00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hello and welcome back to another episode
00:09 of the 77% Street Debate.
00:11 We are at the University of Liberia
00:13 and in the country's capital.
00:15 Now, six years ago, President George Weah came into office
00:19 with the promise of a youthful and dynamic leadership.
00:23 One term later, the former footballer was given the red card
00:26 by the voters here and in his place,
00:29 a new president is now going to take over.
00:31 And so the question today is,
00:32 was that promise of youth leadership false?
00:35 Who else to answer this question for me than some Liberians?
00:38 And I want to start with Ebenezer
00:39 to just give us an overview of how you would say,
00:43 how would you rate George Weah's term in office,
00:46 first of all?
00:47 - The government came to power
00:48 on the shoulders of the young people.
00:50 There were four pillows.
00:51 The first pillow, power to the people.
00:52 The second pillow is job creation, economy.
00:55 The first, sustain the peace.
00:56 And the fourth pillow has to do
00:57 with transparency and accountability.
01:00 If we go back to the second pillow,
01:01 about job creation today, little or nothing.
01:04 There were people placing, incompetent people
01:06 placing hard places in government.
01:07 The streets are dirty, the cities have been abandoned.
01:10 There hasn't been resources for education.
01:12 And little more has been done to eradicate,
01:17 to reduce poverty,
01:18 especially among young university graduates.
01:21 - All right, let me actually ask the university students,
01:24 most of whom are here today.
01:25 If you believe that the country is now better off
01:28 after George Weah's presidency, please lift your hand.
01:31 If you think the country is better off today
01:34 after George Weah's presidency, please lift your hand.
01:37 Absolutely no one believes that.
01:40 I mean, that must not be easy for you to hear.
01:43 Where did it all go wrong?
01:45 - Well, the expectation of a young leader,
01:48 young leader coming to power,
01:49 they came to power with very great ideas.
01:53 Telling Liberian people that in the next couple of years,
01:55 75% or 80% of the youth will be employed.
01:59 So Liberian voted George Weah or Wembley.
02:02 At the end of the day, what unfortunate that
02:05 the number of people you talk about employing,
02:07 we didn't reach that number.
02:09 So definitely, voting another young leader
02:12 will find it difficult in a particular scenario.
02:14 - Okay, so I want to hear some practical examples
02:17 of where you think the government could have done better.
02:19 You know, Ebenezer, earlier you outlined
02:21 what the promises were.
02:23 How did they not fail?
02:24 I mean, how did they not work?
02:25 Faith, let's hear from you.
02:27 - So I think the promises that were made
02:29 by this ongoing government,
02:32 where they did went wrong as was the fact of
02:34 implementing some of the promises they did.
02:37 So we had a lot of promises that were made
02:39 by the government in terms of free tuition
02:41 at the University of Liberia
02:43 and other public university in Liberia.
02:45 So you see, sometimes you make good decisions,
02:48 but then if you don't have a strong implementation team,
02:51 it becomes a problem.
02:52 So I think that was the problem.
02:54 The implementation, the people who are surrounding,
02:56 people who are in direct control
02:58 of the implementation process fail us.
03:01 - Okay, there's a few things that have been said,
03:03 which I just want to bring us back to, right?
03:07 The fact that perhaps the expectations of young people
03:10 were way too much, that there was absolutely no way
03:13 George Weah was going to ever meet those expectations.
03:16 Prince, let me hear from you.
03:17 - Job creation was a serious problem.
03:19 And I think it is because of that,
03:21 George Weah was elected out,
03:23 and then Mr. Buaka, who is a very-
03:25 - President Buaka, yeah.
03:26 - Buaka, who is a very experienced statesman,
03:31 the expectations are high, and I can assure you,
03:34 if he doesn't live up to the expectation,
03:36 what happened to George Weah would definitely happen to him.
03:40 - So Faith, do you think that young people
03:43 then gave too much power, too much hope,
03:46 too much of everything onto this one person?
03:49 Was that fair?
03:51 - When he took office, we saw a lot of young people
03:53 being brought, truth be told, a lot of young people.
03:56 There were even ministers, deputy ministers,
03:58 I'm talking about at the ministerial level.
04:00 But unfortunately, these young people also fail us.
04:03 They actually fail us, because let's say
04:05 you are given an opportunity as a young person
04:08 to serve as a deputy minister for agriculture.
04:10 Even if you don't have the experience,
04:12 and you have six years, make use of all of the-
04:15 We have internet that we can make sufficient research
04:18 to be able to make impact in our country,
04:20 but they didn't do it.
04:21 - All right, so Ebenezer, let me come back to you.
04:23 Does this mean then, again, the question I keep asking,
04:26 Faith has articulated it very well,
04:27 that even the young people in his government
04:29 really failed you.
04:30 Are we doomed then as a continent
04:32 to be led by octogenarians?
04:34 - Certainly not.
04:35 There is still disbelief in the young people,
04:37 except that President Weah chose
04:39 a lot of incompetent young people.
04:41 There are a lot of young people that are qualified.
04:44 There was no proper vetting process.
04:45 He took people to technical areas
04:47 that they had no knowledge.
04:48 Like they said, there was no turn over note.
04:51 People just ran to ministries, ran people out,
04:53 turned the entire country over to human resource officers
04:55 in these various ministries and agencies.
04:57 There were cases of corruption.
04:59 There were no actions taken.
05:00 So we cannot blame the people.
05:01 We elected the president.
05:03 He owed that responsibility to us as a country,
05:05 not the appointees.
05:06 - So we've spoken about a lot of problems today, right?
05:10 And I want you to tell me if I'm correct
05:11 as to how I understood you,
05:13 that some of the biggest problems in this country today
05:15 are corruption, yes?
05:17 Nepotism?
05:19 There's a problem with poverty as well.
05:21 But we also agree that there were some things
05:24 that were done right, including education, right?
05:27 All right, so I want us now to think about some solutions.
05:30 What are some of the things that you would like
05:31 to see done differently in order to move
05:34 this country forward?
05:35 Let me start with my panelists here
05:36 and then I'll come to you guys.
05:38 - Thank you so much.
05:39 One of the things I would like for this president to do
05:41 is first that we have to leave all this political thing
05:44 and go back to teaching our people how to vote.
05:47 One of the major problems in our country,
05:49 we don't know how to vote.
05:50 - What do you mean you don't know how to vote?
05:51 - Okay, majority of us in this country only vote
05:54 because they know that particular person.
05:56 Now what the president can bring to the population.
05:59 This is what led to us electing President George Weah
06:02 because we love him.
06:03 If we know how to vote, when to vote,
06:06 who to vote at this particular time
06:08 to save us in our country.
06:09 We can have a country free from unemployment.
06:12 - All right, Ebenezer, I started with you
06:14 and I would like to conclude this debate with you.
06:17 In the next six years, so that we are not here
06:20 talking about the same things,
06:21 what would you recommend that young Liberians do
06:25 to more empower themselves in the political sphere?
06:28 - I want young people to do is to take advantage
06:30 of the opportunities that will be provided.
06:32 The new president has a platform already.
06:34 It is called AREST.
06:35 I mean, the A is for agricultural rule,
06:38 education, and sanitation.
06:39 And so I think that the young people
06:41 should take advantage of the various programs
06:43 that will come, take advantage of the lessons,
06:45 take advantage of higher education,
06:47 and they can contribute meaningfully
06:48 and of course bring integrity to the table
06:50 because some of my colleagues say
06:52 there were a lot of young people appointed in government,
06:53 they didn't have the capacity to drive the economy
06:56 or to drive growth in their respective areas.
06:59 - Now, at the beginning of this debate,
07:01 I asked a simple question.
07:02 Was the promise of youthful leadership sort of flawed?
07:05 Well, what we've heard here today
07:07 is that a lot of young people were disappointed,
07:10 but there's also a lot of expectation and hope
07:12 from the same young people.
07:14 I don't know about you, but I really enjoyed that.
07:16 Thank you for watching.
07:18 (upbeat music)
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