Bomi County Senator Edwin Snowe has warned the newly inducted president of the Bomi Community College (BCC) to stay out of the county’s politics if he wants to succeed at the college.
He cautioned the president of the county’s only institution of higher learning to remain focused on his duties as a school administrator and stay out of issues that would distract him and his students.
The lawmaker made the statement on Friday, June 10, 2022 when he made remarks at the induction ceremonies of the 5th President and two Board Members of the BCC.
Some citizens and residents told the Inquirer Newspaper that the newly inducted president will find it difficult to succeed at his new post since he’s not a son of Bomi County.
In separate interviews, they said that citizens from other counties who are working in managerial positions in Bomi are finding it difficult at their various places, leaving some to resign for alleged threats on their lives. According to them, Sen. Snowe’s threat to the new president of BCC is a Bomi way of life.
Many prominent citizens of the county who attended the program have condemned Sen. Snowe’s statement, describing it as divisive and a directive threat intended to implant fear in the new president and take him off balance.
They believe that Dr. Gbatu has both the moral and academic qualifications and will do better than some of the county’s own children who had served in that position. “Senator Snowe is noted for making those kinds of intimidating posture to take one off balance and put fear in him or her. He has done it to most of the appointed officials, and it is the same strategy he is trying to apply on the current BCC’s president,” Mr. Isaac Watson, a resident of Bomi, who resides in Monrovia, said.
“It is my prayer that the new Community College president focuses and does his best,” Watson wished.
The former Superintendent of the Bomi County, Samuel Brown, said there is nothing as “Bomi Politics” but rather local, national and international issues that would spark the concerns of an individual, a group of people and would require their academic inputs.
“I don’t know if we have anything called ‘Bomi Politics.’ While we respect the comment from Sen. Snowe, we would respectfully differ with him. You cannot ban an entire community; moreover the county’s highest institute to stay away from discussing important issues in their domain,” Mr. Brown averred.
“What happens when the issue you termed as ‘Bomi Politics’ concerns the running of the school. How do you expect for the president, a faculty of a student to keep silent? Supt. Brown quizzed. He however called on the BCC president to focus on his job and educate the children of Bomi.
However, the BCC president, Dr. Abimelech Paye Gbatu, described Sen. Snowe’s statement as a start-up call for his administration assuring, “We were called to provide quality education to the people of Liberia, no matter where you are from, and we will do just that.”
Dr. Gbatu told a team of journalists following the program that, “All I want is for all of us to play our role without the interference of the other. I will teach and let the county’s legislators find the necessary funding to run the school.”
On his direct response to Sen. Snowe, Dr. Gbatu noted that there is nothing every county has a unique pattern of discussing issues that are relevant to it and added, “If that is what Sen. Snowe called Bomi Politics, then I am in line. But the senator must also understand that I am a Liberian and by virtue of my assignment to Bomi County makes me a resident of the county, so staying away from his Bomi Politics would mean that.”
According to old man Watson, he should not speak to the issues of education, health and social benefits of the issues concerning my work place; then the Senator and I will need to sit and derive a friendly path,” Dr. Gbatu asserted.
The Bomi County Community College strategically located in Tubmanburg is a public land grant government-supported higher education institution established as the first post-war public community-based initiative in Liberia in August 2005.
In 2009, the National Commission on Higher Education accredited the BCC. The Act of Legislature subsequently enacted the BCC on September 2012, with the mandate to administer a co-educational institution of teaching, learning, and research within the Western Region of Liberia.
The BCC aims to fulfill the professional needs of a huge youthful population in the region and offers courses at the Associate of Arts Degrees in Agriculture and carpentry; Nyema Nma, Jr. writes.
