Defunct Interim Government of National Unity or IGNU’s President, Amos Claudius Sawyer, has reportedly announced his retirement from partisan politics in Liberia early this week.
He told his constituent, the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA) and the Liberian People’s Party (LPP) that his retirement is due to “health challenges” which limit the range of his activities in which he can fully and productively engage.
Sawyer, 76, hereafter intends to continue his engagement as a senior “scholar and citizen” working along with others to sustain peace and reconciliation, strengthen democracy and enhance development in the country and the sub-region.
He then gave special thanks to all who had worked with him over the decades of his involvement in national political affairs as a partisan.
He concluded in his letter dated Monday, 11 October sent to MOJA and LPP as one of the founding members of both organizations noted that: “Needless to say, my commitment to Liberia and the people of Africa remains unshakable.”
The Liberian People’s Party (LPP) was founded 13 August, 1984 as the electoral wing of the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA), a pan-African group.
MOJA has chapters in Ghana, The Gambia, Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Uganda, Angola, Namibia, South Africa and other African countries as well as in South and North Americas and Europe.
It was founded on Wednesday, 21 March, 1973 after the Sharpville massacre in South Africa. Its early members include Togba Nah Tipoteh, Amos Sawyer, Henry Boima Fahnbulleh, Jr., and Dew Mayson.
Others are Nya Taryor, Conmany Wesseh, John Stewart, Dusty Wolokollie, James Fromayan, Tiawan Gongloe, Flomo Kokolo and others.
Even though MOJA is not a political party, but it played an important role in the struggle for social justice and democracy in Liberia.
Its sensitization work in the 1970s raised national political consciousness to an unprecedentedly high level, radicalizing the mass of urban and rural poor and sections of the military.
The heightened political consciousness and agitation it caused led to the collapse of the settler oligarchy that had ruled Liberia in a colonial manner for over a century.
