A Patriot’s Diary
With Ekena Nyankun Juahgbe-Droh Wesley
Liberia has never ceased to bewilder the global community. More than 175 years of so-called self-determination has become a farce. Completely laughable!
One leadership after another does not seem to be getting anything right. Liberians are good at talking. They believe as in their home-made cliché “talk is free. Talk is cheap!”
Our country is bedeviled by the trappings of a total lack of patriotism. Those who tend to crave for power are simply unpatriotic! Whether they come from the intelligentsia or so-called grassroots, it makes no difference after all. When Liberians sought to experiment with power, they strangely elected a footballer as President.
George Weah’s popularity on the soccer pitch, for many, meant the emergence of a miraculous leadership. Sheer jokers! Weah’s self-styled divide and rule tendency coupled with a trait of selective generosity also saw him as the professed man of the people who had lived and survived entrenched poverty in a slum community.
Were they justified? We prefer to leave that as another debate for right-thinking folks but Weah’s surrogates and ardent supporters would think otherwise.
Weah is the only Liberian leader to deliberately ignore protocols. He and his handlers are just reckless! Two successive visits to the United Nations saw a grotesque amassing of loyalists embarrassingly ferried to the U.S. Most of them went on a shopping spree. Sheer loot of the national treasury when civil servants’ salaries are hard to come by, education in tatters and health care nothing to write home about.
Whether it is the Mano River Basin, ECOWAS, the AU or anywhere Weah gets an invitation to simply sightsee, he would mindlessly and frivolously mobilize dozens of concubines and good-for-nothing praise-singers for a fiesta.
Again at this year’s UN Water Conference on Water, taking place in New York, Weah’s Banana Republic has demonstrated absolute disregard for frugality especially for a government struggling to raise the much needed revenues to support critical projects that will address the needs of the country and its people.
Almost the entire WASH institutional machinery is attending this year’s UN-sponsored Water conference. One would understand a bare minimum delegation from Liberia’s WASH office. Instead, an irresponsible government chose to embark on wasteful spending.
What the heck would Liberia’s Ministers of Justice, Defense, Finance, Information, Gender, as well as the Mayor of Monrovia, and LACE boss be doing at a United Nations-sponsored Water Conference?
The government’s media advisory also named: Bobby Whitfield, Chairman and CEO – National WASH Commission and Head of Delegation; Duanna Kamara, Manager Director – Water and Sewer Corporation; Eugene Lenn Nagbe, Commissioner – Maritime Authority; Paulita CC Wie – Deputy Minister, Ministry of Internal Affairs ; Ms. Pam Becher-Taylor – Paynesville City Mayor; Bolton Dennis, Assistant Minister for Community Services – Ministry of Public Works; Salia O Kamara, Executive Director – National WASH Commission; Prince Kreplah, Director for Planning, Program and Technical Services – National WASH Commission; Amos Gborie, Director for Occapational Health – National Public Health Institute of Liberia-NPHIL; Henrietta M. K. Jaryee, WASH Focal Point – President Delivery Unit; Chuchu Selma, Country Director – WaterAid Liberia; and Timothy Kpeh, National Accountability Champion and SWA CSO Focal Point for Liberia.
Can Weah’s enablers explain to Liberians if the composition of such a grossly unnecessary delegation to the UN Conference on Water would seek to benefit the country in any way or form? Folks, this is precisely what we get when we entrust vagabonds with state power. It becomes rudderless! It manifests cluelessness! Obvious leadership vacuum hangs in the balance! This is outrightly foolhardy to say the least.
The trappings of a shameless bigotry at the instinct of a nitwit who we elected as President. Mind you, these same people would be looking up to the donor community to support programs that we can begin to implement by infusing frugality in our fiscal discipline. But Weah is seeking reelection after Balkanizing the treasury amid thievery and senseless abuse of power.
“Folks, this is precisely what we get when we entrust vagabonds with state power”. Ekena Wesley on President George Weah’s reckless spending. But will the “musician/president” listen?