For the past few days, I have pondered over a more candor way of responding to Mr. Theodore Hodge's blatant attacks on Mr. Prince Johnson for his expressed intent to become an office holder in Liberia. In his article entitled "Prince Yormie Johnson for senator, for president?"; published on the website theperspective.org, Mr Hodge referred to Mr. Johnson as a "drunkard”, “thug”, “hooligan” and Samuel Doe's ear eater and for that he disqualified Mr. Johnson as a candidate. Above all, Mr. Hodge challenged the citizens of Nimba to write and disassociate themselves from Mr. Johnson. Well Mr. Hodge, I am one of few Nimbians who have chosen to respond.

Since your article was so irresponsible and based on your emotions, it deserves not much of a long answer. Before you challenge Nimbians or any Liberian to denounce Mr. Johnson's senate or presidential aspiration, you should first ask yourself these questions: (1) Is Mr. Johnson a Liberian? If indeed he is, does he have rights as other Liberians? Is he eligible to contest for office of his choice? If indeed you answer yes to all these questions, then your opposition to Mr. Johnson is baseless. However, if your argument is that Mr. Johnson's hooliganism, drunkard and thuggish label disqualifies him from holding office, I challenge you to cite or produce a constitutional provision to prove your points.

It is factual that Mr. Johnson was a warlord and has many questions to answer to the people of Liberia, but so do other office holders; such as George Dweh, Alhaji Kromah, Kabina J'anneh, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Sawyer, Daniel Chea and many more that I can name. The fact that you have allowed your emotion to exceed your sense of reasoning to single out and castigate Mr. Johnson, trivialize your point of his disqualification. Every Liberia has an emotional opinion that is denigration to each of our political leaders, but if on the basis of that we ignore the constitution and disqualify our office holders, we will have no one in our leadership position. There is no doubt that Mr. Johnson have questions to answer and until their eligibilities are denounced by the constitution of Liberia, they are entitled to the same rights and hold public office as any Liberian. Mr. Johnson's actions in Liberia are no worse than others that are active in our leadership positions today.