The Perspective
Atlanta, Georgia
October 21, 2018

                  

Officers and members of SUNCSAL,
Other distinguished ladies and gentlemen,

It is always a pleasure for me to speak to young people because it provides me the opportunity to share my thoughts about various issues in our country.  This is why I most often find time even with my busy schedule as a courtroom lawyer and a lecturer at the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law to honor invitations by young people, whenever they invite me to speak to them. Today, I want to speak to you briefly on the topic: Breaking the chain of dependency in Liberia- a necessary condition for national development, progress and prosperity.

For a long time in our country, dependency has become a way of life, a culture. It was developed by our national leaders and it has permeated into our communities and our families. Over the years, one leader after the other has always depended on some countries, organizations or individuals for aid to take care of our needs. The scenario is such that government depends on foreign aid to implement its socio-economic development programs, its payroll, amongst other needs; the communities depend on government and NGOs to implement their community development programs and families depend on whoever is around for assistance. And this ranges from local government officials, businessmen and businesswomen, NGO workers and religious leaders in order to provide for their families. The culture of dependency has become so bad that even the things that government should mobilize its people do are instead put on the list of the assistance it seeks from other countries. Yet, no nation can achieve sustainable growth and development based, exclusively, on foreign aid. No community or family can experience sustainable improvement in the quality of life of its members based purely on assistance from others. Simply put we have become a begging nation and a nation of beggars. This is not good for our country. We cannot be a respected nation if we are a nation of beggars. The citizens of Liberia should not expect citizens of other countries to respect them if all their country does is to beg. In order to be respected, one must be self-respecting and no self-respecting person goes around begging for everything.

Our government begs for food, medicine, water, electricity, and money to build roads and bridges. Our government even begs for money to sweep our streets. Because we rely on begging as a nation and believe that there will always be willing donors, we most often do not maintain or replace the things that are given us. For example, over the years, various foreign governments and non-governmental organizations have built toilets and provided hand-pumps in many rural communities throughout Liberia. Today, many of those toilets and hand pumps are not in use because of lack of maintenance. Interestingly, affected communities are waiting for those who provided these toilets and hand-pumps or other generous donors to maintain them. The Chinese built for us a modern sports stadium as a gift to our nation. But, whenever, it needs maintenance or improvement we beg them to come back to maintain or improve it for us. The American Government provided us Peace Corps volunteers in the 1960s to teach our elementary and high school students. Nearly sixty years later, we are still begging for Peace Corps to come and help improve learning in our schools.

There are many factors that motivate begging. The first and most important is the mindset that one is unable to provide his or her needs. In other words, a beggar first reaches a conclusion of being in a state of helplessness and that the only means of survival is to be assisted by someone else.
Our country is not in the state of helplessness. We have sunshine and rainfall all over our country throughout the year. We grain forest throughout the year. We have good soil and great natural resources under the soil and on top of the soil. We have a lot of water bodies, including the Atlantic Ocean, and many rivers as well as streams, containing a lot of natural resources. We are not helpless people. In fact, in terms of natural resources and climatic condition, we are much better than some of the nations that we rely on for foreign assistance. Some of the nations that we get assistance from are desert countries and they envy us for our rainfall, our green forest and many rivers. Some of the countries that we beg have six months of sunshine and six months of darkness and most of their landmasses covered by ice. They envy us for the amount of sunshine that we have in our country. Some of the countries that we beg for assistance are landlocked countries with no assess to the sea. They envy us for the long and beautiful ever-green and sandy coastline that we have. Yet some of the countries that we rely on for assistance are a group of Islands and the leaders of those countries have to work harder to provide social services for their citizens. They envy us being a country that is one whole landmass of the earth. I just want to encourage you, advocates, to let our people know that some of the countries that we beg for assistance are in much more challenging natural conditions than we are. We are, certainly, not a helpless people. We must not feel sorry for ourselves that God put us on this part of the planet earth. We are a lucky people.

We are not a helpless and naturally poor people. We are endowed with natural resources that must be properly managed for our welfare, happiness, and prosperity. In order to do that we need to put more money into education. With an educated population, we will develop the capacity to teach our own students and become independent of the Peace Corps volunteers, who have done so well for us over the years. With an educated population we will develop scientists who will do research in our forest, on our land, under our land, in our waters, under our waters and in our airspace and provide us ways in which we can transform our natural resources to make us self-sufficient in food production and to become a food exporting country; to become the producer of medicines for tropical diseases; to become producers of polished diamonds, and other value-added mineral products; to become producers of furniture, instead of exporting logs to other countries and to become a manufacturer of steel and steel products, amongst many other efforts to add value to what God has given us. With an educated population, our forest can become a source of eco-tourism and our beaches can become a preferred destination of tourists from all parts of the world. Some nations survive on tourism alone. Therefore, we have a better potential to become a donor country than to remain a begging nation.

If we do not reorganize ourselves as a people and take charge of our destiny, based on what we have, we will continue to feel sorry for ourselves and our children will continue to seek greener pastures outside Liberia. This is not a solution. It is even a source of frustration and humiliation because when you come from a begging country no citizen in the country that receives you respects you. You are considered a liability, no matter how much contribution you make as a medical doctor, teacher, engineer or any other professional. Have a conversation with Liberians who live abroad and you will find this conclusion to be true. Citizens of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, many Europeans countries, Japan, China and some other Asian, South American and Middle Eastern countries as well as, North African and a few East and South African countries are respected outside their countries because they are not seen as liabilities. A citizen’s respect abroad is most often, largely based on the respect for his or her country.

Therefore, my advice to you young advocates is to advocate for making Liberia a self-respecting country by promoting self-reliance as a way of breaking the chain of dependency that has undermined and continues to undermine Liberia’s development, progress and prosperity.
I thank you.