Following the recent internment of the Gbao Progressive Youth Development Leader, Moses Mantein, members of the group, have endorsed new officers to steer the organization until elections later this year.
Mr. Mantein passed away recently following a period of illness.
As enshrined the organization’s constitution, the succession clause allows the sitting vice president and all others in strategic positions to ascend on a “dress right dress” basis to keep the torch of the organization burning.
The Progressive Gbao Youth Development Association (PGYDA), a Monrovia-based Nimba organization, formed in 1981, has as its core objective the task of fostering unity and development in the Gbao Chiefdom.
The chiefdom is located in District#7 Nimba County.
Since its formation, the organization has successfully raised potential individuals whose contributions to the chiefdom, Nimba County and the society at large, are historically recorded. PGYDA is one of Nimba’s oldest Monrovia-based organizations, which has and continues to contribute its quota to national development, specifically peace and unity in the county.
In his induction remark, Patrick M. Gongbegon, a former leader of the organization, challenged the interim officers to commit themselves to ensuring that peace and unity are fostered at any or all times in Gbao Chiefdom.
Gongbegon called on them to be champions of those things that will make the chiefdom to keeping on the path of development, adding: “You’re to keep the legacy of the fallen leader Moses Mantein flaming; you’re to create those dreams and visions that will lift up the image of the Chiefdom so that its greatness will keep standing tall.”
In his acceptance speech, Albert S. Sonkarley, who’s stepping in the shoes of the late Mantein as acting president, promised a new dawn whereby a new mindset to revolutionalize the organization will be the order of the day.
Sonkarley described the late Mantein whom he had worked with as vice president over the years as a man, who had Gbao Chiefdom truly at heart.
He promised to keep his legacy alive.
He used the occasion to recognize the efforts of those sons and daughters of the soil whose dreams and visions gave birth to the organization since 1981.
Mr. Sonkarley called on all Gboa citizens in and out of Gbao Chiefdom to hold together in unity and push for the good of the Chiefdom socially, politically and economically.
He consoled the bereaved families solemnly and noted that the name Moses made while sitting on the throne as youth leader will remain ever so long in the anal of Gbao history.
The premier secretary general of the organization since its creation, Freeman Shelton Gonkerwon, called on the citizens to recover “wasted time in division, stop beating other people’s drum politically, who have and continue to keep us sitting on the fence whenever they succeed to get to power.”
Gonkerwon said: “Until we can crown our own heroes and heroines, trash away divisiveness, raise our own flag, we risk standing in the same dormant position.”
Those inducted were Albert S. Sonkarley, president, Morris D. Caint, vice president, Charles M. Tuazama, general secretary, Esther Boahn, chair lady and Edith Gonsahn, treasurer.