One of the aggrieved Mandingoes of Nimba, , walked into the offices of the Public Agenda newspaper yesterday and expressed dismay over what he termed “the inexcusable official attitude of delaying the resolution of the unjustifiable Nimba Land crisis and the lukewarm attitude of government to restore to the ethnic Mandingoes their rights and entitlements that are forcibly and illegally taken away from them.”

He maintained that “when the senseless civil war was brought and imposed on the people of Liberia in the name of revolution for justice and equality, little did Liberians know that their compatriots, the ethnic Mandingoes would be targeted for selective extermination by the planners, financers, and prosecutors of the bloody and senseless war.”

He wondered how several advocates, right groups and even the self-styled feminine lobbyists in Liberia would dare ignore the plight of ethnic Mandingoes, including women and children, whose husbands and fathers are being deprived of their inalienable right to resettle in their legitimately acquired properties which they possessed, inhabited, owned and utilized before the civil war.

“Now that the civil war is over,” he continued, “it would have been patriotic enough that Government of Liberia adheres to the civilized norms and decent standards as stipulated in the international conventions and treaties regarding resettlement rights of the returning refugees and internally displaced people,” Mr. Sanoe lamented, “Instead, what we have seen so far is the lackadaisical official attitude towards the restoration of our rights”.

Meanwhile Mr. Sanoe has disclosed that “half of Ganta is legally owned by our people, but the buildings were demolished during the war. The rightful owners of those properties have tried in vain to reclaim their lost properties.”

He said some ethnic Mandingoes have even won court cases against the intruders and illegal occupiers of their properties, but that the enforcement arms of the Government, the Executive Branch, failed miserably to implement the law in favor of the Mandingo man in Nimba because of “narrowly conceived political interest”.

Those who he said have won court cases but government refused to enforce the court order, were Mr. Mohamed Konneh of Sanniquellie and Old man Garfin Kromah of Saclepea.

Mr. Sanoe maintained that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the Internal Affairs Boss, Minister Johnson, were more interested in the votes of the Manos and Gios of Nimba County than to ensure justice, reconciliation, democracy and lasting peace in Liberia. 

There is a saying that peace is not the absence of guns, rather it is the deportment of peoples and communities towards each other. When members of the human societies behave unjustly towards each other, while the authorities give tacit or implicit support to injustice or demonstrate acquiescence or indifference to it, many honest observers and stakeholders believe that it is recipe for violence.

Sanoe said further: “It seems that Liberia’s troubles are still far from over, because of the injustice, imbalance or inequality that is being meted out against some segments of the society. A case in point is the bitter and acrimonious feeling existing between some Manos and Gios on the one hand, and the ethnic Mandingoes on the other, due to counter accusations of an apparent illegal intrusions, encroachments and occupations of the lands and properties of the Mandingoes by the former during the dark days of the senseless Liberian civil war”.