There is much talk about people not being able to solve their problems because they do not have enough money. This is the wrong way to go about trying to solve your problem. Remember that the powers that be are not interested in solving your problem and this the reason for their blocking your efforts to solve your problem. You do not have enough money to do what you need to do because the powers that be take for themselves what should be given to you. This is the source of the longstanding and widespread corruption that has become the main State enemy, according to the powers that be and they are correct. But when they talk they do not walk the talk.
By Togba-Nah Tipoteh, contributing writer
I attended a funeral today of a woman who hails from the poorest part of Liberia. This woman is a marketer who does not have enough money to feed her family and she is a Great Grand Mother with blood and non-blood members of her family and more of the later than the former just like the family of my Parents. But she managed to take care of her family just like my Parents did. How did she manage to do so? She managed to feed her family with what she had. This Great Grand Mother took some product that had a low price from where she was and took them to areas where the price was high. With the profit that she got from the sale of her product, she used some to plant food, some to feed her family and the rest to buy more products to take for sale.
The powers that be continue to deprive the other poor people, like this poor woman of what the poor people worked for. The powers that be continued to import goods and pushed them on the poor people, like the way they push rice, Liberia’s staple food, on poor people. For example, the price of rice has gone up because the world’s largest exporter of rice, India,with an annual rice exportation of 40% of the world’s exported rice, has placed an export tariff of 24% on exported rice. This tariff placement means that rice imports to Liberia have to have price go up. This is the reason for the recent increase in the price of imported rice when the poor of Liberia are already suffering and can not afford to buy imported rice although two thirds of the rice that they consume come from abroad.
Furthermore, Front Page Africa and an internationally acclaimed research organization published a research paper two weeks ago indicating that nine out of the Liberian subsistence farmers want to migrate because of climate change, Migration for climate change or not should be the reason for people who love Liberia to prevent such from happening, especially when over three thousand people have died from drowning in overcrowded boats. This is the reason for the writing of the Commentary on Swamp Farming to motivate farmers to remain in Liberia to do swamp rice farming that produces annually from one-acre swamp rice LD7million worth of milled rice and at least three harvests can be generated annually from that one acre. The best way to convince the farmers not to migrate is to raise awareness in ways that motivate them to stay in Liberia and do swamp farming. When there is a reduction in imported rice, local ownership, employment and production go up and local rice price goes down and income generation goes up as poverty alleviation moves upward. This awareness raising exposes the corruption in the National Elections Commission (NEC) of Liberia. As this exposure continues, elections move from being unfair being fair. It is only through this action within the Rule of Law that persons with good records can get elected to bring in the system of Justice, the indispensable ingredient for Peace and Progress in Liberia and in any other country.
