THOUGH A YEAR late, the ruling Unity Party has finally unveiled and inaugurated its development plan – the ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development (AAID). The tag is captivating, the expressions or write-out conveying the intent is mesmerizing. A keen, uncritical reading of the five-year national development plan (2025 – 2029) gives the imagery of some glorious, Elysian Fields – a prosperous Liberia where social services to the long backward people would improve, poverty substantially petered out, crimes nipped in the bud, public officials acting with integrity, and where all citizens – both rural and urban — will feel the impact of progress.
HERE COMES PRESIDENT Joseph Nyuma Boakai in a special Message introducing the AAID dossier: “Liberia is a nation of untapped potential. Endowed with abundant natural resources, a strategic geographical location, and a youthful population – 74.6 percent of the population – is below 35 years old, Liberia possesses the building blocks for transformative growth. Yet, significant challenges persist. Governance challenges, the legacy of protracted conflict, global crises and persistent poverty has hindered progress. With many Liberians living in poverty and unemployment disproportionately affecting women and youth, we must take bold and innovative steps to achieve inclusive and sustainable development.”
THE PRESIDENT CONTINUED: “The AAID endeavors is to confront these challenges by prioritizing human capital development, economic transformation, and good governance as cornerstones of our development. We are committed to empowering Liberians by improving health and nutrition outcomes, providing quality education, and empowering our youth with technical and vocational training and skilling, thus creating employment opportunities for them, as they play a catalytic role in transforming Liberia.”
QUITE FLOWERY AND mesmerizing declarations about the government’s intent to ensure that Liberia leapfrogs from its socioeconomic stagnation; isn’t it? And as if that was not convincing enough, the Chief Driver of the Agenda, Finance and Development Planning Minister Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan, adds to the President in the Forward of the document: “The AAID is underpinned by principles of inclusiveness, sustainability, justice and equality, accountability, peace and reconciliation, and local ownership. It reflects the aspirations of all Liberians, shaped by nationwide consultations with stakeholders including government, civil society, private sector actors, traditional leaders, the youth, People with Disabilities, and international partners. These consultations reinforced the importance of a people-centered development, addressing systemic barriers and structural inequalities while prioritizing the empowerment of marginalized communities.”
LET THIS HARD truth be told: the problem about development plans in Liberia from time immemorial has not been the sweet words cleverly weaved to convey an intent. It has not been about adequate, clear and unambiguous expression of what will be done, how it will be done and when it will be done. We have had enough of such rhetorics. The problem has been gross, systemic failure to put the accrued resources for development where they are intended. The problem has been the truncation of resources intended for development, gross failure by leaders, drivers of development agendas to allow resources, all the resources mobilized – be it national or international – for the cause of the stated intent to filter down fully and address the challenges so well flowerily expressed in the agenda.
LEST WE FORGET, it was the other day – this same Unity Party, and these same ideologues and drivers of AAID – who came out with a 100-Day Deliverables, then the Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy (IPRS), then the MDGs-based PRS, and National Vision 2030. Lest we forget, after the implementation of these rhetoric-adored plans, at least a year or two before the expiry of the regime, the President forewarned of crushing economic hardship, ironically not prosperity, and that the citizens should brace themselves for it. And truly, by 2018, the prophesized crisis burgeoned.
LEST WE FORGET, this first 12 years reign of the Unity Party, was the second “golden age” of Liberia, the first been under the True Whig Party in the 1950s/1960s when Liberia’s per capital income beat all economies of the world save Japan. Lest we forget, it was by the same time of postwar recovery that Rwanda, also coming out of war, was heavily greased, like Liberia, with copious international empathy that was the trigger of the largess and the boom. But go and see Rwanda today. The testament of progress and leap is well noted because the leaders sincerely capitalized global empathy and largess into tangible progress. And where is Liberia today?
THE OPPORTUNITIES WERE squandered and de-capitalized.
THERE MAY BE counterarguments, with some saying times have evolved and are different, and therefore, there is reason to be hopeful. Granted. But as the Kru parable goes, “If the streams could not overflow during the winter, is it not folly that will flood during the summer?” Think about it.
AT THE TIME the Liberian economy was relatively booming because the country was inundated with foreign aids and supports, and GoL was left with merely paying lavish salaries, what was done? Even the over $250 million for Mount Coffee Hydro is virtually of little or no help, leading us to buy electricity from Ivory Coast and begging other countries for power. What can we do when these are famine and drought times?
FOR THE ABOVE stated factors, we greet the AAID Agenda with caution, and even pessimism. Looking back at 2024, the first year, there is little to be hopeful about. The Executive Mansion’s NASSCORP van deal, the Commerce Ministry van corruption deal, the yellow machines and fragrant disregard for procurement laws, the controversial rescue of a purportedly insolvent commercial bank, the bogus and corrupt scholarship schemes at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the office of the First Lady are all reasons to cast doubt on this regime’s ability to deliver on heavens promised by the AIDD. If it does the magic wand, good for Liberia. Thanks to God.
BUT ARE THERE saints born or baptism taken place in 2025 that Liberians don’t know about? Except that is the case, the better for AIDD. Otherwise, what we have on hand is another bundle of rhetoric for development destined for the dustbin of history, leaving the few wealthy persons richer, and the impoverished majority of Liberians more entrenched in the poverty.