‘They Are Scheming to Take Control’

MONROVIA – On Friday, February 5, students of St. Peter’s Lutheran High School in Sinkor attended the 6th edition of the National Youth Civic and Peace-building Lecture, held under the auspices of Students United for Reconstruction and Education-Liberia (SURE-Liberia).

Two of Liberia’s business executives spoke at the lecture.

The first was Sando T. Johnson (no relation to the family spokesman for ex-president Charles Taylor, Sando Johnson of Bomi County). Johnson is the president of Continental Machinery on 24th Street in Sinkor.

He spoke on the theme, ‘How Youth Could Become Successful in Life’.

The other speaker was Simon Freeman, Chief Executive Officer, Consolidated Group Inc. located on Benson Street, Central Monrovia. He addressed the topic, ‘The Role of Youth in the 2011 Elections in Liberia.’

In his lecture, Freeman cautioned Liberian youth not to sell their votes in 2011 because Liberia stands at the crossroads as it did in the 1980s. Various actors, he said, are scheming to control the resources and future of the country and striving to buy votes.

“The leader we elect must demonstrate empirical evidence of innovation, creativity and ingenuity by presenting a platform that effectively isolates poverty and hopelessness by defining how it will be done. Monies will be spent as they wrestle for your future. Eat the money. Do not sell your future but vote for quality,” Freeman told the youth at the lecture.

The Liberian CEO also touched on many crucial national issues as well as matters relating to morality and professional ethics, the lack of which, he pointed out, has been a stumbling block to the development of the country.

He recalled that from its foundation, Liberia emerged as a land where genealogy matters, which created a sense of segregation among indigenous Libeians and the settlers until the 1980s.

“Substance and relevance depended not on demonstrated capacities or abilities, but on how one was aligned to the influential and powerful in society or on how one bore a name that could be traced to persons considered like-minded,” he said.

Freeman averred that young natives, who were recruited to serve as domestic servants – though unwillingly – got rebranded by taking on the surnames of their masters in order to fit the status quo of yesteryears.

“Once the natives availed themselves as domestic servants, their names were changed, though unwillingly, but the change was done to rebrand the natives for easy identification by the status quo; an acceptable assimilation methodology at the time,” he explained.

The Liberian business executive said that the demeaning accommodation and degree of deprivation the natives suffered led to the coup of 1980.

“Before 1980, there were two groups of people. [A person] was either a Congo or Country. After 1980, cracks appeared, and the sense of belonging set in, hence one belonged to a particular tribal group or the other, mainly because the available opportunities in government had been consumed by one group to the dislike of the others, who felt allocations should have been more equitably distributed.

“Though the known perpetrators of injustices against their compatriots had been killed, new actors emerged – not as Congo people, but as natives belonging to a tribe – from which non-beneficiaries that were natives would distance themselves and seek identity in the smaller groups or tribes to which they belonged. The replication of old approaches to governance effectively placed the tribe over the state,” he told the audience.

Freeman explained that the settler communities before 1980 sought to protect their own goals by building large bureaucracies within ministries and agencies that were not a true reflection of the social needs of the country.

He added that leaders of native descent since 1980 also used the very tribal vehicle to preserve their tribes instead of meeting the social needs of society.

“Politicians used the vehicle and still use it today to preserve partisanship; though there should be only two criteria to access available opportunities in Liberia: that one is a Liberian and that one is qualified for the job,” he said.

The Consolidated Group Inc. CEO added that Liberia today wrestles with challenges of yesterday and is repeating the mistakes of the past as though its people have never truly analyzed the cost of tribalism, sectionalism or partisanship.

“Selfishness, as embodied in sectionalism, nepotism, partisanship and tribalism are the true reasons why a large government has been preferred over a vibrant private sector that would have created more jobs, more freedom and true independence,” he pointed out.

In his presentation, Continental Machinery President, Johnson, underscored the need for Liberian youth to attach importance to civic education. The youth, he said, are a valued component of Liberian society, as they have a crucial role to play in the country’s development and progress.

He told his audience that to enable Liberian youth to achieve their goals, they as individuals and groups should be able to identify what they want to do and remain focused on their dreams and aspirations.

He urged young Liberians to rise above socio-economic and other vices such as corruption that have the potential to retard national progress.

“Cheating with little things is the beginning of corruption. As youth grow with cheating they become full-scale corruptors of millions of dollars if entrusted with public and private offices,” he told the audience.