Good Governance is key to development

A Development Expert at the United Nations Development Program or UNDP, Mr. Mohamed Boakai, has disclosed that Liberia’s development must be on the basis of good governance.

“What we need now in order to be developed is governance in this country; we have all of the natural resources that can better change our lives as individuals, but what matters for us now is good governance, instead of focusing on other things,” Mr. Boakai emphasized.

He made the remarks Wednesday, August 31, 2016 at the end of a two-day capacity-building Workshop for journalists in the country.  The two-day capacity-building Workshop was held under the auspices of the of the United Nations Communication Group or UNCG at the UNMIL Headquarters in Sinkor, Monrovia.

The workshop brought together local journalist from various media institutions – print and electronic, with the aim of upgrading their skills on how to report on the UN Mission in Liberia, as well as issues like Sexual Gender-Based Violence, or SGBV, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse or SEA here in Liberia.

Making his presentation, Mr. Boakai indicated that there was a lot of natural resources to better transform Liberia into a broader future, but said more attention must be paid on issues of good governance and not only natural resources anymore.

He noted that it would take collective efforts in getting the kind of governance that Liberians need because everything cannot be done by the government. “We as citizens must come together and work for the common good of this country; because if we continue to abandon our own responsibility as citizens and push the government to the wall, then definitely, we are doing harm to our own developmental agenda,” he indicated.

“The reason why I say we as a nation don’t need natural resources for development, but governance, is because when the people are well governed, there will be more companies to come; people will have jobs; and they will start to pay their own taxes,” Boakai intimated.

According to him, people who normally blame the government for failing to develop the country are those who don’t understand the essence of governance and are not tax payers. As a result, he said, they just get up and say all kinds of things about the government.

By Lewis S. Teh