By Gabriel I.H. Williams
On September 27, 2024, I saw a video recording posted on the Facebook page of the Executive Mansion (Office of the President of Liberia). The video was a ceremony that had been held on the margins of the ongoing 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at UN Headquarters in New York, USA. At the impressive ceremony, my beloved country, Liberia, launched her candidacy for a seat to become a Non-Permanent Member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) for the 2026-2027 term.
At the auspicious occasion, attended by distinguished Liberian and international guests, including U.S. Ambassador to the UN, H.E. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, President Joseph N. Boakai, who also addressed the UNGA for the first time since assuming the Liberian presidency in early 2024, underscored the significance of the occasion for Liberia and Africa, given Liberia’s historic leadership role in Africa.
Beaming with smile, President Boakai highlighted Liberia’s historical legacy as a founding member of the UN and its precursor, the League of Nations.
“Liberia’s history is closely intertwined with the ideals of the United Nations. Our commitment to fostering peace, resolving conflicts, and advocating for self-determination across Africa is well documented,” President Boakai noted.
The Liberian leader also underscored Liberia’s prominent leadership role in the establishment of significant continental and regional organizations, such as the Organization of African Unity (OAU), renamed the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Mano River Union (MRU). These multilateral organizations, he added, have played vital roles in promoting cooperation, peace, and development across Africa.
Also speaking at the occasion was former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s global icon since Nelson Mandela of South Africa. In her remarks, Africa’s first democratically elected female president and Nobel Laureate, declared: “Liberia meets all the criteria to represent Africa as a Non-Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council!”
Amid applause, former President Sirleaf recalled that Liberia produced the first female president of the UN General Assembly – diplomat and jurist Angie Brooks-Randolph. She added that Liberia was one of the three independent African countries, and as one of the only two free independent nations in Africa at the formation of the UN, provided support, including the granting of passports and the hosting of prominent freedom fighters, who liberated their respective countries from colonial rule, and many of them became leaders of newly independent African nations.
President Sirleaf, who is universally revered for her fight for democracy and gender equality, closed her remarks with a call to Liberians to take note that “we are proving to be the champion for women leadership in Africa.”
As another example that Liberia has been a trailblazer for female leadership in Africa, it is also befitting to note that our country produced the first woman university president in Africa, Dr. Mary Antoinette Brown-Sherman. She was President of the once famous University of Liberia (UL), where many young freedom fighters from around Africa, who were given sanctuary in Liberia and supported by the Liberian government, studied. Other African freedom fighters attended Cuttington University College, now Cuttington University in Suacoco, Bong County, operated by the Episcopal Church of Liberia.
Dr. Sherman was an exemplary leader who fought to keep the UL as a center of intellectual ferment, especially during the turbulent decades of the 1970s and 80s, including the invasion of the UL campus by armed soldiers during the Samuel Doe military regime, leading to deaths, injuries, female students raped, and extensive property damage.
Today, not a college or a major program is named to honor her contributions, while the UL – including the once venerated law school – has become a breeding ground for mediocrity and intellectual dishonesty, as reflected in many reports of academic fraud.
Also speaking at the UN ceremony was Liberia’s Foreign Minister Sara Beysolow Nyanti, who served as Assistant UN Secretary General before her current Liberian government appointment. She indicated that Liberia’s bid was intended for the country to share her past experiences as a global leader, its recent tragic history, as well as the ongoing process of peace consolidation, in the quest for a better world.
Accordingly, this is a call to the Boakai government to use the opportunity of Liberia’s campaign for a non-permanent seat on the UNSC as a teaching moment, to inform and educate Liberians and the world at large about Liberia’s historic leadership roles in Africa and the world. Considering the significance of this development and how it can begin to reignite a sense of pride in Liberians at a time the post-war country is struggling to find a sense of direction and positive national identity, public information through the mass media, events in schools and institutions of higher learning would be the right course to follow.
Equally important, while Liberia is striving to resume its right place in the comity of nations – as reflect by its quest for a non-permanent member seat on the UNSC – there have been attempts to misrepresent and distort historical facts regarding the country’s place as modern Africa’s oldest independent republic, which provided continental leadership. and was a beacon of hope for people of color from around the world, including people from the Caribbean or West Indies.
For example, it was Liberia’s President William V.S. Tubman, the pre-eminent African leader on the global stage, who literally birthed the OAU, now the AU. The document that became the original charter of the OAU was drafted under the leadership of then Liberia’s Secretary of State (now Foreign Minister) J. Rudolph Grimes, an erudite lawyer, who was a product of the world-renowned Harvard and Columbia Universities in the United States.
While Ghana’s first President Kwame Nkrumah is today universally celebrated with honor and reverence as one of modern Africa’s great leaders credited for the creation of the OAU, there is barely a mention of President Tubman, who Dr. Nkrumah looked to for mentorship at some point in history. Nkrumah had close family ties to Liberia and with President Tubman because his father originated from Liberia and resettled in the then Gold Coast (now Ghana). There are family members from Nkrumah father’s side in Liberia, where he visited very regularly.
As another example of Liberia’s support for liberation movements across Africa, former South African President and global icon, Nelson Mandela, traveled incognito (having one’s identity concealed to avoid notice) around the world using Liberian passport during their struggle against apartheid, before he was arrested by the racist exploitative minority regime and jailed for over 27 years.
At the time of the 1980 military coup in which President William R. Tolbert, who succeeded Tubman, was murdered and 13 senior officials of the government publicly executed, President Tolbert was the sitting Chairman of the OAU. He had played a very critical role in the negotiations leading to the Lancaster House Agreement (United Kingdom) that brought about the independence of Rhodesia, renamed Zimbabwe, from colonial subjugation to black majority rule on April 18, 1980. Tolbert was on the verge of traveling to Zimbabwe as head of the delegation of African heads of state and government at the independence celebrations when he was killed in the coup on April 12, 1980. An advanced high-level official Liberian delegation had already been in Zimbabwe and was still in East Africa enroute home when tragedy struck in Liberia.
This was the beginning of Liberia’s implosion, leading to the brutal and barbaric civil wars that also destabilized several neighboring countries, as reported in my book, ‘Liberia: The Heart of Darkness – Accounts of Liberia’s Civil War and Its Destabilizing Effects in West Africa.” My second book, “Corruption is Destroying Africa: The Case of Liberia,” which is also available online like the first, has two chapters detailing Liberia’s historical leadership roles in Liberia. Thanks to eminent political scientist and historian, Dr. D. Elwood Dunn, a retired political science professor at the University of the South in the US, who assisted me with a treasure trove of hitherto unpublished work to buttress my research regarding Liberia’s historic leadership role in Africa.
About the Author: Gabriel I.H. Williams is a career journalist, author, and former Liberian diplomat to the U.S., who has served as a journalism scholar at the UN Headquarters under the Daj Hammarskjold Memorial Fellowship, which is one of the most prestigious awards in international journalism. He can be reached at gabrielwilliams028@gmail.com.
