Seeming words of war ensued recently between Madam Nancy B. Doe, widow of slain President Samuel Kanyon Doe, and a family, Senator Zoe Emmanuel Pennue, over a memorial ceremony for her late husband, President Doe.
Senator Pennue, an ethnic Krahn, and family member of the slain President, reportedly initiated a military traditional memorial ceremony for the late President recently in Caldwell, Montserrado County.
But this is not go well with Mrs Doe, who contended that she and her children, as the immediate family, should have been the one to lead such exercise.
We think that brewing confusion in the once first family over what should be a last respect and memorial for a husband, father and renowned statesman, who was decapitated by rag-tag rebels is absolutely unwarranted.
President Doe died a very painful and humiliating death in the hands of rebels commanded by late Senator Prince Yormie Johnson after he was attacked and captured in September 1991, on the base of the regional peace monitoring group, ECOMOG inside the Freeport of Monrovia. He had gone to welcome the peacekeepers when he met his fate.
We call on Madam Doe to ceasefire and focus on keeping the family united especially, in the wake of plan by the government to give the late President a national memorial thru reburial.
We believe that as widow and mother, she is in a unique position to carry the family along irrespective of who does what. Rather that issuing public statement, washing their dirty clothes in the press, such disagreement should be addressed in family meetings.
The late President was a very decent and loving president, who positively impacted Liberia is many ways. His love for sports kept the nation united. His agriculture program, Green Revolution, put citizens to work, including his officials, who were required to cultivate private farms for self-sufficiency in food.
President Doe was also development-oriented. He modernized the National Police Headquarters. As a military man himself, he gave the Armed Forces of Liberia top priority, increasing salary of servicemen, building barracks and equipping troops. All that is history now.
This is why we think it is important that the family should unite and look up the current government that has announced a reburial plan, not only for President Doe, but late President William R. Tolbert, so that the two leaders, whose leaderships ended, leaving dark clouds over the nation, can rest in final peace, and bring closure to these chapters in our nation’s history.
