Month: September 2020

Scholar Nyei, as I love to call you, I am especially proud of you for achieving this milestone – earning a PhD.

I am sure you know that I am not surprised that you would have achieved this great fete. You have made everyone of proud. I am honored to call you my friend and comrade.

I can remember a few short years ago when Dr. Sawyer (the Papay) approached me and asked that we invest in you because you held great promise as a future leader. It was a decision that needed no time to think about and we immediately did our part. If I am asked again and I have the same opportunity, I will repeat it in a heart beat.

Investing in you was ‘riskless’ risk: it only had an upside and absolutely no downside.

Thank you for making us proud and demonstrating that believing in you was not a mistake.

Congratulations comrade, scholar Nyei…

On September 14, 2016, I had the distinguished honor of being asked by Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia, to serve as Chief of Executive Officer and Commissioner of the Liberia Maritime Authority. It was an honor for me to have served for 4 years.

I remain grateful to Madam Presidemt for opportunity afforded me. I will argue that nothing in my parentage or social status warranted this honor but through the blessings of the Almighty, I was asked to serve.

It could only be the Almighty!

After four (4) years of service, I am soldiering on to other things. I hope that I made some impact in the lives and careers of those professionals that I encountered at the Maritime Authority. But if nothing else, they definitely impacted me. I will continue to cherish the memories of the time we spent working together.

I hope I respected and honored them as much as they did to me.

However, in the process of discharging my duties, if I did hurt anyone, I am profoundly sorry and I seek your forgiveness.

In terms of accomplishments at the Authority, I hope that I did leave behind a system of management and operations that is embedded in the DNA of the Authority. I am not concern about infrastructure (the national HQ); I am more concerned about the system and processes that will enable the new leadership of the Authority to achieve more.

I want to thank all the young professionals that I met at the Authority and enormous support they gave me. They taught me a lot.

I am not a maritime professional by training and so I relied on the cadre of technicians at the Authority to achieve the little we did. What I carried to the Authority was a professional management experience that I thought could be used to harness and direct the technical capabilities of the professionals to deliver results.

In my fantasy, we did! But I stand corrected!

I am hopeful that our paths will definitely cross again as I “punctuate” this journey and soldier on….

It’s not good bye; it is see you later