By Lincoln G. Peters
Two ranking executives of the Liberia Musicians Union, in persons of McDonald Parcular (MC Parcular), Vice President for Administration, and Ms. Miatta L. Kamara (Lady Love), Vice President for Operations, announced their resignations over the weekend from the union with immediate effect.
The two musician union officials stated alleged lack of teamwork, financial malpractice, uncontrollable piracy, and profanity in the Liberian musical industry as reasons behind their resignations.
Speaking at a press conference in Monrovia, Mr. Parcular, affectionately called MC Parcular said his resignation from the Liberian musicians union is due to the current split that is in the institution.
The veteran Liberian gospel musician alleged that the president of the institution Mr. Sammy Gboguy has been taking unilateral decisions in the institution without the consent of other executive members of the union, something he believes is wrong in leadership.
“We were elected as a team with a platform to transform the Musicians Union and make sure that dignity is restored to that noble organization,” Mr. Parcular lamented.
He said, on the contrary, the president of the organization doesn’t respect his fellow colleagues and always takes decisions alone, thereby making the organization like his personal property.
“We are not having a voice in the organization since we took office,” Mr. Particular lamented further, as he made allegations that Mr. Gboguy has begun overlapping everyone’s functions in the organization, acting as the treasurer, financial sectary, general secretary, and every other thing in the organization.
The reality gospel singer claimed that Mr. Gboguy has every document of the institution in his possession and always feels offended when questions about these things are raised.
“We are not having an executive board to resolve our problem and so we usually take our problem to stakeholders to solve them. We have called meeting several times with other stakeholders and government ministers on these issues and they advised president Sammy Gboguy to desist from such leadership attitude,” said Mr. Parcular.
He noted that when the meeting is over, Gboguy would make no difference in attitude, urging reporters to ask former Liberia Movie Union president Frank Artus and many others at the Information Ministry about this issue.
Also speaking during the press conference, Ms. Miatta L. Kamara popularly known as “Lady Love” said they came to leadership with the platform to mitigate profanity within the Liberian music industry and to fight piracy so that Liberian musicians can benefit from their work.
She said they also had on their platform the aim to work and see Liberian musicians’ output meeting international standards, but on the contrary, the president no longer seems to be looking in that direction.
“We have called him to meet many times as executive members as to how we can strategize to bring an end to these things that have caused musicians not to benefit from their work for the past years. But he is not even thinking on that,” said Ms. Kamara.
She complained that Liberia is gradually losing its cultural norms due to the insults that are in the music these days, but the Musicians Union has not addressed it because of its president.
She claimed that after their induction ceremony, Gboguy recruited his relatives who are not part of the Musicians Union to work with the leadership of the organization despite her resistance over the past two years.
However, Lady Love vowed to continue to be supportive of the Liberian Musicians Union but added that she can’t remain one of the leaders once their president is not willing to change his leadership style of taking decisions alone.
However, every effort applied by this paper for the past three days to get to Gboguy through calls and text messages proved futile, as he failed to respond up to press time.—Edited by Winston W. Parley
