“Let’s Change Our Negative Mindset towards Liberia” -Dr. Kollie Dissects Major National Drawback 

MONROVIA – Upon delivering his inaugural address as Liberia’s 25^th Vice President in 1977, Reverend Dr. Bennie Dee Warner made a stunning statement about the general Liberian psyche and the country’s backwardness. “To reduce all our problems to one, I would say that the greatest and perhaps the basic problem of Liberia is us. What is wrong with us is us! Our attitudes toward one another and toward ourselves, our undermining of each other; or easy satisfaction with the mediocre, and our value system diminish our national and personal image”. Forty-eight years down the line, another Liberian, though not of a loftier station as former VP Bennie Warner, Dr. John F. Kollie, former Deputy Minister for Fiscal Affairs at the Ministry of Finance, and later Commissioner General of the Liberia Maritime Authority, is sharing similar thoughts about Africa’s oldest republic, stating in unequivocal terms that Liberia remains backward because Liberians lack patriotism and are mainly good at pulling down the country at the drop of a hat.

Making his strong expose in a podcast over the weekend, Dr. Kollie, using his social media moniker Zubah Kpadeh, shared his perspective on where the country is, and how all Liberians can view and approach the challenges the country is facing, noting that the first and fundamental problem is that Liberians have knack to oversimplify and over-politicize the challenges the country face. 

“Under those conditions where we oversimplify it, then we think anybody can solve the problem. We just need to take anyone as an indicator, put them in coat suits and assign them a task and they’re supposed to be able to solve the problem because of the oversimplification, as if these challenges are not daunting enough. And so, we don’t send our most prepared minds. And then we over-politicize the issues,” Dr. Kollie said.

Expounding further, the former founding member of the opposition Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) political behemoth urged Liberians to observe that life shouldn’t always be seen through the prism of game theoretic models, where there must be winners and losers, noting that it is over politicization of the challenges facing the country that further compounds the problems and evade solutions to those challenges.

“I will further preface all of this by saying that these problems are not insurmountable, but for us to address them, we must make sure once we understand the problems, the challenges, and then we put our best minds forward to address those challenges.

“At the bottom of this, I think, in my opinion, sitting around the table for some time and understanding the challenges, the first thing we need to address is the mindset. The mindset of just the composition of what we call a Liberian. I think we have a different kind of mindset, and with that mindset, I don’t know how we will transform this country. It’s not just the leaders. I am saying just the ordinary Liberian people. We must change our mindset. We must wish our country well. I am not saying we should not criticize; but at the core of it, each of us will have to do things that advance the overall cause. Someone would say, and I believe it’s Henry Andrews, we don’t expect the universal set to be any better than the subsets. And so, if we Liberians are thinking one way, I don’t see how the country moves in another direction.

Every one of us will have to participate in this process of development, and each of us will have to play our own part. Each of us will have to make deliberate efforts not only to advance ourselves but to ensure that advancement moves the national cause. But if we are going to sit down and wish those who are given the opportunity to lead us, if we are going to wish that they don’t succeed, then we don’t want our country overall to succeed. Again, I am not saying politics is not going to play a part, but what is the greater good here? What is the bigger objective?

“The reason why I say this among other things is, for example, if you see a country like Ghana, if you went to an international conference, every example that folks will give will be positive thing about Ghana. In their own little way, they are selling their country and projecting it. On the contrary, if you went somewhere and there were Liberians, they will find every reason to beat on their country. Every opportunity that they’re given, they will beat on their country. How is the country going to make progress if the citizens from the country continue to beat down on the country?

“I remember a case in point during Ebola. While other nationals were putting things together to help their country, I saw Liberians on social media and elsewhere beating down on their country rather than lifting it up in a time of crisis. We are supposed to be helping to uplift our country, but instead we’re beating on our country, every opportunity we have. I am just saying, with that mindset, I don’t think we have the mindset to develop, just individually, and then before you consider the collective. We all have to start thinking how each of us in our little neck of the woods, how can we advance our nation’s cause? What is it that we can do so that this country moves forward?

“I remember a colleague of mine, that’s before I took the UNDP job, we were sitting and talking, and I was telling him that some of the things that are happening are positive, that they’ve paved the SKD Boulevard. The colleague said no, that road is not a boulevard; it is a two-lane road, and so, we cannot say SKD Boulevard. But is that what we’re concerned about? I am talking about those who used to live in the dust on that road, now that the road has been paved, it’s what I am talking about. It’s not whether you call it a street, an alley, or a boulevard. That is not important to me. But if you’re going to use that to beat on people who paved the road, rather than applauding them so that you have the moral credibility to criticize them if and when they don’t something well, you’re going to hinge on whether it’s a boulevard, it’s an alley, or a street, and you’re missing the bigger picture, I think we’ve missed the point here. And that is why I say, our first and foremost problem is our mindset, and unless and until we can start to change mindset individually and see how we align it where we want our country to go, like they say, we can be the change we want, we can start that process by first changing our mindset, wishing our country well and doing things that will incrementally move our country there, whether we’re in a public position or not. I think as individual Liberians; we should do everything we can to move our country forward,” Dr. Kollie aka Zubah Kpadeh said.