Ballmoos, former Liberian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, died on December 17, 2015 in London.
Causes of Ambassador Blackett’s death are yet unknown aside from rumor that a ‘back-passed heart surgical operations’ failed.
He was en route from a two-day ambassadorial retreat from Monrovia and made a stop-over in Lagos before reportedly encountering the problem.
The late Ambassador Blackett had joined 20 other Liberian ambassadors and heads of missions for the retreat which ran from the 9th to the 10th of March, 2017.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with relevant ministries and agencies of Government held the two-day retreat for the heads of its 25 diplomatic and consular missions around the world.
The late ambassador will, among other things, be remembered for his personal role in the Liberian Government’s fight against Ebola when he negotiated some assorted medical items from a Kuwaiti hospital which arrived in Liberia in early September, 2014.
Liberia currently has 21 embassies, two permanent missions and two consulates-general accredited near various capitals in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.