BWI alumni Assoc. makes SOS call

The BWI Alumni Association appeals to the media community at home and abroad to kindly prevail on Mr. Benoni Urey to pay the LD$300,000 (three hundred thousand Liberian dollars) that was pledged to the association’s project on his behalf by Mr. Emmanuel Lomax, his aide and chairman of the Friends of Benoni Urey, more than a year ago.

On May 31, 2014, Mr. Emmanuel Lomax was a proxy for Mr. Urey during an annual convention of the BWI Alumni Association in Kakata. Mr. Urey was invited to speak to the convention as an eminent citizen; but he chose to send Mr. Emmanuel Lomax to proxy for him.

It was during Mr. Lomax’s address to the convention, which was not a fundraiser, that he made an LD$300,000 pledge on behalf of Mr. Urey, and the hall went wild. Since the making of that gracious pledge that was captured by the media, not a dime of the money has been given and nothing concrete has been heard from Mr. Emmanuel Lomax or Mr. Urey himself. Several communications have been written to this effect, all to no avail.

As an alumni association, we believe people who make voluntary commitments should be honourable enough to fulfil those commitments so that they are taken seriously. Our disappointment also is Mr. Urey’s decision not to talk to us directly on the matter so that we understand his position on the pledge. We have tried the best possible ways to get Mr. Urey to make his position on the pledge clear, but he has never seen reason to even call to respond.

We want to make it crystal clear, members of the Fourth Estate, that making the pledged LD$300,000 available to the BWI Alumni Association is not the only thing we are asking of Mr. Urey. We want him to come out and make his position clear on the pledge. If he did instruct Emmanuel Lomax to make the pledge on his behalf, let him assume responsibility and pay or if Lomax did not get his approval before making the pledge and so he (Urey) is not responsible, let him also make that clear to us. That’s all we are asking of Mr. Urey. He has kept us in suspension for more than a year.

The most recent letter sent to Mr. Urey on the matter was dated June 13, 2015 —– right after the BWI Alumni Association’s annual convention. There has been no written or verbal reply to that communication as well.

Against this background, we are appealing to the media community to please prevail on Mr. Benoni Urey to either make the pledged money available or make his position on the matter clear.

We want to continue to maintain a good relationship with personalities in the society; but we want them to know we are a very serious association — a very big academic and intellectual constituency —- that should be taken seriously.

Saturday, June 27, was BWI’s Founder’s Day, and the hundreds of alumni who gathered for the celebration resolved that we ask the media to help us get to Mr. Urey on the matter since he’s not talking to us.
Thank you, members of the media community, for your help in getting this out into the public domain.-Press Releases