25.4 C
Monrovia
Saturday, February 15, 2025

Liberia Has No Need to Depend on Donor Benevolence to Advance Its National Development Agenda

Must read

John H. T. Stewart

Frankly speaking, Liberian leaders have no need to travel the globe with begging bowl in hand from capital to capital to source support to fund our national development agenda.

This is because this country is bountifully endowed with abundant natural resources that can underwrite its national development agenda.

Consider for example how poverty stricken the people of Kinjor, Grand Cape Mount are and the very demeaning conditions of life mired in extreme poverty which characterizes daily life. Yet the people of Kinjor are virtually sitting on a world of gold but which is being sequestered from them under the guise of a Concession Agreement found to be bogus according to the Moore-Stephens Report.

The story is virtually the same in nearly every county as alluvial deposits of gold can be found all around the country. According to geography, Liberia is well drained by numerous creeks, rivulets, streams and six principal rivers all of which run parallel from north to south. Thus, the wide occurrence of gold in Liberia is by no means surprising.

In addition to gold, Liberia has other resources like rubber, iron ore, diamonds, timber, etc., however my focus in this piece is on gold particularly in Belle District.

A bogus investor(Chinese national) Gao Feng aka “Barry” has been conducting illegal gold mining operations in the Belle District. And in doing so, he has recklessly damaged the environment as can be seen from photos which I had published earlier.

The statistics I have presented below were sourced from official reports from the Ministry of Mines and Energy. The figures are indeed mind blowing and it makes me wonder why, just why this is allowed to happen.

Troubling though the statistics may be, but they show that the People of Belle Yallah with proper environmental guidance and advice and with a little capital investment, can recover the cost of the investment in less than two years based just on these stats.

Note that all the companies/corporations engaged in illicit mining in Belle District which are listed below are all owned and operated by Gao Feng, aka, “Barry”.

  1. From the Xin Li Da Investment Development Illicit mining pits #2 within Belle Yalla, 2,365,704.00 cubic meters of Gravel was extracted in the period March to December 2023. The amount of illegally produced gold amounted to 1,182,852.00 grams with a total market value of US$85,165,344
  2. From Pit # 1 within Belle Yallah, an amount of 2,148,000.00 cubic meters of Gravel was extracted. The estimated amount of illegally produced gold was 1,074,000.00 grams with a market value of US$77,328,000.00
  3. From the Scott Investment Incorporated illicit mining pit in Belle Yallah, 998,000.00 cubic meters of Gravel was extracted. This yielded 499,476.00 grams with market value of US$35,928,000.00
  4. Also from the same Scott Investment Incorporated illicit mining pit #3 between the period March to December 2023, a total of 1,498,000,952.00 cubic meters of Gravel was extracted. The estimated total of Gold produced was 749,476.00 grams with a market value of US$53,962,274
  5. From Scott Investment Corporation illicit mining pit #5 within Belle Yallah, an amount of 836, 352.00 cubic meters of Gravel was extracted. The amount of gold produced was 418,176.00 grams with a market value of US$30,108,672.00
  6. From the Urban & Rural Services Inc. Illicit mining pit # 6 within Belle Yallah Gravel extracted amounted to 6,359,680 cubic meters. From this an amount of 3,179,840.00 cubic meters of Gravel was extracted. The Gold produced amounted to 3,179,840.00 grams with a market value of US$228,948,480.00
  7. Finally, from the Scott Investment Inc. Illicit mining pit #7 within Belle Yallah a total of 6,359,680.00 cubic meters of Gravel was extracted. The total amount of illegally produced Gold was 2,755,224.00 grams with a market value of US$198,376,128.00

Now let us do some addition here:

US$85,165,344.00

US$77,328,000.00

US$35,928,000.00

US$53,962,274.00

US$30,108,672.00

US$228,948,480.00

Total = US$511,440,770(Five hundred eleven million, four hundred forty thousand, seven hundred and seventy United States dollars)

Imagine what this amount of wealth extracted from just the Belle Yalla area alone can do for Gbarpolu County let alone Belle District which includes Belle Yallah. How can the leaders and elders of Belle District, especially members of the Legislature allow this to happen.

The people of Belle District have nothing to boast of in terms of schools, hospitals, good roads, potable drinking water, electricity and other basic necessities of life yet, such an amount of wealth is stolen right from under their noses.

Quite clearly, Liberia is rich and there is no need for our leaders to visit foreign capitals around the world with a begging bowl in outstretched hands.

What this bogus Chinese investor has shown us is that it is possible for the people of Belle District led by honest, courageous and patriotic men and women to throw off the shackles of endemic and pervasive poverty by the use of their own resources extracted from their soil.

But based on experience of others, the World Bank, IMF, IDA, will more likely than not, oppose such a move away from dependency clearly because it would mean that Liberia would no longer be enslaved by World Bank/IMF lending policies from which the World Bank is making colossal profit.

But only a weak and subservient leader will continue to accept such World Bank/IMF diktat. And when the people become aware of what possibilities lie before them to transform their lives, but which are being denied them by greedy politicians and bogus investors, it is game over.

Final Word-Liberia has no need to depend on donor benevolence to advance its national development agenda.

Latest article