By Precious D. Freeman
Two high ranking Executives of the Liberia Musicians Union (LMU), have resigned with immediate effect as a result of serious allegation of financial malpractice being observed within the institution.
The LMU Vice president for Administration, McDonald Parcular and the Vice president for Operations, Miatta L. Kamara made public their resignations over the weekend.
In separate remarks at a press conference in Monrovia, they described their issues as lack of working relationship, alleged financial malpractice, uncontrollable piracy and outage of profanity among others as some of the reasons which precipitated their resignations.
Parcular accused the institution’s president, Sammy Gboguy, of unilaterally taking decisions on behalf of the institution; something he believes is affecting and undermining the growth of the institution.
“We were elected as a team on a platform to transform the Musicians Union and make sure that dignity is restored to that noble organization; on the contrary, the president does not respect his fellow colleagues and always took decisions alone,” he maintained.
Mr. Parcular further stated that the president makes the organization like his personal property, and as such, other high ranking executives of the institution voice/voices are yet to be heard of their ascendancy.
He added, “This president has begun superseding everyone’s function in the organization, and also having every document of the institution to his possession, and what is so much baffling is that he always feels offended whenever he is being asked about his attitude.”
“We do not have an executive board to resolve our problems and so we usually take the problems to stakeholders to solve them. We have called several meetings with stakeholders and government ministers on these issues; after all the pieces of advice given to him, he still exhibits the same behavior,” Parcular stressed.
Madam Kamara also pointed out that the Institution through its president was recently given LD 150,000 by Cultural Ambassador Julie Endee for the Independence Day celebration but alleged that said fund is yet to be accounted for when it is glaring that the money was not used for the intended purpose.
According to her, she received US$ 500 from a man only identified as Sheikh when he brought in a popular Nigerian Artist, Kiss Daniel, but noted that the money was then taken from her by their president and that too is yet to be accounted for.
She alluded, “What is more alarming is the huge number of relatives that this president has recruited following our induction ceremony who are not even part of the organization. On this note, I will still support the LMU but not as a member because the leadership has failed miserably and it is very corrupt.”
Meanwhile, all efforts exerted by this paper to speak to LMU’s president Gboguy through calls and text messages for the past three days proved futile.