Liberia turns one hundred and seventy eight years old tomorrow, July 26, and as the usual protocol demands, a marked celebration is arranged through the length and breadth of the country.
Liberia gained independence since 1847, and she’s the second oldest republic in Africa after Ethiopia. Interestingly, she has all it takes as far as rich natural resources are concerned to live a truly independent and enjoyable life, yet, she and her citizens remain dragging under the weight of poverty.
The poverty rate is about eighty percent often making her citizens traditional hosts of dehydrated living conditions from time to time.
Bad governance, culture of corruption and lack of the spirit of nationalism, have and continue to create social, political and economic insecurities for the citizens.
Power users, if not all of them, are in the constant habit of creating wealth only for themselves, while the vast majority remains languishing in social, political and economic hell.
Darkness is therefore created, while it’s noon thereby creating social, political and economic doom for the masses thus purging the actual taste for independence.
At one hundred seventy eight years old, the country remains making a journey in the night, struggling to feed itself, although its soil is naturally fertilized thereby, being receptive to germinate any seed.
At one hundred and seventy eight years old, the country is struggling to give itself social, political and economic independence, simply because, the culture of political, social and political wisdom is lacking on the part of those who govern.
In the wake of entrenched culture of poverty, there’s hardly genuine love, unity and peaceful existence between and amongst the people, simply because, the ingredients of true love and unity including economic viability is lacking.
Let’s age with wisdom and vision, set a new stage and pace for true and measurable growth and development. Let’s grow with maturity, including creating the appropriate panacea that will lead us from social, political and economic calamity to social, political and economic reality.
Old age means nothing, if not cradled upon the foundation of wisdom and vision as spelled out by the Holy Bible, “no nation prospers in the absence of vision.”
Indeed, the vision and wisdom are the cream of life individually or collectively without which no life is worth living.
As we celebrate, let’s look over our shoulders and see where we have gone wrong, and develop a mechanism to correct those wrongs. Let’s realize that it’s our obligation as people to drive ourselves through the storm using wisdom and vision, if and when we are to truly live a prosperous life as nation and people.