By Michael Adeboboye
In the memory of Bong County, there are seasons that feel different. The years between 2018 and 2024 were one of them. For the first time in Liberia’s history, a daughter of Gbarnga sat in the Vice Presidency.
At the same time, another son of the county held the gavel as Deputy Speaker of the House. In one stroke, Bong found itself not on the margins of national conversation, but at its center.
That arrangement was never an accident. President George Manneh Weah deliberately elevated Bong’s representation, understanding that a county that had given so much to the nation deserved a seat at the table where decisions were made. The effect was immediate.
Doors that had long been heavy swung open. Development money, attention, and political leverage began to flow toward the heartland.
Walk through Gbarnga today and you can still see the imprint. Broad Street, once riddled and tired, was completed and given new life. The corridor from Gbarnga toward Gbalatuah on the Lofa Highway was finished, cutting travel time and connecting farmers to markets they could only dream of before.
At the Bong County Technical College, new buildings rose, programs were strengthened, and the government’s decision to make tuition free meant that a young man from Salala or a young woman from Fuamah could sit in a lecture hall without fearing the next fee deadline.
The investments reached beyond the classroom. In the hometown of Senator Prince K. Moye, the Gbenequelleh Health Center was furnished and equipped, a facility built in the final days of Senator Jewel Howard-Taylor’s tenure in the Senate and sustained under the CDC administration.
Across the county, health workers and teachers were brought onto the national payroll with adjusted salaries. Phebe Hospital received substantial government support.
The new Gbarnga Market was completed, giving traders a dignified space to do business. Agreements were signed with Jungle Energy Power to push electricity into communities that had lived in darkness.
There were scholarships, empowerment programs for women, and facilities established to confront drug addiction among young people who had for too long been forgotten.
These were not symbolic gestures. They were roads, classrooms, hospital beds, and paychecks. They were the tangible signs that Bong County had, for once, occupied a significant place in the national development agenda.
Where the story turns painful is in what came after. Political competition, as it often does, began to outweigh political purpose.
At a moment when the Vice President, the Deputy Speaker, senators, representatives, chiefs, and elders could have sat together and drafted one agenda for Bong, partisan lines hardened. Energy that could have built was spent on tearing down.
Former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor has said it plainly: the county did not need to belong to the same party to belong to the same cause. The cause was Bong. Instead, the historic leverage slipped.
Today the national spotlight has shifted toward other counties, particularly Lofa and Nimba. It is a shift that calls for sober reflection, not slogans. Howard-Taylor reminds Bong people of an old Kpelleh wisdom: “One should never remove one’s hands from covering oneself in order to cover another. ” The meaning is simple and cutting. In chasing political victories elsewhere, a county can lose the very opportunities entrusted to it. She is not asking for a return to personalities. This, she insists, is not about Jewel Howard-Taylor, or Prince Moye, or George Weah, or the CDC. It is about Bong County. And about whether the county will allow partisan politics to keep outweighing the collective interest of its people.
The past cannot be rewritten. But its lessons can guide what comes next. With 2029 on the horizon, Bong faces another chance to reset. Voters will have before them two six-year records to weigh: the Weah-led administration and the Boakai-led administration. The roads built, the tuition paid, the hospitals supported, the jobs created — those records will speak. What Howard-Taylor is urging now is unity of purpose. Disagree on candidates, disagree on parties, that is democracy. But when it comes to the interest of Bong, politics must end and responsibility must begin. Protect the opportunities you have. Expand them. Use them. Do not trade them away because of party colors. Bong County had a moment when power and promise met.
The question before the people now is whether they will let that moment define their future, or become a memory of what could have been
