Monrovia — Former River Gee County Senator Conmany Wesseh has said the death of Senator Prince Johnson has left an irreplaceable void in his family and Liberia, describing the late Nimba County senator as one of the most pronounced figures in the country.
By Selma Lomax, [email protected]
Elected in 2014, the former River County Senator spent nine years in the Liberian Senate with Johnson.
Wesseh extended condolences to the family of the late senator, Nimbaians (natives of Nimba) and the Liberian Legislature, stating that his legacy will live on forever.
“Indeed PYJ (as he was affectionately known) was and will remain in many things to many Liberians and some other people the world over.”
He recounted that Senator Johnson was his close ally when he was at the Liberian parliament. “We were in the same age group that qualified us as “Crowd of Boys”. While he would remind me that I was their ” distinguished leader” as students, I got to know of him as a “lord” during the first few months of the Liberian war in 1990.”
He alluded that the fallen senator played an active role in the deadly fourteen years civil war and even began the most pronounced figure with four others.
“Although he actually participated in less than three years (December 1989 to October 1992) of the fourteen years of violent and devastating armed conflict, PYJ stood out as the most pronounced figure in competition with four others. One of these is Samuel Kanyon Doe who led the coup d’etat that tragically ended the more than a century old rule of the True Whig Party; and who led a reign of terror for ten years from 1980 as military ruler and “elected” President until his violent death on September 9, 1990.”
I have heard references to him ranging from one extreme to another such as the prince of peace, the good, the bad and the ugly. I have heard people calling him father, son, liberator, leader, Senator, a good man and a bad man, a man of God and a man of the devil. Simply put in our Liberian expression, PYJ was a HELLUVA man. He called me “Distinguished” and I never failed to call him “Chief” as many others did.
Hon. Conmany Wesseh, former Senator, River Gee County
Wesseh emphasized that as peace negotiator, when the civil War ended, he met with the late Johnson at his Caldwell Base as part of efforts to restore calm in Liberia.
He stated that Johnson displayed a man’s skull and claimed that the man had attempted to kill Wesseh in mid-1981.
He said “It was then and there that I concluded that PYJ was indeed a HELLUVA MAN PEKIN. He then made a firm commitment to enduring peace in Liberia if Taylor would keep the peace and not attack him and ECOMOG. Judge Luvenia Ash-Thompson and I continued our peace mission to Taylor’s base in Gbarnga in that same February, 1992.”
Wesseh argued that when Charles Taylor attacked Johnson’s Caldwell Base in October 1992, the late senator only fought back to save himself, his men, the war orphans and innocent civilians who took refuge at that Base with himself escaping by the whiskers to ECOMOG and eventually being taken to Nigeria.
He stated that the late senator, true to his word to me, never took up arms again in Liberia.
