My Facebook friends, I’m posting below my response to a misleading post by my family man Samuel P. Jackson just to set the record straight. Thanks and have a great week:
SPJ, This is a public forum and with your following, for good or bad, information is widely disseminated through your network. You wrote in your FB post that I provided advice on your London School of Economic project paper and listed me as source of verification on assertions you made in the post. Such insertions in your post and tagging me insinuate my agreement. Because many of your statements were erroneous or misrepresentation of facts, I’ve a reputation to protect and must therefore say something.
First, I’ve over the years provided designated outside thesis guidance on energy to students from various graduate schools including Harvard and Princeton. Yours was not an official advice because it was a direct request from you, the student. I tried to inform you that many of your “researched” information about the Liberian electricity sector were in error and therefore your conclusion about private sector investment as immediate solution was misleading. There will be no genuine private sector investment without an acceptable investment climate. That is a fact not because I say so but because that is the reality of investment.
Secondly, your various assertions in this post and on talk shows and other media is a twisting of information whether deliberate or out of ignorance. It is tantamount to gaslighting in some instances. Many of your information especially on the power sector are simply wrong. Cousin Sam, I do not want to be associated with such intellectual dishonesty.
My third point is, “what is wrong with us is us”. It is not the Americans, it is not the Europeans, it is not the Chinese neither the Indians nor the Lebanese. It is disingenuous when you blame the Americans and the immediate past administration as source of the ongoing electricity outages and uncollected garbage in Monrovia. Stop it! Read my recent published article on the genesis of our power outages and the missed opportunities by various administrations for permanent solution. The blame cannot be on foreigners or any one administration but all of us as Liberians.
Lastly, I want to make it clear that you and I may be related but we do not share the same political view or life philosophy. You approached me at start of the Weah administration to use my high-level contacts to secure genuine funding for road infrastructure because loans they had consummated were not coming through. I was disappointed that after packaging a $700 million proposal at my cost, that instead of engaging us on how the proposal was structured and what were the steps to full implementation, a proprietary document presented to the government was used to frame a public bid (of coursethere were no takers as expected). While you now blindly support the same government you once harshly criticized and now see it as a government that does no wrong, I on the other hand, have never and will never blindly support any government, even ones I support or work for. My love for our country and suffering people and my conscience will never allow that. I advise in private but when the barn catches fire because expert counsel was disregarded, I clarify the air as a duty to country. My record speaks for itself.
In closing I plead with you to never tag me or use me as verification reference in your ongoing adventures. I do not wish to be a source of your validation in a sector outside your expertise.
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