Speech delivered at

Liberia’s 158th Independence Anniversary

Liberian Old Timers Association Celebrations

Houston, Texas, USA

July 23, 2005

Mr. William Davies, President, Liberian Old Timers Association
Officers & Members of said Association
Mrs. Yata Korpeleh Sankawulo
Former First Lady of Liberia
Fellow Liberians
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen:

I thank you Mr. President for your kind words of commendation.  I believe, however, that the person who sweeps the streets or administers to the sick is making as worthy a contribution to the progress of their country as the person who writes books, or serves as a government official.

I thank God who has made it possible for me to be standing here today making this address.  I thank my parents, whose spirits are certainly hovering around me.  I thank my wife, whose love and support has made it possible for me to accomplish many useful deeds. She has stood with me through many a stormy sea and aided me immensely in my work.  I take the liberty to expose our little secret today: she’s told me many of the stories I have written and published.  Words are inadequate to thank her for putting up with the difficult life of a writer.

I thank my children, especially our daughter, Rose, and our son, Roland, who played a crucial role in bringing us here and are now taking care of us.  I thank the friendly government and people of America for granting me the privilege to come and live here, away from the devastating civil war we have been fighting for three decades.  I am especially grateful to the doctors at Ben Taub Hospital for saving my life.  Last, but not least, I thank the competent and dedicated staff of the library at Cy-Fair College, where I have been carrying on with my studies and writing activities.  I thank Roland and my granddaughter, Patience, who take me there daily.

As we celebrate another anniversary of our country’s independence, I am sure the question that looms in our minds is, why has Liberia collapsed?  Why has a nation founded on Christian principles and the rule of law destroyed itself?  How can we put back together the bits and pieces that remain?  

Answers to these questions are well known to the average Liberian.  Ask anyone in the streets of Monrovia and they will tell you that greed for power and wealth, selfishness, sectionalism, tribalism, and corruption are responsible for the destruction of Liberia.  But these are only symptoms of underlying causes.   We usually overlook or sweep them under the rug because they are too painful to confront.  However, nothing will change in Liberia as long as we fail to identify and overcome these problems.  

Ladies and gentlemen, after the deaths and displacement of more than half of our country’s population, we can no longer afford to deceive ourselves.  Indeed, Liberia has fallen because we did not use the right materials in  building the nation. Therefore, the subject I've chosen for this address is, “The Building Blocks of a Thriving Nation.”

There are those who feel that  we should forget the past and go on with our lives, for there is nothing to be gained by looking backward. And there are those who believe that the solution to our problems lies in looking at the past to identify those who brought these tragedies upon us, so that we may get revenge. They are all wrong.  One cannot make any progress without taking into consideration the lessons of the past.  Look at the space program in this country, America.  Something went wrong with it and people died; the administrators of the program had to find out what went wrong and do something about it before sending people back into space.  The same is true of all human activities.  We must examine and reexamine our progress, especially when something goes wrong, correct the mistakes that have hindered our progress, or we will continue repeating the same mistakes, and falling into the same hole.  As thinking creatures, we cannot afford to handle our affairs in this manner.

Of course, those who recommend that we forget the past may be right, because when we Liberians review our history, we are only concerned with who, rather than what, is responsible for our problems.  If two dozen men with two single-barreled shotguns can over-run the defenses of a nation with an army of more than ten thousand men, we need to examine our military training programs. Witch-hunting does not solve problems.

There was a time when we thought if the countryman came into power, it would be the end of our suffering and the beginning of development.  But the countryman’s coming to power turned out to be the beginning of the worst nightmare in our history.  Then we began changing one leader after the other, thinking that the man with a terminal degree in political science, or who has legal training, or who is a neutral academic, or if a woman or a devout Christian became our leader, peace and progress would naturally come to Liberia.  But all these speculations have failed. We must ask ourselves why.

Ladies and gentlemen, if there is something fundamentally wrong with a vehicle,  the best driver in the world will not be able to get it to drive unless that problem is solved. We can no longer afford the luxury of believing that all is well when we are heading in the wrong direction.  Liberia is one of the richest and luckiest nations in Africa.  She has immense natural wealth and a longstanding, friendly relation with America, the world’s most powerful and richest nation.   If the Liberian nation has collapsed and disintegrated, we need to ask ourselves, “What have we done wrong, or failed to do?”, and not what others have done or failed to do for us.  

Before we can solve the many problems of our country, we as a nation must admit that we have failed in our endeavors to build our nation as we should have.  The scriptures tell us that the beginning of salvation is admitting that you are a sinner.  And not only that: You must repent of your sin and turn completely around and follow the way of the Master.  Ladies and gentlemen, we have had more than enough time and resources to modernize the Liberian state, but we have allowed corruption and personal interests to supercede the interests of the nation.  The civil war has taught us that nobody’s interest can be well served once the interest of the nation as a whole is ignored.

It must be said that all Liberians are, in one way or another, responsible for our failure.  I have heard many Liberians say, “I never took a gun and killed anyone, or stole government money.  So I’m not responsible for the crisis we’re in.”  But go anywhere in the world, once you say you are a Liberian, people will accuse you of destroying your country. Accusations are usually pointed at the so-called pioneers or Americo-Liberians for the ruin of the nation.  But it is Gio people, Krahn people, Mano people, Kpelle people, Bassa people, and Mandingo people who were killing one another.  Many of them claim that Taylor gave them drugs to kill their own people.  We often say in Liberia, “Jack drunk but is not a fool.”  Many of the killings were done by people who were sober.  The founding fathers might have made a thousand mistakes, but they passed onto us a piece of Africa; it was our responsibility to develop it. Unfortunately, we have taken our country to be a no man’s land, a farm, or elephant meat—we get riches from it to enjoy in other countries.  I've learned that wealthy Liberians are now building new homes in Ghana—as for America, it is their mother country. Indeed, Liberia is a nation betrayed.  The challenge before us today is to identify and uproot the cause of this tragedy and use the right building blocks for reconstruction.

The first building block of a nation is unity. Liberia continues to be divided according to ethnic, regional, and interest groupings despite all the talks about unification.  Even during the best of times, the national radio and television did not cover one percent of the country, and over ninety percent of the country was inaccessible by motor road.  In a country where people are so isolated, they are bound to be afraid and suspicious of each other, and are likely to fight among themselves.  History has shown again and again that lack of communication is a major cause of warfare.  If we develop our country, we must give everybody an opportunity to be something and to live for something; if this is implemented, I am sure most Liberians will not choose war as an option in life.

Lack of communication among us accounts for the evils of discrimination, segregation, tribalism, and the endless war that now plagues the Liberian nation. Although our founding fathers came to these shores with the Bible in one hand, and the Constitution in the other, because they were not in communication with the natives, they permitted a spirit of vengeance to intrude upon their good intentions to build a just and equitable society in which all lived in peace, freedom, and prosperity.  Regarding themselves as Americans, they stated in the declaration of independence that they were originally inhabitants of the United States of North America, when in fact they derived from Africa and had gone to America by accident.  They talked of Liberia as a barbarous coast, and wrote on the national seal, “The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here.”  December 10th was solemnized as a national holiday when hundreds of natives were slaughtered in a skirmish by Matilda Newport, a repatriate.  It was only in 1973 that the natives legally became citizens of Liberia.  We of this generation, if we truly love our country, must abolish these discrepancies in the instruments that represent our aspirations as a nation.  Let us put all emphases on those factors that unite us, and abandon those that divide us.

It is perfectly understandable that people who leave their home for more than four hundred years will find it difficult to reunite with their people.  Even Liberians who live in this country for five or ten years sometimes look and sound strange when they return home.  But it is our responsibility to explain to our people that we are one, despite the accidents of history.  We must acknowledge and cherish our common heritage and work together to build a new social order based on justice and equality; otherwise, we may never know peace. Another reason for the animosity between repatriate and native Liberians is the slavery question.  However, even some of the natives who remained in Africa suffered the yoke of slavery, just as those who were sold.  The repatriates also sold natives into slavery, a problem that brought down the government of Charles D. B. King. It is my observation that we black people make too much ado about our enslavement.  The white people, too, have been slaves, but they are more concerned about how to improve the quality of their lives than what happened to their ancestors hundreds of years ago. As the biblical Joseph did for his people, we can use the experiences we have gained in the West to develop the African continent.  This is one way to defend the integrity and humanity of the black race.

The next building block of a nation is the ability to take control of our own destiny.  By this I mean taking responsibility for our own affairs.  In Liberia, Lebanese and Fulah people run our shops and bake our bread; Ghanaians do our fishing, run our shops and bake our bread; America and Taiwan provide us with rice—our staple food. There was a time when we thought the US currency was our currency.  Once we have no control over our own economy, any fool can tempt us with money and create havoc among us. When you become president of Liberia, the first thing people want to know is what outside connection you have to bring in funds to develop the country and run the government.  For more than a century and a half we have been waiting for others to develop our country, but it has not happened, and I don’t think it will ever happen. The outside world knows that Liberia has more than enough resources for the modernization of the state, but we have allowed corruption to erode the economic base of our country.  

I remember a Finance Minister going to New York to borrow 50 million dollars for road construction.  The banker told him to go back to Monrovia; somebody there had the money to give him.  If you become a Liberian leader and fail to accumulate wealth for yourself, Liberians call you a fool.  As a former Head of State, I and my family do not even enjoy security protection, nor do I get a pension or any allowance from the government.  Ladies and gentlemen, economic justice is totally absent in our country.  Only those who run the government enjoy the government.  Once we do not establish a government that caters to the needs of all the people, there will never be peace or security in Liberian society.

Finally, the greatest building block of a nation is patriotism.  As I said before, Liberians are mostly concerned about what their country can do for them, and not what they can do for their country.  When I became the Head of State, people told me repeatedly, “This is your chance now.  If you don’t do something for yourself, they will forget about you when you leave office.” They were right, but I couldn’t afford to pocket the country’s money for the benefit of my family and myself when the masses were dying of hunger and disease. I am happy I had no control over public funds; the rebel leaders took over everything.  It was the only way they would stop killing our people.  For me, the life of the people was more important than money.

Corruption exists everywhere in the world, but I have observed that people in other African countries such as Ghana and Nigeria, go to foreign countries to find money to build their countries, but we take the riches out of our country to build other people’s countries. I have seen Liberians sell government property, steal government money, even sell the nation’s embassy simply to enrich themselves. We find it impossible to keep our streets clean or lay out our towns and cities properly.  We come to America and see how the government takes care of its people and even people who are not Americans, but at home we drive the most expensive cars in the worst of streets among starving people traveling on foot.  When Tolbert tried to use Liberia’s money to develop Liberia, we killed him because we wanted the nation’s money to go into our private pockets.

What amazes me above all else is when a handful of rebels with nothing more than two single barrels took the country from our army, and yet the Liberian army proudly went about declaring that it was a national army.  In fact, they not only failed to defend us, they joined the rebel forces and turned their guns on us.  Up to now, I don’t understand why Liberian soldiers killed Liberian people.  The stealing of money in the Finance Ministry became so rampant until, once upon a time, some workers there set the Ministry on fire. Salvation for our country is possible only if we place it first in all our aspirations and give all that we have to develop it.  Independence does not mean sitting around and waiting for things to happen.  It means taking responsibility for ourselves.  It means being concerned with what each one of us can do for our country, and not what our country can do for us.  It means negotiating with other nations from a position of dignity and moral strength.  It means improving the quality of life for everyone in the country, and not just a select few.  It means the government should be for all the people.

Today, the first independent African republic has lost its credibility in the world community, but life can begin again.  All we have to do is use the right building blocks and we will have a country we can be proud of. With elections around the corner, let’s put into office a leader who has Liberia at heart—not someone with one foot in Liberia and the other planted in some other country.  Let’s put into office an individual whose first and foremost concern is bringing progress and more progress to the nation.  Once our economic, social, and political house is not in order, we will never have peace nor enjoy the respect of  the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, let us pledge our sacred honor to saving our country from the horrors of the past and make a new beginning for the sake of progress and happiness for our people, and their posterity.  I’m sure we can do it and we will do it.

Long live Liberia as a happy land of glorious liberty by God’s command.  

Long live the Old Timers Association of Houston.

I thank you.

The painting on this this page, Thin Line Between Life and Death (Oil) appears courtesy of the artist, ENOCK MUKIIBI, Kanyanya Village, Kampala, Uganda