Hon. Musa Bility’s Speech at the Mandingo Convention in Philadelphia

July 27, 2007

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen

I want to thank the organizers of this conference for taking the initiative to organize this historic conference.  After years of efforts on the part of successive leaders and groups to organize a conference that embraces representatives of all of the people of our community, you have succeeded. I applaud you for this accomplishment as history will note this as a landmark achievement. I want to also thank you for selecting me to speak on this occasion.  I am as humbled by your invitation to me to speak on behalf of our community back home as I am gratified by your foresight in organizing this conference.  Our community is called upon to develop a shared vision of its role in forging Liberia ahead after a quarter century of intermittent violence and 14 years of civil war. We must meet that challenge by developing the capabilities to join with those of other Liberians for reconciliation and development. Therefore, this meeting is an important step on the road to crystallizing our thoughts and transforming them into action plans for the benefit of our community and our country.

I had prepared a speech in Liberia before my departure. While in transit in Brussels Airport in Belgium, I checked the internet and saw an article on Limany in which it was said that Limany has not been invited to the program. Limany has become the voice of our people at the time when we didn't have a voice. When I saw this article about Limany not participating and other negative articles about the convention, I was distracted and because of this, I won't read from the prepared speech I brought. I jutted down some points which I want to stress to you.

As one of the present leaders of our community in Liberia, I am proud to say that I and other colleagues currently in the leadership of our community stand on the shoulders of previous generations of illustrious sons and daughters of our community and nation. Notable among the modern leaders of our community is the late Dr. Edward B. Kesselly. Dr. Kesselly showed us that we as a community need not circumscribe our potentials to economic activities only. He showed us that the true path to effective citizenship and power in the Liberian society was through mobilization for participation in national politics. He showed us that it was only through political participation as a community that community’s interests could be preserved and promoted among competing regional and community interests in Liberia. Dr. Kesselly did not only expound this principle in theory, he worked hard and put it to practice. As we all know, he was the founder of Unity Party, the ruling party in Liberia today. Many of us have remained faithful to the advice of our parents and elders who heeded Dr. Kesselly’s call and stood with him in organizing the Unity Party. I ask you to join me in a moment of silence to the memory of Edward Kesselly and all of our fathers and mothers who paid the supreme price with their lives in years of struggle for political recognition and participatory citizenship in Liberia.

Following closely on the heels of Dr. Kesselly’s generation was the generation of leaders that include Alhaji GV Kromah. Alhaji Kromah's voice was a hope and inspiration for our people at the time when we were hopeless, humiliated, killed and our people fled en-mass to other countries. Through the struggle he led, our people came back to Liberia with great sense of pride of pride and dignity. With this being said, we must agree to disagree over his styles of leadership. There are those among us who bitterly disagree with him and others who dearly love and admire him. Wherever we stand on this issue, history will record that he led our people at the time when we needed a voice to restore our sense of confidence in ourselves.

For me as a Liberian and Mandingo, I want to recognize the man who has made us so proud, without whom (given our recent past), there would be no peace and democracy in Liberia today. That important personality is Sekou Damate Konneh. In my opinion, Sekou Damate Konneh is the most important leader in Liberia in the last 25 years. He is the only leader of a major warring faction who did not violate any agreement he signed. He led the struggle that drove Taylor out of Liberia and he is largely responsible for the peace and democracy we now have in Liberia. This is a reality whether we like it or not.  In view of this, we salute our past and present leaders, among them, Edward B. Kesselley, Alhaji Kromah, and Sekou for their courage and we pay tribute to their gallantry. Without their sacrifices, our community might not have been able to secure a place of respect on the contemporary Liberian political landscape. Today, there are some of us serving in the current government. You have Justice Janeh, Hon. Lusene Donzo, and your humble servant serving as the Chairman of the board of Directors of NPA. I am the owner of two impotant media institutions in the country and we run programs that promote our values as a community. We have Friday sermon broadcast live from the various mosques in Monrovia and we have the popular Mandingo program called Jelekaniko. This is an indication to all of you that our time has come as leaders of our people today.

Our challenge today is to build on the legacy of the past and expand the opportunities for succeeding generations. Meeting this challenge requires that we deepen our understanding of the Liberian political, social and economic processes and develop both the personal and community capacities to ensure solid participation on our own merits and not through surrogates. Even though the past leaders deserve credit and we must honor them for their sacrifices, their times have passed and now is our time. As such, we must stop fighting proxy war for these past leaders and begin to identify what we can do for our country and community by ourselves. Take 16 years out of the life of any of these leaders and you will realize they were our age when they started the struggle for which we admire and respect them. If they could do it, we too have come of age to step up to the challenge of leadership in our community and nation.

Our first challenge is to deepen our knowledge about ourselves and our country. We need to pay more attention to the history and culture of our people, understand from whence we come so that we can more clearly chart a course to the future.

Throughout Liberia today as in the past, the economic entrepreneurship of our community has been well known and acknowledged. As economics is fundamentally important, it is essential that we update and modernize our skills as entrepreneurs. This requires advancing the skills of our young people in the art and science of business and financial management, marketing and information and communications technology so that we can take advantage of expanding opportunities for the betterment of ourselves, our community and our country.

We also have a challenge to ensure that our voice remains articulate in the policy processes of our government and country. This cannot be assured if we do not remain politically cohesive as a community and participate in the political process as a unified force. Only in this way can be command the clout that translates into policy inputs that ensures promotion of community interests in the national scheme of things. We should not sit back and wait for elections season to come around and then invite candidates to tell us what they will do for us. We should become politically proactive. This means formulating a political and policy agenda based on our community’s needs and aspirations and with our aspirations for our nation as a whole. We must build coalitions with others with a view to promoting a national agenda for democracy and development in our country.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I need not tell you how severe the impact of war has been on our community and our nation.   Each one of us here bears the scars of war. We have sustained the loss of love ones and of property. For many of us, our families remained scattered across West Africa and beyond. Our community is perceived by some as the victim and by others as the perpetrators of conflict. So it is with most ethnic communities in civil wars; so it is especially in the Liberian civil war. Victims are also perpetrators and perpetrators are also victims. This is why we should encourage, advocate for as well as participate in a strong and genuine program of reconciliation whose objective will not be solely geared toward seeking retribution. Martin Luther King has told us that a society that lives on the principle of an eye for an eye will soon have nothing but blind people. While we must not ignore impunity, we must double our efforts to achieve restorative justice. We owe it to our posterity to put the bitter past behind us, to form strong bonds among ourselves and to build strong bridges to other communities. It is only in this way that we can build a strong nation out of the ashes of war. As a community with deep interest in assisting our country to transcend conflict and the scourge of conflict, we are challenged to advance innovative proposals for reconciliation and the sustaining of peace in our country.

Mr. Chairman, our community members in the diaspora, especially those in the United States, carry a heavy responsibility to assist us to meet the challenges we face. Liberian communities in the United States are among the most richly endowed with skills and material resources.  Throughout the course of the civil war, the remittances from these communities were an indispensable source of support for our war-weary people. Members of these diasporic communities have returned home and many are participating the public service and in the private sector. One of our concerns is that not all of the members of our community are aware of the responsibilities that they should shoulder and consequently, not all members of our community are taking advantage of the available opportunities to equip themselves to meet these challenges. We need to encourage our youth to put more time in school than in attending parties and other social events.

Education remains the light to our path forward. We need to ensure the mobilization of resources to make sure that all of the young people of our community both here and at home attend school and acquire appropriate skills. We need to keep track of our skilled human resources and bring those skills at home to serve our people in government and the public sector as well as in the private sector.

With this conference, we must begin setting goals to be accomplished for our community and for our country: goals in education for our youth and women; health care for all of our people but especially for our children and youth, women and the elderly. We must set economic goals for the upliftment of the needy in our community; we must establish economic safety nets for the vulnerable. Mr. Chairman, we must establish political goals so that our community can be properly represented in the councils of political decision making in our country. We must seek social goals to integrate our culture and traditions into the mainstream of Liberia society and to attain the full respect of all Liberians.

As we begin these deliberations, I can assure you that those who I represent stand fully ready to join you in crafting and implementing an agenda for our community and for our country. I understand that the theme of this convention is community unity and empowerment. One thing I want to tell you is that back in Liberia, our people are united, and we have been able to find common ground in working together as one people. The challenge is with those of you living in the US. As we have paved the way for finding the common ground to work together, we encourage you to do the same.

With this being said, let me close by once again congratulating you for organizing this historic conference and for inviting me to speak to you on this occasion.

Thanks you and God bless. 

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