At the moment, the continent is like a house having many rooms but one particular room in the house has all the junks, including very useless things that other homes are doing all to get rid of. That one room, sadly, is LIBERIA.
Very sadly, one tenant inherits the messes from one outgoing tenant just to perpetuate the same messes, which are serious challenges that are impeding growth, development and improvement in the lives of ordinary people.
In addition to the economic mess that former President George Manneh Weah’s Administration left for President Boakai to inherit, is the continuous decline in the Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index.
Liberia has declined by seven points from 32 in 2018 to 25 in 2023. The Corruption Perception Index scores and ranks countries based on how corrupt their public sectors are perceived, according to experts and business executives. The score ranges from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean), where 0 equals the highest level of perceived public sector corruption and 100 equals the lowest level of perceived public sector corruption. 180 Countries were targeted in 2023 as in 2022. So, the lower the number in the ranking, more corrupt that nation is perceived.
Mr. Anderson D. Miamen, Executive Director, Center for Transparency and Accountability in Liberia (CENTAL), which is TI’s local partner, in a statement issued in Monrovia, said it is deeply concerned over Liberia’s consistently poor performance, especially her place among the Worst Decliners globally.
Since 2018 when Weah assumed the presidency, Liberia never made any program to higher on the scale. But has continued to drop lower, meaning it is getting more corrupt daily.
CENTAL’s statement said, the poor performance speaks to the Liberian Government’s inability to address the entrenched culture of impunity for corruption, despite enacting new anti-corruption laws and amending existing ones to make them stronger. The anti-corruption watchdog group cited the lack of investigation and prosecution of current and former government officials sanctioned by the US Government for corruption as some of the reasons behind the country’s decline. Additionally, the statement said the weak enforcement of anti-corruption laws and limited financial support to public integrity institutions such as the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission and Public Procurement and Concession Commission have contributed to the decline.
Well, President Boakai, though you inherited these very serious challenges from Weah and administrations before him, you are now in the hot seat to fix the country.
Your administration can take cue from what CENTAL has said so that your Rescue Mission train can indeed rescue Liberia from the continuous decline. Like you declare illicit drugs a national emergency, we urge you to do likewise to corruption. Don’t pay lip service to fighting corruption like your former boss, former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf did.
Though you have inherited the mess, we expect you to fix this country over the next six years.
