Liberia's New Capital City: A Fiasco?

Having just shared a printed op-ed about the saga of the supposed-new administrative complex in ELWA last week, this op-ed from last week in The New Republic Liberia is effusively written and nicely summarizes the noises that have been made in the last two years about the vague and quixotic plan to move the capital of Liberia from Monrovia to the forested village of Zekepa, an under-developed, remote settlement at confluence of the borders of Grand Bassa, Bong, and Nimba counties, an arbitrary yet mythic location in the center of Liberia.  This apparently remains merely a random fantasy alluded to for unclear reasons, as covered in this blog in mid-2012, and absent during more recent public statements, such as the President's State of the Nation Address last month. Quoting the op-ed in full: 

As did in 2006 before the rest of world that her government would unremittingly wage war against corruption, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, to an overwhelming approbation, stood before the National legislature in 2012 and made a solemn proclamation about the relocation of Liberia's Political Capital, to Zekepa, the convergence of Grand Bassa, Nimba and Bong Counties.Growing population, climate change and erosion were cited as reeling factors. One year later while performing similar constitutional duty, she re-echoed similar commitment with resounding punctuations. Considered as national nostalgia, many expected full-blown report on the status of the project. But too bad, either knowingly or unknowingly, the President made no mention of it in her 2014 Annual Address. "So, what's at stake? Has it become a fiasco?" The New Republic, finds out.2012 has since elapsed but some of its grandeurs remained stocked in the bottomless parts of humans across the entire globe, but for Liberians is President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's pronouncement concerning moving the Capital to the center of the country. . President Sirleaf informed the nation that her administration was in the middle of arrangements that would lead to the moving of Liberia's oldest political capital city to Zekepa, a convergence of three counties with identical links, Nimba, Grand Bassa and Bong."I am talking to every single citizen of this great nation when I say: our progress belongs to you, and the future is yours for the taking, a future in which the process would have started to move the capital to the center of the country. Given the effects of climate change and expectation that rising sea levels will threaten coastal cities, including Monrovia, we will have concluded the plan to move the Capital City to Zekepa, where the territories of Grand Bassa, Bong and Nimba converge," Madam President said in 2012 with boomeranging applauds and standing ovation.Not stopping there, the President whose victory in 2006 over other potential politicians hinged on her credentials, reassured Liberians in 2013, a year after the initial pledge, that in developing ment For many, it was one of the president's commitments since assuming office and |Liberians, especially her religious followers exhaled that she was ready to demonstrate her true colors, as a developer. "Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Mr. President Pro-Tempore, in my Annual Message to the Sixth Session of the 52ndNational Legislature, I informed your Honorable Body and the Liberian people that in response to the expected effects on population growth, climate change and the expectation that rising sea levels will threaten coastal cities, including Monrovia, in the decades to come, we had decided to commence the process that could lead, eventually, to relocating the Capital City to Zekepa, where the boundaries of Grand Bassa, Bong and Nimba converge.Two years on, we have commenced the research and planning that will enable us to make the decision as to how to proceed with the Zekepa project," she said in her 2013 Annual Message.At the time, she noted that a small task force had been set up and charged with conducting the research, technical analysis, master planning and design that will be essential to the comprehensive development plan for the proposed city of Zekepa. Apparently being aware of the ambitiousness of the plan, and considering Liberia's financially squeezed state, madam Sirleaf said "This is not a quick project. This is a long term project.""The Task Force will spend the next six months in the primary stage of research, after which I will consult with your honorable body regarding a greater national involvement and the way forward in achieving this objective."Since these enthralling remarks of 2013, analysts are concerned that not the President, or any official of her government that has ever made it his/her business to bring to the knowledge of Liberians the status of the project, and the extent of the design and planning work mentioned earlier.What also brings the credibility of the project into the question, according to those spoken with, is her inability to disclose names oaf individuals that comprised the task force."The President made the disclosure in January of 2013. The six months she talked about have since elapsed and there is no information, absolutely, as regards the outcome of the design and planning work. I hope this is not a fiasco,' remarked one Peter Kiadii, who said he is political commentator"It is also troubling that she did not make any mention of the new capital project in her speech on Monday to the |National Legislature."That the Madam eschewed talking about the project which is of interest to all Liberians, speaks volume, he said, and argued that she willfully avoided doing so because "nothing is being done there."President Sirleaf's state of the nation address lasted for over two hours but many said it was only a repeat of things she has said over and again in past annual messages.However, the Liberian government disagreed that the Project is a fiasco as many tend to perceive it. Commenting on the state of the new capital project, Deputy Information Minister for Public Affairs, Isaac Jackson told this paper via mobile phone exchange that progressive actions were being taken.Without specifying actions so far taken by the government, he said, there are intended to actualize the President's vision of moving the capital. Minister Jackson who said he was in the middle of work, noted "detailed will be communicated to you in subsequent time."

The Wealth of Liberia

To-day, businessmen and investors from all parts of the world have discovered the commercial and industrial potential that is the Wealth of Liberia"

Big thanks to Twitter bud Chris Carnel for immediately alerting me to this YouTube posting from Pepperbird Studios: a restoration of a c.1974 newsreel on Liberia, released to Yor-El Francis of Pepperbird from the Tolbert family's private collection. 

Every once in a while a vintage film or photo surfaces which embodies this blog better than a thousand word post. This grainy, colorful, 22-minute archival gem seems tailor-made for this blog, starting off with a Swissair DC-8 landing at Robertsfield, and from there launching right into a sightseeing tour of the landmark buildings of central Monrovia, most of them barely 10 years old at the time. It almost recalls this blog's Architectural Tour of third of a century later. 

Monrovia reflected in a graceful cultural heritage, but a city, as modern as To-day... Buildings steeped in the traditions of Liberia's rich history...Building reflecting the country's promise of a rich future. As with the imposing Executive Mansion, home of the country's president, William R. Tolbert...Buildings that reflect the civic dignity of the city, its commerce and industry... For the well-being of its people, the JF Kennedy Memorial Hospital..The renown Ducor Intercontinental Hotel also looks out to one of the islands first sighted by those early settlers, 150 years ago.

Its a glowing overview of the Camelot that was Late Classic Liberia wonder-story, the High-Tolbertian boom of Rally Time, raw commodity exporting, rapid industrialization, all narrated in an infallibly clipped mid-Atlantic accent, blaring trumpets heralding the excitement of an economy on the move in between the frenetic reporting. Act One is made up of several minutes of luscious street scenes of bustling mid-1970s Monrovia, looking spotless and state-of-the-art: leafy Broad Street lined with fine-looking buildings, all recognizable today.

There's current no information about who the customers for the film-making were, but presumably this was a governmental commission, although the Tolbert family's now-somewhat infamous Mesurado Group of Companies features more than prominently throughout the feature, almost to the point where the film becomes indistinguishable as a promotion of the conglomerate or of the country itself. In those days, as in other times, investing in the Liberian economy meant investing in, or at least closely alongside, prominent and elite families. 

That contentious issue aside, the film spends a good deal of time noting many of the government programs aimed at assisting the general population, in skills training, employment and the advancement of agriculture through higher education twinned with research and development. Tobacco, processed crepe and latex rubber, cocoa, coffee and timber seem to pour out of the Liberian hinterlands and through the humming, orderly ports of Buchanan, Greenville, Harper, and of course the Freeport. It's undeniably impressive. 

There are also some delightful scenes of Swissair's glass-fronted ticket office in the Palm Hotel, at the corner of Broad and Randall Streets, as well as the busy Air Liberia office, whose location was presumably on Broad Street as well, but this is a new one for me. Later in the film, the Wings of the Pepperbird are shown linking the bustling port of Buchanan and to the industrial hive of Mount Nimba to Spriggs Payne.

The entire film is quite astonishing. In its economic overview, a sequence of scenes breeze through factories and finishing lines for cigarettes and soap, paint and packaged seafood, window frames and wood products, none of which exist 39 year later. Only Cemenco is recognizeable, although the legacy of Parker Paint and others live on in place names. Likewise lost to war and history are the refining capacity of the Liberia Petroleum Refining Company. 

 Outside of the industrial zones, the Agricultural educational farms decentralized in Virginia, Lofa, and Grand Bassa, as well as the Liberia Feed Mill Company, provide a quasi-statal architecture of agricultural advancement, with a goal of not only building export volumes, but becoming self-sufficient in rice production. The Liberia Produce Marketing Corporation, like so many of these ventures, has since ceased to exist. Even these structures and facilities have disappeared. 

In contrast, the gleaming towers of commerce, culture and industry are all recognizable, standing today either as shabby shadows of their former selves, albeit serving the exact same purpose as they did originally (the Masonic Temple, Chase Manhattan Plaza, Centennial Pavilion, the Executive Pavilion, the Executive Mansion, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance, Monrovia City Hall, JFK Hospital) or standing as shameful shells of once-boastful monuments, like the E.J. Roye Building and the Ducor Hotel. 

Indeed, the early shot of businessmen arriving at Robertsfield almost exactly matches the picture on RIA's Wikipedia page: the airport's facility is the same building today as it was in those days. 

The entire feature is an amazing gem for Liberiophiles and history buffs. It's entirely preciously-rare footage of Liberia's golden era, from the sunny scenes of the new Gardnersville and Amical Cabral housing estate to the incredible breadth of Liberia's industrial facilities. Of course, the film is painfully bittersweet, as it speaks of the Wealth of the Future and Progress, barely five years before President Tolbert was assassinated in the Executive Mansion, the opening violence in a horror which erased every inch of Liberia's progress, much of which, astoundingly, has yet to return. 

Zekepa: Liberia's Abuja?

Although the passage of an Act to establish a new capital city for Liberia came and went in late 2009 with plenty of blustering announcements and chatter there followed absolutely no details and even less action for more than a year. Then, during President Sirleaf's annual state of the union address in January 2011, once again the outline of the fabled city appeared on the horizon. From a press report of later that January [emphasis mine]:

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has unveiled plans for the relocation of Liberia’s capital Monrovia to Zekepa where Grand Bassa, Bong and Nimba Counties converge.Delivering her sixth state of the nation address Monday, President Sirleaf said there was need to relocate the capital city due to the effects of climate change and expectation that rising sea levels could threaten coastal cities.She said plans were being concluded for a new capital city at Zekepa, but warned that it would take time to realize this dream.“The vision I have outlined is a collective vision but we should be under no illusions about how difficult this will be to achieve. There is a long road ahead of us, and that road will not be smooth. We will need great courage and determination to get to our destination,” the liberia leader said.Liberia’s 20th President, William R. Tolbert, Jr. who was assassinated during the  1980 military coup d’etat, planned to relocate the Liberian capital to Gbarnga, Bong County in central Liberia.Meanwhile, President Johnson Sirleaf has disclosed that Liberia is on the verge of becoming a petroleum exporting country in the coming decade.She however said that before the country exports a drop of oil, her government will put in place policies that will dictate how oil wealth will be used for development, stability and poverty reduction.She said if properly managed,  resources from oil could be invested to transform Liberia. Currently, oil exploration is taking place off the coast of Liberia.Monday’s state of the nation address to the national legislature was the president’s  last in her first term as president of Liberia.

Firstly, Zekepa, a place that hardly exists any more than Brasilia did in 1950s Brazil, Abuja did in 1970s Nigeria, or Yamoussoukro did before President Houphouët-Boingy's reign. The Google Earth images above pinpoint Zekepa (not to be confused with the mining site Yekepa) which does indeed rest in a small nook of south-central Nimba County near the border with Bong and Grand Bassa Counties, and as can be seen not particularly far, as the pepperbird flies, from northeasternmost Margibi County nor for that matter Monrovia itself. Yet despite its verdant locale, it is by the few accounts that exist a tiny hamlet, and no matter how geographically proximate it may be, there are no roads to the place, nor really any suitable modern transportation options of any sort nearby.

In placing this proposal in a global context of the the movement of capital cities, this bears resemblance to several, including Brasilia but also Dodoma in Tanzania but most especially Abuja, Nigeria's capital which was explicitly moved away colonial coastal city dominated by one group to more neutral territory near the geographic center of the country and at a intercultural crossroads.

Secondly, its rather remarkable that President Sirleaf's pronouncement listed climate change and sea erosion as the primary drivers behind moving away from the coast. Its on the one hand interesting to see any head of state refer to climate change openly, much less one from a less developed country with a less educated electorate. More curious than that is the idea that the country's current capital, and by far its largest city, with a metropolitan area home to about one in three Liberians, is in danger of being swallowed into the ocean, and therefore the government will vacate the sinking city, leaving the populace behind.

The final aspect of the report to note is the mention of the oil. This is hardly a nonsequitur. From the beginning of the Sirleaf-era talk on capital relocation, the undertaking has been consistently linked to the new revenue stream of oil, often explicitly proposing that a very worthwhile use of the additional funds would be to build a new capital city. This begins to bring to mind Abuja again, which despite the legitimate arguments for its construction in the name of national unity and a break with the past, was without question an orgy of corruption during its establishment, and since that time has served as a comparatively luxurious retreat, hidden away from the teeming cities and the majority of the country's population, where the country's rulers control its revenues and wield power to their own benefit, out of easy reach or sight of much of the population. Its easy to imagine that this has appeal among Liberia's public servants also.

Liberia National Airlines, April 1967 Schedule

Images courtesy of Björn Larssen of Timetable Images.

A previous post lamented the current lack of any domestic air service in Liberia in the wake of Elysian Airlines' demise. Its also interesting to explore how extensive such domestic operations once were. From the depths of the internet comes this delightful artifact: the schedule of Liberian National Airlines from April 1967, showing services from Robertsfield to Buchanan, Rivercess, Sinoe (presumably landing at Greenville) and Cape Palmas (Harper, Maryland).

Whats especially interesting is that the service includes a flight between Spriggs-Payne airfield and Robertsfield, a distance of scarcely 50 kilometers, a hop which the schedule allows twenty minutes to complete. A box below details the leg northward to Freetown from both RIA and Spriggs on Wednesdays. A separate matrix details passenger fares and excess luggage charges.

Despite the sleek jetcraft zooming across the glossy cover of the brochure, LNA operated only two sputtering Douglas DC-3s to run its entire network, so recalling this as the golden age of Liberian domestic air travel may be somewhat rose-tinted. According to the Encyclopedia of African Airlines (Ben R. Guttery, 1998), LNA eventually merged with Ducor Air Transport to form Air Liberia in 1974, a carrier which survived until the outbreak of fighting in 1990.

Special thanks to Björn Larssen of Timetable Images for allowing the reposting of the above images.