MONROVIA – The former Chairman of the erstwhile Mass Communication Department, now the Department of Communication & Media Studies at the state-run University of Liberia (UL), Alhaji G.V Kromah has died in his 69th year.
Kromah died early Tuesday, 18 January 2022, at about 3 AM, at his Sophie Community residence, in oldest Congo Town, according to family sources.
A protracted period of ailment rendered Kromah bedridden before his demise on Tuesday, according to family members, who tearfully told Smart News Liberia that he suffered for too long while on his sickbed, struggling with a strange illness.
Prior to his demise, Kromah was a journalist, writer, politician, and former warlord, who served as one of two founding leaders of the now defunct United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) warring faction during Liberia’s internecine gun battles.
In the 1970s, Kromah served as special assistant to then Vice President William R. Tolbert and later served as Assistant Minister of Information when Tolbert became president. He went on to become Director General of state broadcaster, the Liberia Broadcasting System, in 1982, and two years later in 1984, rose to the post of Minister of Information, during the reign of slain President Samuel K. Doe.
While serving as Minister of Information, Kromah denied that the Doe administration’s ever cracked down on the UL’s Capitol Hill, Monrovia campus, which led to deaths and torture of many individuals in 1994.
In June of 1990, following months of the outbreak of the Liberian civil war, Kromah went into exile, and later co-founded the ULIMO, a rebel faction that constrained former fierce rebel leader Charles Taylor to agree to a truce that witnessed Liberia realizing a political solution which eventually halted hostilities in the country.
The ULIMO would later split into separate factions in 1994, with Kromah leading the side known as ULIMO-K, named after the initial of the first letter in his surname, while Roosevelt Johnson, who predeceased him led the other faction known as ULIMO-J, which got its name in like manner.
Following the end of the Liberian civil war, Kromah contested for the country’s presidency in the July 19, 2017 presidential election on the ticket of the All Liberia Coalition Party (ALCOP), placing third, having accumulated 4.2% of votes. He ran again as ALCOP’s presidential candidate in Liberia’s October 11, 2005 presidential election, and was again defeated; this time garnering just 2.8% of votes.
