Last week, the nation was once again shaken awake by the release of an audit report that should have stopped every conversation in the country. For more than forty-four years, successive governments have robbed their own people blind; stealing from schools, hospitals, and development programs meant to lift this country from the dust.
The report, spanning nearly half a century, lays bare a pattern of betrayal so deep and repetitive that it no longer shocks the conscience.
What was revealed is a charge sheet implicating more than five governments, an indication that these crimes are not committed because there are no laws to prevent them, but because those charged with enforcing the law are the very ones committing the robbery.
It shows how our leaders have used public office not as a place of service but as a personal ATM. It speaks to a system so well designed for stealing that corruption no longer hides; it walks in daylight, confident that no one will care.
But the stealing does not end with theft; it multiplies into a curse. Funds stolen in one administration are paid back as debt in another — with interest. The looting of public resources is not only an act of present-day greed but an assault on tomorrow’s generation.
The cost of this thievery is not just recorded in the audit books; it is written as debt to be paid by generations yet unborn. While the duty of every generation is to build a society better than it found it, for forty-four years and counting, all we have done is create a non-functional, debt-burdened nation resting on the weary shoulders of those who did not cause its ruin. Debt kills a nation; it robs the unborn of a future.
Yet the real tragedy is not only in what the audit uncovered, but also in how we, the people, received it. A nation that has suffered from the absence of hospitals, broken schools, and crumbling infrastructure should have risen in anger. Yet the report was met with silence, laughter, and a few social media jokes. No protests. No resignations. No serious public debate.
Even the government, guilty as those before it, responded with the usual arrogance and dismissal. The approach was nothing short of the usual political showmanship of blame games lacking a committed effort to prevent through holding those responsible accountable.
This is where the story turns inward. The audit report did not just indict officials – past and present, it indicted us as a people. It says that Liberia has reached a dangerous place where corruption is not just practiced but accepted. We have normalized wrongdoing. We have turned thieves into glorified politicians and public office into a hustle.
Every time a new government comes, it promises to fight corruption, and every time it fails, we simply move on as if failure were expected. We curse the system in public but worship the same politicians in private. We sell our votes for T-shirts and rice, then complain when hospitals lack medicine.
This audit should have been a mirror, one reflecting not only the decay of governance but the decay of our national soul. For how long will we continue to let leaders rob us in daylight and still clap for them at night?
The truth hurts but must be told that Liberia is not suffering from a lack of laws, but a lack of will. Corruption has become a culture, and cultures do not change by speeches, they change when the people decide enough is enough.
Until then, every audit report will do the same ; attract few hours of political showmanship of finger – pointing, cherry- picking of which government that stole more than the other , highlight the same numbers, but with different names from different administrations, effect on the citizenry same or worse , and the public reaction the same- silence read the same.
Truth in Ink Reflection:
The audit report speaks, not only of numbers stolen, but of a nation’s conscience gone quiet. It is not just the thief who runs a country, but the silence of those who watch and say nothing.
In Liberia, corruption survives not because it is powerful, but because too many have learned to live comfortably beside it.
