IPNEWS: Former Minister of State for Presidential Affairs, Nathaniel Falo McGill, who has thrown in his hat to contest the senatorial seat in the upcoming 2023 presidential and legislative elections, has been making waves in recent times, as citizens from Margibi County continue to petition him to run as senator for their County based on his sterling record of humanitarianism and goodwill, especially towards the education of the downtrodden youths of Liberia. Using his own humble beginning in seeking education at the University of Liberia during the height of the Liberian civil war as one of the many reasons why is much inclined to provide assistance to the struggling students of Liberia, Mr. McGill, during one his many petitioning ceremonies, apparently misspoke when he stated that, due to economic hardship, he overstayed in obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree, and that he entered the University of Liberia in 2005 and graduated 2001, an obvious unintentional gaffe.
Providing clarity over the inadvertent gaffe which his detractors are not using to flood the Internet, McGill has clarified that indeed, he entered the University of Liberia in 1995 and graduated in 2001 with the GOLDEN CLASS.
“I was speaking to a group of citizens in Margibi recently and mistakenly made that statement which is now being paraded on the Internet by my detractors, to the point of insinuating that I never graduated from College,” McGill informed The Analyst last evening in a telephone conversation.
Watching the video multiple times, one would easily surmise that the date sequence does not add up, and one would also notice that McGill did not do any double take during his speech to correct himself, thus leading one to understand that the extracted portion of McGill’s speech that is flooding the Internet was an outcome of error, a clear misstatement or “slip of the tongue”.
According to McGill, the context of the mention of his academic sojourn during the community engagement was to underline that he had to spend a relatively longer period at the UL because he could not afford the cost of his tuition.
It was to make the point that, as someone who encountered tough times in school, that he understands the suffering which many Liberian youths are enduring today, which is why he continues to provide scholarships and other support to them.
It seems that the McGill clarification will put a final lid on the ramping social media frenzy about his misstatement, as he has also cited “living witnesses”—individuals that are prominently known in the Liberian public, even including folks in the opposition community, who graduated along with him with the Golden Class at the time.
He has directed those who are thinking otherwise about his academic credential to ask his classmates who graduated with him.
Amongst those he named as his graduate-mates are “former Finance Minister Boima Kamara, who was the class president; Munah Farhat, who currently is with the Alternative National Congress (ANC), and was the class vice president; House member Acarious Gray, and Richard Walker who was the Golden Class Secretary General. (Courtesy of Analyst Newspaper)
