By Tom P. Gorgla
There is a moment inherent in the trajectory of institutions, sovereign states, republics and individuals that gives definition to their outward character.
It is this defining moment which enables psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, sociologists and geo-political analysts to accurately decipher the past, to properly read the present and to plot the future performance of man and institutions.
Africa’s ‘oldest’ republic, the sovereign state of Liberia is no exception. Her journey throughout available history may just provide more than enough material to test the refined minds of the best geo-political analysts.
The history of Liberia inundated with intellectual minefields, remains a phantom to all but few Liberians who are brave enough to delve into the fraudulent narrative of what was being paraded as the “history of Liberia” by those who thought and continue to believe that their “founding fathers” brought into being what is today the Republic of Liberia.
This begs the question ‘who founded Liberia’? Indeed was Liberia founded by anybody? Or was Liberia illegally occupied during the murky days of imperial conquest, the United States being no exception?
In times of conquest, misguided settlers of whatever color are prone to exercise the dynamics of thievery by laying claim to significant parcels of land that has already being settled by indigenes, no matter how sparsely the land in question is populated.
Universal jurisprudence has proved time and time again that such claims not only lack legitimacy, they are legally fraudulent.
We have seen this dynamic of ‘founding’ being played out in what is today the sovereign state of Australia which was an extensive piece of real estate illegally seized by the British who later turned it into a penal colony for His Majesty’s prisoners.
There is ample evident of colonial powers seizing land from the indigenous population without so much as a civilized discursion on the transfer of ownership of this land between the land grabbers and the bona fide owners of said land.
And yet the imperial lords and their siblings’ weir audacious and deluded enough to believe that they were the products of civilized society.
The scramble for Africa was all about illegal land seizure through criminal conquest by deranged westerners. This conquest was most times carried out with a level of brutality that could make Sade look like a saint.
Humanity, as it is today, had no rights then. Laborers in American cotton plantations and over half of that country’s labor force at that time in other industries were used as slave laborers.
It took the combined conscience of the civilized world to force these plantations owners and their patrons in Washington D.C. to accept what the rest of the world already knew that slavery was a barbaric way of treating your fellow man.
It was during this gray period in the checkered history of mankind that some western Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who had earlier settled parts of North America, decided to grab an extensive piece of prime real estate in the western part of Africa.
This property was used to settle hundreds of hapless people who the Americans have subjugated for centuries and forced into slavery to work inhumanely in abominable conditions on cotton plantations in the southern part of the United States of America.
True to form, complete with all the bigotry of that era, the Americans decided to name the land they have illegally grabbed, after man’s most prized possession ‘liberty’ from which the satirical label of freedom was given to this land ‘Liberia’ naming the new Republic’s capital after their president Monroe – hence the name Monrovia.
Since that eventful beginning of the passage of this nation throughout her turbulent history, her governance mechanism, her sovereign structure and constitutional instruments have faced varying abuses by successive administrations.
Indeed, the administering of this Republic since its ‘founding’ has not only been half hazard and patriotically bankrupt and completely derelict, it has also bordered on criminal neglect of the founding principles of any sovereign nation.
This benign neglect has given and continues to give credence to accusations of fiscal impropriety and monumental ineptitude leveled at key players in this country’s successive administrations since 1847.
To date, the Republic of Liberia is still registering a dire need for wholesome commitment to the ever pressing development needs that she so rightfully deserve.
What went wrong?
What happened to the lofty ideals imbedded in the declaration of this republic’s independence?
Why has Liberia been treated with such willful disdain by the very people in leadership who proclaimed loudly at extremely high decibels there unbridled patriotic commitment to the development of this nation?
Indeed why this republic has, that is so remarkably endowed with impressive natural resources being forced to beg for daily sustenance from countries and governments that do not have a fraction of our god given endowment?
We will be seeking answers to these vexing questions in our subsequent editions.
If you have anything to contribute to this narrative, please send it by text message to the following mobile numbers…0779073652 and 0881165658
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