By Sherman C. Seequeh
Let me commend the intention. Let me acknowledge the necessity.
Let me recognize the urgency.
In a country where vast stretches of territory remain cut off by mud tracks and collapsing laterite, where farmers watch crops rot because trucks cannot reach their villages, where pregnant women are carried on hammocks because ambulances cannot cross washed-out roads—road equipment is not luxury. It is lifeline.
Liberia has lived too long with the geography of neglect. Entire counties become islands when the rains fall. Rural markets cannot reach urban buyers. Youth leave their villages not because they want to—but because roads refuse them opportunity.
So when the administration of Joseph Boakai moved to acquire road-building equipment—the famous yellow machines—Liberians rejoiced. Because roads are not only asphalt. Roads are schools reached. Clinics accessed. Prices stabilized. Unity restored.
And Liberians remember something else.
Four years ago, on the campaign trail, the then opposition standard bearer of the Unity Party spoke with conviction that in his first 100 days, no car would be stuck in the mud. It was a powerful promise, born of real suffering. Today, cynical voices whisper that the nation is nearly half a decade late on that pledge. Those whispers may be harsh—but they are reminders that promises create clocks in the public mind.
In that spirit, commendation is deserved.
If I were Boakai, I would know that Liberia cannot grow while its counties remain strangers to each other.
If I were Boakai, I would remember that rural isolation is the quiet engine of poverty.
If I were Boakai, I would see in every feeder road the possibility of national healing.
But hope must be protected by trust.
Because after the applause faded, questions rose. Procurement questions. Transparency questions. Deployment questions. And silence settled where clarity should have spoken.
A Yellow Machines Committee was constituted by the President to reassure the nation. Yet weeks have passed, and there are no official updates, no public reports, no deployment framework shared with citizens.
Committees without communication breed suspicion. We have not been short of them.
If I were Boakai, I would know that in Liberia’s political history, procurement secrecy has wounded public confidence too many times.
If I were Boakai, I would understand that development projects must be clean—not only in fact, but in perception.
If I were Boakai, I would publish the committee’s findings immediately: procurement process, contract values, maintenance plans, operator training schedules, county deployment strategy.
Because trust, once shaken, is expensive to rebuild.
Let us speak plainly. Liberia’s backward infrastructure is not accident. It is accumulation—of neglect, of corruption, of short-term thinking. Counties have been promised roads every election season. Machines have been bought before. Many rusted before finishing ten miles.
The yellow machines must not become yellow monuments.
If I were Boakai, I would name the roads to be graded first—county by county. Not promises whispered to partisans, but schedules printed for the public.
If I were Boakai, I would put women’s farming cooperatives, cocoa farmers, palm growers, teachers, and health workers into consultations about road priorities. They know which roads matter.
If I were Boakai, I would ensure that rural Liberia—not political strongholds—decides deployment.
Because machines that serve only politics divide a country. Machines that serve farms unite it.
Liberians do not fear the machines. They fear misuse. Fuel theft. Operator favoritism. Spare-parts disappearance. County diversion. These ghosts live in our national memory.
If I were Boakai, I would create a public tracking dashboard: machine location, hours worked, fuel used, roads completed. Let citizens monitor progress.
If I were Boakai, I would train county technicians, so maintenance lives beyond Monrovia.
If I were Boakai, I would ring-fence a five-year maintenance fund, so machines do not die after one rainy season.
If I were Boakai, I would invite civil society auditors quarterly—not to embarrass government, but to strengthen it.
Because infrastructure is not purchased; it is sustained.
Let us also be honest about the deeper truth: roads are political—not partisan political, but nation-building political. When counties connect, economies integrate. When economies integrate, resentment shrinks. When resentment shrinks, peace strengthens.
Liberia’s civil war was not only about power. It was about abandonment. About regions forgotten. About youth stranded. About towns cut off from opportunity.
Roads repair more than earth. They repair memory.
So, this moment matters. The yellow machines can be symbols of a government that remembered the hinterland—or symbols of another promise swallowed by mud.
If I were Boakai, I would choose the harder path: radical transparency, shared planning, relentless maintenance.
If I were Boakai, I would speak to the nation before the machines roll, not after suspicion spreads.
If I were Boakai, I would remember that development measured in secrecy becomes doubt; development measured in honesty becomes legacy.
Liberians want roads. They want connection. They want dignity for rural life.
Give them the machines—but also give them the truth.
Then the roads will not only join towns to cities.
They will join government to people.
They will join promise to performance.
They will join hope to history.
And Liberia will finally begin to travel together.
And finally, if I were Boakai, I would remember the promise spoken on dusty campaign roads—that in one hundred days, no car would be stuck in Liberian mud. History has stretched that hundred days into years. Cynics may mock, but citizens still hope.
If I were Joseph Boakai, I would not run from that promise—I would redeem it. Let the yellow machines roll not as apology, but as fulfillment. Let them erase doubt mile by mile until the nation can say: the promise was late, but it was kept.
