Let’s remember April 12, 1980

By ralph geeplay

 

This week, Liberians remember April 12, 1980. It is hard to comment on the events that preceded the day and the aftermath of the military overthrow without raw emotions being in the mix. A day when some Liberians trooped to the streets to dance while a segment of the population was mourning. 

For obvious reasons, the emotions associated April 12 are genuine, because it represents a high noon in Liberian history and violent, and that violence also stretched years back; it was 'changing the guards with out guarding the change,' some have termed it, as far as the political leadership and the strategy to govern! April 12, which gave birth to the People's Redemption Council (PRC), was a precursor and a spring to a turbulent decade that also gave way to Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), with the front main argument being that Doe had lost his legitimacy because of his ruthlessness. 

It is always a hard commentary, because most of the principals actors are still around and their supporters and families still mourning the tragedy that has become the Liberian experience in the context of violence. What makes it even harder is that there is still no remorse associated with the gruesome decapitation of Liberians by these actors and some of their supporters.

The day itself will always be looked at as a historical opportunity that was wasted, the good will that greeted the PRC was soon thrown out the window when they tasted power, and what was meant to correct a decaying political hegemony dominated by a few, especially the settler class, also failed to delivered to the Liberian people the many promises it made on the morning of the coup. The military men in boots were no different from their predecessors, if not worse. It is true that the settler class abused power, but what gave others the right to draw out their knives and waste blood in the streets of Monrovia and subsequently the entire nation during the 80s and 90s. What arguments can we make for revenge...?

If anything, April 12 was a promise as it was about change and liberation. Master Sergeant Samuel Doe in his first public address was unequivocal when he promised to deliver the country from the turmoil and mistakes of the past, it is not a question about him not understanding what he read to the Liberian people, as he became literate he should have gone back to that address, there were a lot of us that were counting on him. He promised to exterminate public corruption, nepotism, and amongst others. Further, he and his PRC also pledged to return the country to constitutional civilian rule with the military bowing out. 

On all counts, the PRC failed. Doe was also busying himself executing his peers with whom he to power, and subverting the rule of law to suite his own whims. You can make the argument that in 1985, after a rigged presidential elections the nation did enter a constitutional period, you can... It is also within that context that the day must be remembered. Those who say that we simply needed change at the helm because we were tired with the 'Congo People' after 133 years without  the justices we were all moaning for are being insincere. No, but history here can not be juxtaposed in the larger context of a bias on the basis of last names. 

If we must condemned the settler class and its misused of power, Sergeant Doe and his PRC equally must be held accountable for the brutality and its naked use of authority without due regards to civil liberties during the ten years it presided over the nation's affairs. 

Doe robbed us of our dignity and a need for genuine leadership when he chased some of Liberia's finest politicians into exile, amongst them the respectable Dr. Togbah Na Tipoteh and the intellectual professor Amos Claudius Sawyer. Those at home he imprisoned: the principled unbending school teacher Gabriel Kpolleh and and the venerable Jackson Doe. As the war approached, he threw them to Taylor. If Taylor was going to liberate the country 'he must save them.' Who knew Taylor better than Doe?

The expected happened, Taylor butchered them in cold blood. He knew they were Liberia's finest sons, he would have to compete with them to claim power, and with them in the picture, he had no chance.

For example, looking back the nation still mourns one of Liberia’s finest journalists, Charles Gbenyon. He died in a pool of blood for nothing like many others with Doe watching and  I mean literally!  The shooting and killing of university students on August 22 1984, when Doe ordered the army and his Defense Minister Gray D. Allison to "Remove the students or be removed," is not forgotten! How about Decree 88 AA and its extra-judicial intolerance as far as the free press is concerned. April 12 wasn't just an event on the day the coup took place, it must be analysed from the period of 1980 to 1989 with power in Doe's hands.

 

It is not that on April 12, Samuel Doe wasn’t hail; the question is why did he and his troops squander the opportunity: him, his PRC and his NDPL? In the larger context of things, it is interesting to note what power does to the minds of men. What, was it Abraham Lincoln who said "If you want to test a man's character, give him power?” The April 12 1980 'revolution' didn’t reconcile the nation, it did not, and neither did the coup leader tried to do so, and I mean across the board, the so-called 16 tribes included. What Mr. Doe was obsessed with was power and how to retain it, and it is sad he exited the stage just as he came.

Liberians greatest responsibility in a new epoch is reconciliation and education. The uneducated mind is a terrible cubicle. But reconciliation must not come to our nation by sugar coating and sweeping under the rug the past wrongs and evils that paralyzed our nation all these years. As we forgive, so must we vent out the deep wounds that are still there. The great civilizations do that. The Americans still talk about their civil war from a historical perspective, its pitfalls, its glory and the character of Lincoln, so do the Jews and their ordeals under Hitler and fascist Europe during World War ll. The Rwanda genocide is still being discussed in the public square, but it is only in places like Liberia, that the suffering and execution of the innocent and the injustices meted out to the many becomes a taboo subject, if not, they try to shift blames.

At independence, in July 1847, it was also a promise that the nation would treat all of its citizens fairly regardless of origin or tribe. In 1980 it was also a promise that the equal distribution of liberty and nation’s wealth would be expandable to all without regard to division. The 1989 ‘great patriotic war’ was also a promise to rid us of the despot who horns had grown longer than expected, and thereby restore our freedom. On all fronts the Liberian people were betrayed and slaughtered in their own country because of greed and power by a few men! While we seek to reconcile ourselves, we must be honest with our history and tell the truth so that our children know from whence we came and were we are headed, and that must be done without rage and boil over emotions.

 Let’s remember April 12, because it deserves a sober reflection.  Liberians are entitled to live in their homeland with peace attended, and no one must ever monopolize political power or own the nation’s wealth to the exclusion of the many or the few, and the sooner we all realize that education is a key to our democracy the better we all will be.