MONROVIA: A renowned Liberian economist and iconic progressive politician, Dr. Togba Nah-Tipoteh, has opined that the recent Oratory delivered at Liberia’s 177th Independence celebration, by Dr. Robtel Neajai Pailey, an Assistant Professor of Economics and Political Science at the London School of Economics “did not put a bad divide between the USA and Liberia.”
In a Writeup, styled: “A Good Divisive,” Dr. Tipoteh who is a former Minister of Planning and Economic Affairs indicated that “the Oration put a good divide between the USA and Liberia because it helped to remove the longstanding and widespread slave mentality that the USA powers that be imposed upon the people of Liberia.”
Dr. Tipoteh who is also former Chairman of the International Monetary Fund (IMA) stated in the Writeup: “The plenty talk began when the person representing the United States of America (USA) government walked out of the July 26, 2024 Oration. According to her, she walked out because the Oration was divisive. In her view, the Oration was divisive because it put an unjustified divide between the USA and Liberia.”
However, Dr. Tipoteh, who is also former Chairman of the African Governors of the World Bank, said “This imposition began over five hundred years ago and remember how slave owners in the USA slept with good looking black female slaves to get light skin slaves because they sold for higher prices. Light skin black skin black people in the USA think that they are better than the dark skin black people. This attitude is also seen in Liberia, as seen with the first President of Liberia, the murder of President E. J. Roye, the sale of Liberians to the Portuguese, marriages and elections. But this attitude is bad,” he said.
“ However, this attitude is of our own making. The marketers who are considered to be uneducated but are very educated say correctly that if your house does not sell you the street will not buy you. Some Liberians did not tell the Truth and this led to the deaths of at least 300,000 Liberians and many more injured people and many min the coup d’etat and the civil war,” the article indicated.
Dr. Tipoteh: “Let us leave the slavery situation and go to other areas because the USA government claims to have given Liberia lots of money. Therefore, Liberians must be grateful. Here is a list of some of the USA companies in Liberia getting billions of United States dollars from their investments in Liberia:
- Firestone with a contract from 1926 for 99 years covering one million acres pf land to plant rubber when the USA needed rubber tires to fight in World War Two;
- LMC, LAC, LAMCO, Bethlehem Corporation, CARI, VOA, OMEGA and COCOPA. 3. The special case of the CIA connection in Liberia that planned the murder of President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana,” he asserted.
He wonders: “What has Liberians received from these investments? Look at data since the 1950s when Liberia had the second highest real per capita income in the world, Liberia was experiencing one per cent of the population having over sixty per cent of the income and wealth of Liberia (Robert Clower, et al. Northwestern University Press, 1966).”
Tipoteh: “ Today, almost all Liberians have access to at most less than LD$300 a day while the National Legislators have access to at least LD$200,000 a day while their foreign business partners have access to at least LD$300,000,000 a day( The Annual Reports of the CBL, LISGIS,MFDP, MCI, WB, IMF, ADB and UNDP).”
According to the Liberian progressive and iconic politician, “When it became known through the raising of awareness that a former black slave and an indigenous Liberian were friends for seventy years, the Front Page Africa newspaper that carried the story and broke world record by publishing the story for at least twenty five times in a row, not forgetting that other newspapers published the story several times because the people wanted to read it. Then they knew that a good divide is not between congo and native but between good and bad.”
He added that “The representative of the USA government walked out of the Oration because the Orator told the Truth about the bad divide and the need to promote the good divide through the taking of ownership, especially of Liberian culture in education, to promote the participation of the people in national decision-making, thereby uniting the people of Liberia, the indispensable ingredient for democracy.”
Article: “No wonder, there was thunderous applause many times for the Orator as she told the Truth. A well-known Liberian criticized the Orator as having a useless PhD degree and coming from an unknown school. The Orator has an earned and useful PhD and is an Assistant Professor at the well-known London School of Economics, considered to be unknown by a well-known Liberian. To tell the Truth about what is useful and what is well-known is to promote the good divisive! Shame on persons who do not tell the Truth!”
According to Dr. Tipoteh, “The only way to change conditions for the betterment of the people of Liberia is to tell the Truth in ways that motivate people to use the Rule of Law to raise awareness to transform the unfair prevailing electoral system into the enduring fair electoral system. It is only through this transformation that persons with good records can get elected to bring in the system of Justice, the indispensable ingredient for Peace and Progress in Liberia and in any other country.”
He maintains that “This transformation is working well in Liberia as seen in the results of the election of October 10, 2023 in which nearly all of the National Legislators who wanted to be re-elected were not re-elected. This trend will continue in future elections. Justice and the Rule of Law prevail.”
Tipoteh: “Look at the Rule of Law in South Africa where former President Jacob Zuma was ordered by the Court not to run for the Presidency and he did not run. But in the USA, considered to the bastion of the Rule of Law, former President Donald Trump is running for the Presidency through the Rule of Outlaw.
