By: Samuel P. Jackson, Urban Economist, MSc. London School of Economics and Political Science
No one can question the patriotism, honesty and human decency of President Joseph Nyumah Boakai. On his return to Liberia from weeks abroad attending the UNGA in New York and an investment conference in Toronto our president made an impassioned speech. For me it was a tearjerker as he vividly outlined the challenges facing the nation in a human form. Simplistically and like a pep rally for troops or a national soccer team on its way to an international tournament.
But beyond that, the President didn’t indicate a new direction or give us a sense that he was about to turn things around dramatically to realize his dream of building a new Liberia. “We will rebuild this country” he said several times but there was no indication on how. I didn’t expect a development plan in a 20 minute speech but the country needs assurance that indeed we are moving away from business as usual. Here his return speech fell flat. It was the same banal assessment of such a resource rich country being so poor. My book Rich Land Poor Country: The “Paradox” of Poverty explains it.
The president lamented the lack of systems in Liberia compared to the orderliness he observed on his road trip from New York to Providence. How people do their jobs not expecting to be bribed. Good governance undergirded by accountable systems. The president bemoaned the fact that our system is disorganized and needs fixing. Mr. President, impassioned words from a near 80-year-old president is insufficient to fix a broken system. Rotten to its core from years of corruption, political incest and exploitation by transnational corporate criminals aided and abetted by our own sons and daughters. That kind of system requires uprooting. It cannot be fixed with mere political rhetoric. Some diseases are drug resistant and require radical medical interventions. Liberia as a political economy is one of such cases. Ellen and Weah did not begin to treat the diseased nation. They scratched the surface using pain killers, but their own limitations and corruption undermined the treatment of the near terminally ill nation. Liberia’s backwardness in the face of the forward march of nations in the 21st century is a blight. Too old at 177 years to be so desperately poor. Too resource rich to be so underdeveloped. We have the capacity and talent among Liberians globally to rebuild our nation. We have the global expertise and we can raise the funding to develop our nation. We can make the business case. A group of people who remit hundreds of millions annually to take care of the personal living expenses of families in a wretchedly poor nation certainly can raise sufficient capital or attract investments to build a nation of only 5 million people.
President Boakai was elected based upon the mantra to rescue the nation. As a political gimmick it worked. He unseated a popular president with less than 20,000 votes. A clear mandate to change the nation with transformative policies to uproot the entrenched corruption run by a criminal gang of bureaucrats from all political parties. Corruption is not partisan. But the cartel has proven immovable due to the slovenliness of the Boakai administration. In some cases, his senior level officials have been co-opted to participate in the thievery of state.
Unreported figures from monies collected for inaugural activities. Theft of pensioners’ funds by purchase of vehicles for the inaugural. Crimes predating the ascendency of the government to constitutional control of the nation. Efforts to steal tens of millions by intentionally inflating the cost of 285 yellow machines. Illegal grants of millions in fraudulent road building contracts. Defeat in the war on drugs. Senior officials involved in a weapons play at the headquarters of the LDEA. Off budget spending bordering on criminality with almost 16 million of unexplained expenditure. Illegal purchase of vehicles by unauthorized state agencies. Manipulations of systems to maintain criminal organizations like Medtech and CTN. Hungry unauthorized speculations in granting of mineral rights and oil blocks. Banjoing of our resources by scalawags.
President Boakai. You know these are happening. There have been public outcries. Credible reports in newspapers and other media. Your government has been silent in the midst of these egregious transgressions. The silence is deafening. You need to act. And act fast to retain your credibility as an honest patriotic man trying to fix a broken country. Your failure to act expeditiously will signal that your words are shallow expressions of a failed bureaucrat unable to uproot the rotten decadent system you’ve been a part for 50 years. You must redeem yourself. Your people need you. You mustn’t disappoint those tens of thousands who braved the rains and the feces infested streets to bring you to power. Your country is depending upon you.
You cannot rescue the country with many of the team members in your cabinet. Most are soiled. Many have ties to the cabal running the country from the deep underbelly of the beast of corruption. Your government may be the last constitutional democracy in the postwar if you fail. Public anger and frustration may appeal to undemocratic forces. You are the only one Mr. President standing between a peaceful prosperous Liberia and a chaotic nation of poor hungry people. History will judge you harshly if you fail. And so it goes.
