When Men Stand Up

By Moriah Yeakula

There are still MEN in Liberia. Hon. Barnes has won my respect and admiration even more. This video shows him responding to President McGill after he donated US$100k to ULAA and promised to put US$300k in the national budget for ULAA.

Immediately, Presidential candidate Barnes took the mic and criticized McGill openly and directly. You could see the embarrassment on his face. It took guts and fortitude for Hon. Barnes to call him out, in his face, at a public event. I love it!

Today, McGill out of shame and embarrassment decided to get Cephus to add Barnes to the $5M corruption case against Sengbeh. They did the same thing to former NIC boss George Gyude Wisner II and tried to implicate him in the case. The charges were dismissed. When Wisner became the Head of LIROI, a lobbying and advocacy group against GOL corruption and bad governance, they brought the charges back.

Mcgill and Cephus continue to play hanky-panky with the legal system, weaponizing it against political opponents. This is why many of our critical voices are SILENT. They believe they have dossiers on everyone and can blackmail you into silence. Even where it is not legit, they bring bogus charges to silence or punish those who publicly disagree with them.

This is bad governance and it threatens our democracy. Today, you cannot name ONE critical, vocal opposition voice except Alexander Cummings that resides in Liberia. Civil Society actors who should be more vocal barely speak out. In the Legislature, we elected Abe Darius Dillon to be Our Light and continue to speak out as he used to. Today, Dillon has a secured job for a decade and now speaks to George Weah on the phone regularly after committing to work with the government “in the interest of the people”. In the media, a “Hero” was created to use his platform to speak about the ills in society, today he applauds the President as being “tolerant and magnanimous”. It is sickening!

So when some of us see MEN like Hon. Nathaniel Barnes stand up to McGill, it gives us hope and the courage to stay the course. I’m just the “dry lil girl who can’t take her mouth from on the President” but, even if 5 persons see my post everyday, I will not stop callling out the bad governance, corruption, political persecutions, the incompetence and shenanigans of this CDC-led gov’t.

Whether Cummings wins or not, some of us will still fight for a better Liberia because we want to raise our children in that country. We want to live in and enjoy our country. Liberia is our home. And it’s time that McGill stops running it like his pa farm.

THANK YOU for standing up, Hon. Barnes!!