Lamenting Liberia’s Development Woes -Bility Writes from USA, Pointing to ‘Country without a Map’

MONROVIA – That Liberia bags 178 years of existence this week as a sovereign nation but looking like a little village fraught with chronic inadequacies does not matter to many political elite of the country. All that matter is self-aggrandizement, power, and popularity, and rendering their country deeply pauperized through graft and pillage. It takes only the ordinary citizens feeling the pinch of squalor, and a tiny modicum of political elite, to make sense of and worry about the paradox – old, rich but poor and destitute 178-year-old country naturally endowed. Nimba County lawmaker Hassan Musa Bility, haunted and mesmerized by the development glories of the United States, Liberia’s “quasi colonizer”, is compelled to leverage his poetic prowess lamenting his country’s social, economic and political woes in his latest “Letter from Saclepea”. Sojourning in a high-story building overlooking Washington and covered by the clear sky possibly stretching `over this wretched fatherland back home, he laments “A Country Without a Map”. The Analyst reports.     
Lawmaker Hassan Musa Bility’s personal column, “Letter from Saclepea” has been trending lately in the media realm since its launch a few months ago, many taking delight in reading it not merely for the wit and style, but also because it features social, economic and political issues that are dear to the minds and hearts of many citizens.

Though out of Saclepea and out of Liberia, Bility’s pen keeps panting, discharging inks clogged in logic and common sense that matter to the masses of Liberians who have been victim of political neglect by self-seeking politicians.

He is in the United States right now (even though naysayers are saying he’s denied a US visa), and there he is marveling over a country whose streets are “clean and ordered” – perhaps concerned that back home, both in Saclepea or Monrovia and elsewhere in the 178 year-old Liberia, filths and chaos consume streets if not homes and offices.

So, he writes: “This week, I write to you not from the red clay roads of Saclepea, but from across the ocean, in the heart of America. And yet, as I walk the clean, ordered streets of this foreign land, my thoughts remain at home, with Liberia.”

Bility says he sees how nations like this one (USA), built on centuries of struggle and imperfection, rise, fall, and rise again because they possess one thing that “we do not — a shared map, a national agenda, a dream larger than any one person, party, or president”.

Liberia has many political parties, many leaders, and many voices, Bility notes. “But what we lack is one vision that binds us all together. We do not have a national agenda that says, ‘This is where we want to be in ten, twenty, or thirty years.’ And that is dangerous.”

When a political regime builds roads, and develops an overarching development plan, “it is only for them; only to be abandoned in the next regime. We start programs that die with their founders.”

He added: “We make promises in one term and forget them in the next. There is no continuity, no long-term vision, no binding national ambition that says, this is who we are, and this is what we want to become.

The Nimba lawmaker quips, quite rhetorically: “What is our goal as a nation? Where do we want to be by 2040? What kind of economy are we building? What kind of schools, hospitals, and justice system are we working toward? Every nation that has risen from poverty to prosperity did so by crafting a unifying national agenda.”

Adding, he writes: “Rwanda did it, Singapore did it, Ghana is doing it. They said, ‘We may belong to different parties, tribes, or regions, but we will agree on this one vision for our country.’”

Liberia has never done that, Bility insists as a matter of fact. “Instead, our leaders come and go, each with their own blueprints, their own slogans, their own people. And the country remains stuck, spinning in circles while the rest of the world moves forward.”

Call for turning corner

He called for turning a new page if the country is to make any leap, moving forward.

“It is time we changed that,” he says.

Bility asserts that it’s time Liberia’s political elite stopped pretending that governance is about individual brilliance or tribal dominance.

“It is about building a national compass, one that outlives any government and gives every Liberian, from West Point to Ganta, a sense of direction,” he argues, calling on the ruling elite of the country to “build an agenda that says: by 2035, every child should complete basic education; by 2040, Liberia should feed itself through modern agriculture; by 2050, our power grid should light every home, and by 2060, Liberia should be among the most transparent and accountable governments in Africa.”

He adds, “That’s how nations rise…not by noise; not by revenge politics, but by planning, committing, and staying the course, no matter who sits in power.”

Bility expresses strong confidence that Liberians can achieve such a feat, because, according to him, “I have seen our brilliance. I have lived among our resilient people.”

He however warns that “if we do not act now, if we do not build a national agenda soon, we will remain a nation full of potential, but with no direction. A people full of hope, but going nowhere”.

Drawing the curtain on his commentary, Nimba lawmaker says, such a failure would be the greatest threat to Liberia’s future.

“Let us map the future. Together,” he says.