Blind Liberian Complains to Ellen

At an appreciation program held Saturday in honor of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf by scholarship students, a visually impaired Liberian, Noah Gibson, publically complained the University of Liberia (UL) of high discrimination against persons with impairment here.

In a comment at the program held in the C. Cecil Dennis Hall of the Foreign Ministry in Monrovia, Noah, currently a senior student at the Cuttington University in Bong County said since the inception of the University of Liberia, it has highly prioritized discrimination, refusing to enroll persons with visual impairment.

“We also want to make another recommendation regarding the issue of our having the opportunity to matriculate at the state-run university; this university has prioritized discrimination highly since the inception of this university,” he complained to the President, who is also Visitor to the UL. Noah further argued that the UL is the only university here that is not accepting persons with impairment.

“This is the only university, Madam President that is not accepting persons with impairment; reasons best know to themselves. And nothing extra they are teaching that other universities that we are attending are not teaching,” he lamented.

He suggested that with President Sirleaf’s intervention, using her presidential influence, such alleged discrimination at the state university against visually impaired persons would end.

“Only for the fact that … I think, maybe they have their own reasons for which they do so. But [with] the demonstration of the presidential instrumentality, I believe Madam President, this discrimination against visually impaired people will come to an end at the state university,” Noah added, and continued, “As I speak to you, because they refuse to accept us being matriculated there, this makes me to study Public Administration instead of Political Science as I earlier on envisaged. But I am going back there after you shall have intervened and that will be at the master level…”

He however thanked President Sirleaf for the “Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Scholarship or EJS” program, narrating that it helped him at the time he fell at the wayside when things became difficult for him at the Cuttington University, a privately-run institution.

“Things were very much unbearable at the Cuttington University to the extent that some of us fell at the wayside; to the Grace of God Almighty, we stood the test of time and today we got such great opportunity to be on your scholarship,” he told the President.