MONROVIA – One of Liberia’s outstanding economists and politicians, Dr. Togba-Nah Tipoteh, has expressed his approval of assertions by Reverend Emmett Dunn who served as the orator for the National July 26, 1025 Celebration.
Most pleasantly surprisingly, the former standard bearer of the Liberia People’s Party said, the religious leader spoke the ‘truth’ when he said many religious leaders are busy following money and not telling the truth.
“This Commentary speaks of the importance of following the Truth,” Dr. Tipoteh said in an opinion piece shared with The Analyst.
“The Orator told the Truth,” he emphasized. “Our Creator has provided enough for all people but only a few people benefit.”
He reasoned that this is so because the ‘powers that be’ are money-driven, working to be served rather than to serve.
Since the 1950s, there is reliable data showing that less than one percent of the people of Liberia have access to more than sixty percent of the income and wealth, the legendary economist said.
“This is what is correctly called Economic Growth without Economic Development or Growth without Development for short (Robert Clower, et al., Harvard University Press, 1966),” he further noted.
Providing most recent instances, Tipoteh noted that “this bad situation in the National Legislature of Liberia where legislators have access to at least LD200,000 a day and their foreign business partners have access to at least LD300,000,000 a day while almost all of the people of Liberia have access to at most less than LD300 a day”.
“No wonder the people of Liberia have concluded that Liberia is headed in the wrong direction (Afrobarometer, 2022),” he stressed, citing a reference.
He added: “The wrong direction is poverty generating. This direction is seen in the bad prevailing system of injustice in Liberia instead of the good enduring system of Justice. This change in direction calls for the raising of awareness in ways that motivate the people who love Liberia to take immediate actions within the Rule of Law to make living conditions better for the people of Liberia”
According the long time progressive, change means the existence of a growth with development situation in fact.
“This situation is at once the only and best way to get persons with good records to get elected to bring in the system of Justice, the indispensable ingredient for change in Liberia and in any country,” Dr. Tipoteh concluded.