24
22. The Americo-Liberian Government, through its Governance Commission has been boasting of decentralizing governmental activities outside of Monrovia, as it has been the case that almost everything else is being done only in Monrovia since 1822. Here is the only strength the government has been relying on in all of its decentralization noise: (a) In early December 2015, the Government of Liberia, and the United Nations Development Program signed a US$5 million grant agreement with the Swedish Government for the implementation of Liberia’s decentralization program (ELBC, December 9, 2015). In fact, what truly happened according to ELBC was that a joint contribution agreement among the ‘sovereign and independent’ GOL, the UNDP, the EU, the USAID etc. was stroke for $18 million to be used over a period of 5 years, to take care of Liberia’s decentralization, poverty alleviation and other needs during this age of artificial intelligence. 23. Mr. Nathaniel Blamo, head of some Liberia National Union, disclosed once that USAID was the one that renovated the National Legislature; put into place an electronic voting system to be used during plenary debates etc., but that as we speak, the Legislators have been unable to continue with the use of this electronic system for some time now because of their financial inability to solve some problem on the system, and so they are still putting fingers up and manually counting heads during votes in this 21 st century. (ELBC, December 12, 2015) 24. In late December 2015, a Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Research finding was published that identified 34 sites in 8 of Americo-Liberia’s 15 counties at which mini dams could be built to boost Liberia’s electricity supply. This purely domestic research was funded by the Norwegian Government (ELBC, December 29, 2015) 25. In anticipation of a smooth upcoming 2017 polls, Liberia’s Elections Coordinating Committee decided to host a short symposium to amend or discuss amendments to the existing elections law of the country. This symposium was funded by the USAID. (ELBC, January 4, 2016) 26. The Liberian Government after the Ebola fight decided to motivate its health workers by providing them some housing incentives. To do this, the National Housing Authorities had to liaise with the World Bank in identifying a $2.5 million housing project (ELBC, January 8, 2016) 27. Since the UN Peace mission began in Liberia in 2003, the Liberian Government had known quite well that this very expensive UN Mission, costing over $600 million per year to sustain, will definitely leave at least within a decade; and as such, every mechanism should be in place to domestically train and equip more security forces. But this has not been the case even as this UN Mission has spent over 13 years around, now costing them over $50 billion US Dollars. It is in the same year of UN’s final draw down, in 13 years that the Americo-Liberian Government makes case for US$90 million to train security forces, and puts out SOS call for help to train security forces. (http://allafrica.com, September 2015), as the President seeks Legislative approval to restructure the Americo-Liberian National Police and the Bureau of Immigration. (Local