The Essential Role of Public Goods and Services in the Development of Liberia

The Perspective
Atlanta, Georgia
June 9, 2022

 

Mr. Samuel Gee, President, UNICCO- Minneapolis Chapter
Madame Victoria Sendolo, Vice President
Other Members of the executive committee of UNICCO Leadership
Members and the leadership of the Liberian community present
Friends of Liberia and friends of UNICCO present
Brothers and Sisters

Let me start by thanking the president, the Vice President, and members of his executive committee for inviting me to serve as your guest speaker at this program. I am highly excited to be in the Twin City. Whenever I visit Minneapolis, I feel at home away from Liberia, my real home.

This city has one of the largest concentrations of Liberians in the Americas. So when I am here, I see and feel Liberia, its culture, and its people and that experience is delightful.

Tonight, I will install the newly elected members of the board of directors of the UNICCO-Minnesota chapter and then I will make a few remarks where I will call on the newly elected board members to provide excellent performance in their positions and to join the efforts underway in order to make Liberia a more successful country.

Now may the elected board members please come forward and take the oath of office:

You may raise your right hand and repeat after me. I_(please announce your name) do solemnly swear that I will faithfully and effectively execute the office of Board Member, UNICCO-Minnesota Chapter, and to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution and by-laws of UNICCO-Minnesota Chapter, so help me God.

As board members of UNICCO Minnesota, you join a special group of people who in your state and in other states across this nation, have served their communities and Liberia in the effort to move Nimba County and Liberia forward.

In the early 1980s, following the military coup in Liberia, some UNICCO members went to Liberia to help the new military leaders to build a better nation. The military government turned out to be a fiasco and a corrupt brutal dictatorship.

Again, in the 1990s, when the civil wars were ensuing in Liberia, UNICCO was one of the organizations involved in endeavors intended to end the civil wars. I was secretary-general of the UNICCO-Chicago chapter in the late 1980s, that chapter supported UNICCO national to raise funds to provide humanitarian support for Nimbanians who fled the civil wars in Liberia and found themselves as refugees in Cote D’Ivoire, Guinea, Ghana, and other countries.

UNICCO was also in the vanguard of the peace negotiations meetings in Accra, Ghana, Banjul, Gambia, and other cities in Africa. Those negotiations helped to eventually produce the interim government of national unity and peace and subsequent democratic elections in Liberia. In fact, through these engagements and due to the work UNICCO has done, at least two former UNICCO-Minnesota Chapter members, were provided vital exposure and were eventually elected and served in the legislature in Liberia. One of them, Mr. Johnson Gweikolo, is currently serving as a representative from Nimba County in the legislature.

Today, thank God the civil wars are over, and Liberia is at peace. You should all be proud of your organization, UNICCO-Minnesota, and UNICCO-National, for the able role and contributions UNICCO played in ending Liberia’s civil wars and making peace, and helping to build democracy in Liberia. You have continued to contribute to Liberia’s development through sending remittances to your relatives, sending medical supplies to Nimba County, educational supplies, and computers to the Nimba County University. Thank you.

Despite all of your assistance to Nimba County and Liberia, and in spite of Liberia’s great potential for transformation and success, it is still challenged. The consolidation and durability of peace and democracy in Liberia depends on whether or not Liberians and their organizations, like UNICCO-Minnesota, will correctly identify Liberia’s primary challenges and then mobilize to help Liberia to respond effectively to addressing its challenges.

Liberia’s major challenges are multiple and include rampant corruption, a rising crime wave, joblessness, food insecurity, high poverty, poor infrastructure, underperforming education, poor health care system, a weak and ineffective system of government, etc.

In order to help solve these problems, let’s reflect on what economists consider as the distinction between public goods and services and private goods and services. Everything we use to support our well-being can be classified into one of these two categories. When you send money to your relatives in Liberia, that person may use that money to purchase rice or a car or a house. Those purchases are considered private goods. With private goods, the person who purchases them can exclude other people from benefiting from them. There is rivalry in the purchase and use of private goods in the sense that when someone purchases them, there is less available for everyone else to purchase.

On the other hand, for public goods and services such as the court system, the legislative services, health care system, foreign policy services, monetary policy services, police protection and services in fighting crimes, fire services, sanitation and garbage collection services, sea and airport services, etc., are all classified under public goods and services. Once produced, public goods and services are available for all to use. They have the characteristics of non-exclusivity. In the sense, when they are provided, no one can be easily excluded from using them. They are also non-rivalry because one person’s use of a public good or service does not cause a reduction in the amount available for other people. For example, when police protection is effective, it causes a reduction in crime and a safer society and reduces the cost of doing business which encourages domestic and foreign investment which promotes development. So effective police services help the entire nation and providing safety from crime to one community does not reduce the amount of safety available for other communities. Another example is in the area of monetary and fiscal policy services. An effective monetary and fiscal policy can promptly stabilize the Liberian currency, reduce inflation, stabilize the prices of goods and generate the revenue growth required to keep Liberia from getting to deeper debts. So good and effective fiscal and monetary policy can help every citizen collectively. 

In order for a nation to develop, it needs an adequate supply of both public and private goods and services. Notwithstanding, most citizens will not voluntarily give personal funds for the production of public goods and services. Public goods and services have what economists call a free-rider problem where a person wants other people instead of himself/herself, to pay for it and knows that once it is provided he/she will equally enjoy it as those other people who paid for it. Because of the free-rider problem associated with the public, they can not be efficiently supplied by the private sector.  

Accordingly, for the production of public goods and services, people in almost every country rely on public leadership and government to provide public goods and services.

The more effective and competent and compassionate the leadership of a country is, the better its ability to provide public goods and services, which are critical to the development and transformation of a country.

So, as you may see, Liberia’s primary challenges are essentially linked to a problem of the deficiency in the supply of public goods and services. These problems also reflect the poor quality of leadership in Liberia. So, to help assist Liberia in effectively addressing its major challenges, you and I and everyone who cares about Liberia must help Liberia improve its quality of leadership and governance.

2023 will present an ideal opportunity for Liberians to elect a president and members of the legislature that will provide a better quality of leadership and governance to address Liberia’s major challenges. The UNICCO-Minnesota leadership and all of you in this room and your contacts can help Liberia by empowering Liberians, partnering with other organizations and citizens who are working on this endeavor through projects in Liberia. You can assist with the recruitment of candidates who have the character and integrity to provide the leadership that will assist Liberia in producing solutions for its multiple challenges.

Organizations such as mine, ADML (African Democratic Moment of Liberia) is one of those working in this arena to help Liberia become a successful nation. I am the Founder of ADML and have joined other founders and members in offering our personal resources to support ADML’s work. Notwithstanding, we cannot do nor fund all of the required work for addressing Liberia’s challenges without your help. So, we seek partners, collaborations, and financial supporters to work on critical projects in building and strengthening the institutions required to address Liberia’s multiple challenges.

Mr. President, members of the executive committee, chair, and newly installed board members, you are hard-working and believe in development. Continue to invest in your community and your county and your country. However, consider that your country is deficient in the supply of its public goods and services. Nimba County and Liberia need you to rise and join us and help produce the leadership that will ensure that public goods and services which are so indispensable to the development of the country are provided. Without an adequate supply of high-quality public goods and services the consolidation of Liberia’s peace, democracy and development, face a high risk of failure.

Thank you.

 

**Dr. Gonpu can be reached at ggonpu@gmail.com