Prince Johnson Fails to Show His Face

Wow, after all the loud talks last Wednesday,  there were no trace of Nimba County Senator Prince Y. Johnson or his “150 strong and able guys” at the Grand Bassa convention last weekend.

The National Union for Democratic Progress (NUDP) of Nimba County Senator Prince Johnson has elected a kinsman, Representative Ricks Toweh, as its acting torchbearer; kicking out the embattled Senator. The party’s newly elected national chairman, Victor G. Bannie, told reporters in Buchanan that the election of Rep. Toweh as the party’s acting political leader was based on the “overwhelming resolution endorsed by the 90 delegates, who attended the convention from across the country.”

Those elected will run the affairs of the party until 2017 at which time, the party will choose a standard-bearer. This means former warring leader Prince Johnson, now Nimba County Senior Senator, has been officially dumped by the NUDP. Senator Johnson founded the NUDP ahead of the 2011 general and presidential elections and came third in those national elections.

Ahead of last weekend’s convention in Buchanan Senator Johnson and officials of the NUDP locked horns in a war of words when Eric Gbemie and Meddricks Gontee bluntly stated that the Senator would be wasting his time attending the convention because he would be an uninvited guest there. They vowed that Senator Johnson would be denied any meaningful participation and will not command any respect from partisans during the convention because he is no longer a member of the party.

 “I am a man of peace but if you bring me trouble, I will teach you sense. I am going to that convention with 150 strong and able guys to protect me,” the Senator had said.

BUT HE FAILED TO SHOW HIS FACE!!!

PYJ Labels Weah’s Strategy a ‘Missed Kick’

Weah believes his ballon d'Or is a unifying symbol

Peace Ambassador George Weah’s approach to peace-building in Liberia---preaching peace through sports to heal a brutally wounded country – has come under serious criticism from Nimba County Senator Prince Johnson; a veritable miss-kick was what Weah’s soccer jamboree amounted to, as far as what this prominent Nimba County spectator says he saw, watching the show from the sidelines.

Liberia: Rejected by NUDP; Prince Johnson Vows to Crash Party Convention with 150 Bodyguards

Johnson says he will march on Buchanan with 150 bodyguards

Nimba County Senator Prince Y. Johnson has dared any member of the National Union for Democratic Progress (NUDP) to attempt barring him from participating in that opposition party’s convention slated for this weekend in the port city of Buchanan, Grand Bassa County.

Senator Johnson and officials of the NUDP yesterday locked horns in a war of words when Eric Gbemie and Meddricks Gontee bluntly stated that the Senator would be wasting his time attending the convention because he would be an uninvited guest there.

Liberia Again Blunders in WASSCE

Liberia has again performed miserably poor in the regionally administered West African Senior Secondary Certificate Exams (WASSCE), formerly known as the West African Examination Council (WAEC) exams annually-administered to senior secondary schools across Anglophone West Africa. This was disclosed by a team of foreign examiners who spearheaded this year’s tests in Liberia.

The Sierra Leonean, Ghanaian and Nigerian examiners blamed the massive failure on the lack of requisite instructional materials. They made the disclosure at a dinner reception held in their honor earlier this week.

According to the examiners, the success of Liberian students depends largely on what they are being taught. Against this backdrop, the team of foreign examiners recommended that the required instructional materials be made available in the country; adding that if Liberian students must do well in these annually-administered tests and be on par with their regional peers, government, through the Ministry of Education, will have to invest in making available and accessible much-needed instructional materials for schools and students.

They expressed optimism that Liberian students have the potential of performing well once the right things are done.

The foreign examiners however admonished their Liberian colleagues to make sure the integrity of the exams is held high. They also encouraged their peers to be ethical and stop taking money from students under the pretext of helping them sail smoothly through the tests. 

From time immemorial proctors have been accused of helping to foster malpractices during the annually-administered WASSCE, formerly WAEC exams, for junior and senior secondary schools across the West African sub-region. Some exam monitors have been accused of collecting what is referred to as “flexibility” fees from candidates, pledging to sneak in answers while the tests are being administered.

For its part, the local WEAC office welcomed suggestions put forth by their foreign colleagues; pledging to protect the integrity of the exercise at all times.

This year’s exams were administered under tight surveillance. Both candidates and proctors were all subjected to going through screening by metal detectors. The goal was to ensure that the exams were completely fraud-free. As the metal detectors blew alarm on students with mobiles, calculators, text books, among other prohibited items, it did so, too, for the proctors.

A total of 15,171 male candidates and 17,349 female candidates are also participated in the exams, bringing to the figure for both male and female candidates in the senior high division to 26,992. The weeklong exams ran from June 3 through June 7.

In Montserrado alone, there were testing centers in 87 schools. In total, there were 178 testing centers and 416 school building were used in the process.

PYJ Crowns Himself ‘Godfather’ of Nimba

Nimba County Senator Prince Johnson has vowed to trump anyone aspiring to unseat him at the Senate. “I will defeat them all as I did in 2005 when I defeated 22 candidates,” he told a local radio talk show yesterday in Monrovia.

Senator Johnson said he is confident of emerging victorious in the 2014 senatorial election because he still enjoys the confidence and backing of Nimba County.

“I am the Godfather of the county. This is because my people love me,” said the Senator. Senator Johnson’s remarks were in sharp response to news that his competitors are swelling in number and determined to unseat him in the mid-term election.

The Battered Wife

STOP being heartless and learn to be a loving spouse

No wonder why Liberia has made it as one of 15 African countries in which violence against women, especially wife battery, is so rampant. In Liberia [as elsewhere across Africa], wife battering has become one of the symptoms of male oppression and female relegation to an unimportant or powerless position.

The Mandingo Story

Author Nvasekie: ‘No one will tell the Mandingo story better than the Mandingo man or woman.’

A Liberian poet, essayist has authored a second book, focusing specifically on telling the tales of his kinsmen. “The Land of My Father’s Birth” is considered by many as Nvasekie Konneh’s magnum opus because of the author’s ability to descriptively narrate his story in a fashion that does not let go of its grip on the reader; it seizes her attention, keeps her glued to the book and renders her powerless when it is time to take a breather at the end of a chapter. And on one goes, one chapter after the other!

George Weah, We Deserve Answers!

George Weah has assembled in Monrovia some 40 foreign guests. The guests are predominantly past and present soccer stars, including some of Africa's greatest footballers: Roger Milla, Patrick Mboma, Yaya Toure and Kolo Toure, Michael Essien, Oumar Dieng,Emmanuel Adebayo, Samuel Eto'o, Didier Drogba, among others. The stars are here to grace the launch of Weah's brand of the peace and reconciliation initiative, which he intends to begin pushing around the country, across ethnic, gender, religious, social and political lines.

The stars will also participate in a peace football match to be held at the Samuel K. Doe Sports Complex in Paynesville this Saturday, June 22.

But Weah has refused to disclose the budget of this exercise. He convened a press conference yesterday at the Ministry of Information but declined responding to any inquiry centered on the budgetary allotment for this project. Here are our concerns: How much money was given to him by the government for this weekend’s peace launch? Who's responsible for the airfares of these 40 guests, including top soccer stars? At the moment, they are all lodged at one of Liberia's top-notch  resorts -- Palm Springs Casino. Who's responsible for the bills? Weah, we deserve answers!

At Dagger Point

They need the awareness

“My sister, I’m so confused. I had been experiencing heavy bleeding or prolonged menstrual bleeding. But then, my period had been irregular for the past four months. Then I started feeling some heaviness or pressure of some sort in my lower abdomen. I was happy, believing that I finally might be pregnant. But after seeing the doctor, and did the ultrasound test, I was diagnosed with a fibroid. All I had been nursing was a boil in my womb---thinking it was a baby,” Priscilla wept on her terrace last week, sitting next to me, while I commiserated her misfortune.

Pricilla had been at the St. Joseph Catholic Hospital for a checkup [something she had never thought of doing for the past three years] and had been diagnosed with this silent conqueror. In this part of the world, when a woman is assailed by fibroids, she is compelled to face the dagger of one surgeon or the other. So, Priscilla is scheduled to undergo surgery on June 25.

Liberia: No War, Yet No Peace

Liberia ranks 80th out of 162 in this year’s Global Peace Index, (GPI) released Tuesday, this week. According to the London-based GPI, Liberia’s level of peacefulness increased after a reduction in political terror, despite an increase in military expenditure.

This news comes two months ahead of 10 consecutive years of peace following this country’s 14-year civil war that ended in August of 2003.

The nation’s 14-year civil conflict left at least 250,000 dead and was marked by unjustified violence – notably, the slicing of pregnant women’s bellies to determine the sex of their babies. Liberia is relatively peaceful, a decade later, but remains amongst the world's poorest countries, presaging (foretelling, predicting) a much longer march to trudge up the path of economic recovery.

With Glistening Eyes, Ellen Sees Hope as the Centerpiece of Her Legacy

President Ellen Johnson has reiterated hope that her “legacy would be to return hope and opportunity to the Liberian people – by restoring basic services, and giving every Liberian, particularly the youth, an opportunity for a quality education and a job, to enable them provide for themselves and their family.”

She expressed her fervent wish last Wednesday, June 5, at the 2nd Forbes 400 Philanthropy Summit – a gathering of 150 of the world’s richest men and women who have committed to finding solutions to extreme poverty. The event was held in the New York, an Executive Mansion dispatch said.

The President has over and again reechoed that healing her nation and setting it on the right track is what drives her each day. But there are challenges. The biggest challenge is unemployment, which is stuck at a staggering 80 percent with the youth population having been the hardest hit. Reconciliation also remains a sticky gray area in contemporary Liberia.

Govt. Takes Control of E. J. Roye

The dilapidated E.J. Roye Building might not remain a sore-spot for long

 The Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Administration has been accused of using a defunct PRC Decree from 1980 to confiscate the E. J. Roye Building, which belongs to the True Whig Party (TWP). The government has also been accused by the TWP of secretly bribing two of the Party’s former officials to sanction its (the party’s) illegal action.

The Ministry of Information could neither confirm nor deny these claims when contacted yesterday for government’s reaction. The Ministry’s Director of Press and Public Affairs, Abel Plackie, simply told the Observer, “I will get back to you”. No other information was received from the Ministry.

LEITI Defends Its 4th Report

The Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative for Liberia, (LEITI) has rejected the National Oil Company of Liberia’s (NOCAL) recent branding of its (LEITI) 4th report covering the financial year July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011, as misleading.

“The secretariat of LEITI fully stands by the 4th EITI Reconciliation Report for Liberia approved and launched on Thursday, May 16, 2013,” LEITI’s head of secretariat Samson S. Tokpah has said. “The secretariat is especially surprised given that NOCAL is part of the LEITI process and was involved in the reconciliation, review, and endorsement processes of the report.”

As Companies Explore for Oil in 7 Counties; What Becomes of the Have-Nots?

A map of Liberia showing the 30 oil blocks

Off-shore oil exploration has begun in seven of Liberia’s 15 counties with 10 oil blocks being explored by foreign oil companies. As per data posted by the Liberia’s National Oil  Company (NOCAL) on its website, block 8 is situated off the coast of Sinoe, block 9 off the coast of RiverCess and Sinoe, block 10 off the coast of River Cess, block 11 & 12 off the coast of Grand Bassa, block 13 off the coast of Margibi & Grand Bassa, block 14, off the coast of Margibi and Montserrado, block 15 off the coast of Montserrado and Bomi, block 16 off the coast of Bomi and Grand Cape Mount and block 17 is off the coast of  Grand Cape Mount.

For now, these are the 10 blocks that have been leased out, with an additional 20 blocks left open. NOCAL is yet to say in which counties the 20 blocks are situated and when the public might expect exploration in these areas.

The big question is, what becomes of, say Lofa, that is landlocked and [in case] it has no onshore oil? How then, would the people of that densely populated county access corporate social benefits being dished out by oil companies to counties with oil? In the contemporary context, on the have-not list are Bong, Lofa, Maryland, Grand Gedeh, Nimba, Gbarpolu, RiverGee and Grand Kru counties. What if none of these above-listed counties has any oil of its own, and is not positioned to reap indirect benefits, (i.e. transportation contracts) from the industry? Are there any plans in store for them?

Woven into the Traditional Carpet

Believes are so deeply woven into the traditional carpet

In late May 2013, I went down Benson Street to grab some ingredients from the ladies who sell in front of the Monoprix Supermarket because I had chicken barbeque on mind on that very wet Saturday afternoon. After buying everything else, I remembered that I was still left with the spicy aspect of the dish, which meant I needed to get some hot peppers. So, I turned left and spotted this middle-age woman carefully displaying her green and red hot peppers on a table at the edge of the sidewalk to grab the attention of potential patrons. I moved quickly towards her, so attractive was the mixture of hot red, green and light yellow peppers.

“How much,” I asked? “Twenty-five, fifty,” she responded without lifting her head to look me in the eye. “Well, I don’t need this much,” I retorted. “Can I get LRD$15 worth?” “Of course,” she said, adding that I was her first costumer and so she would do anything for me.

NOCAL on Unreconciled US$230K: UL Gave Wrong Report

 

NOCAL president McClain has argued that all funds collected were accounted for

The National Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL) has acknowledged discrepancies indicated in the recently-released audit report by the Extractive Industry Transparency Industry for Liberia (LEITI) with regards to unreconciled payments by companies in the oil sector to government agencies during the financial year July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011.

It however argued that it was the University of Liberia (UL) Administration that mistakenly submitted the wrong financial report to Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (LEITI), not NOCAL authority.  NOCAL’s president and chief executive officer (CEO) Dr. Randolph McClain yesterday told reporters in Monrovia that UL Authority reported US$620,000 for the reporting period instead of US$850,000 received by them for the fiscal period. He said the US$620,000 reported was not for the reporting period.

Liberian Author Launches New Book

Author Konneh took time off to document and tell his own story

A renowned Liberian writer, poet and magazine publisher, Mr. Nvasekie Konneh, is to shortly launch his second book titled: The Land of My Father’s Birth. Fist launched in Philadelphia, USA in February 2013, the book is a memoir of war, survival, and adventure, spanning continents, from Liberia to the Ivory Coast; from United States to the Middle East and Europe.

It is a personal story of surviving ethnic and religious persecution during the Liberian Civil War, as author Nvasekie Konneh, of mixed Mandingo and Mano heritage, fled from the advancing rebel forces of Charles Taylor. It is a story of courage, as Konneh sought refuge in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he met and befriended the daughter of the country’s first military leader, Robert Guei. It is a story of reinvention, as Konneh travelled to the United States, joined the US Navy, and is stationed on board the USS Detroit during which the ship is deployed in the Middle East and Europe making port visits to Haifa/Jerusalem, Dubai, Paris, and Dakar.

Busy Search for Commercial Oil Ongoing

Liberia’s national oil company (NOCAL) has always argued that the country is at least five to seven years away from producing a drop of oil, even after a foreign oil company, Africa Petroleum, had announced the discovery in February 2012 of a huge commercial quantity of crude at its Narina well in block 9 off the coast of RiverCess and Sinoe.

At a news conference convened by NOCAL in Monrovia yesterday, it maintained that though oil was found, it is yet to be established as to whether or not the discovery is in commercial quantity. Until that is done, there is no need to stretch the reality of the day, which is “no oil until five or seven years have come and gone.”

Exploring Liberia’s Oil Prospects

Liberia has high hopes of gaining revenue from oil and gas, currently hidden in its underground (onshore) and below the floor of the ocean (the offshore). The country is currently concentrating on exploring for oil or gas reserves worth commercial exploitation in its 17 existing offshore blocks.

It has no plans to offer an additional 13 unexplored blocks, the National Oil Company (NOCAL) has said. In a latest update posted on its website, NOCAL said the goal is to lease Liberian oil blocks only to those companies best suited to both explore for and produce the country’s petroleum resources. All companies seeking to explore in Liberia, including its offshore territories, should expect to meet the country’s high standards for corporate responsibility, NOCAL warns.

Liberia: Former Warlord Prince Johnson Under Probe

Nimba County Senator Prince Y. Johnson is currently undergoing an intensive probe by the Senate for his recent revelation of electoral fraud allegedly committed by the former chair of the National Election Commission (NEC) James Fromoyan, Pro-tempore Gbehzohngar Findley revealed over the weekend.

At a by-monthly press conference held in Monrovia, Senator Findley announced that the Senate has constituted itself into a single committee for the sole purpose of investigating the Nimba County Senator for his statement. He announced that the Senate began the hearing the matter since last Thursday.

Senator Johnson’s recent claims of electoral fraud, implicating President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the former NEC chair, James Fromayan,  in irregularities which turned the elections in the incumbent’s favor has been met with stiff resistance from the former NEC chair, who thinks the Nimba County Senator is “crazy”.

20 Oil Blocks Still Open

Liberia is yet to award exploration rights for 20 of its 30 oil blocks, according to a data analysis conducted by me recently.  Stats posted on the country’s National Oil Company’s (NOCAL) website show only 10 blocks have been leased. The remaining 20 are open.