Liberia ex-fighters told government cannot pay college fees as promised, forcing drop-outs

Liberia ex-fighters drop studies as money runs out

MONROVIA, Liberia — Nearly 1,000 former fighters have dropped out of Liberian universities because the cash-strapped government stopped paying their fees as promised, ex-fighters’ representatives said, threatening a society trying to recover from a bloody civil war.

Education minister Joseph Korto said the government cannot pay tuition for some 1,600 ex-combatants because of unspecified “budgetary constraints.” Earlier this month, he sent a letter to universities asking them to allow the ex-fighters to continue studying. The letter said the government would pay the universities back later.

Advocates for former fighters say the government stopped footing the tuition bill in 2008 and has failed to account for some $77 million worth of donations given since 2004 to the U.N. Development Program to assist with tuition and various multi-million-dollar donations from other nations. Korto did not explain the source of the budgetary constraints or account for the donations.

The fighters advocacy group, the Reintegration Movement for the Social Empowerment of Former Combatants, has written to Liberia’s auditor general calling for an investigation into how money sent for ex-combatants’ reintegration in Liberia was spent.

“The government told us to forget about the money and that it was going to take care of our education,” said Meddrics Gontee, head of the ex-fighters’ group. “But the government is not meeting its obligations to the universities and today we are out of school.”

He added, “If these people are not rightfully transformed into civilian life, where they can work for themselves, obviously anybody can buy them, and it will be Liberian people’s problem again.”

Some 1,600 fighters out of the 103,000 fighters demobilized after the end of the war in 2003 were found eligible for government-subsidized university tuition.

Many ex-fighters, like 30-year-old Abdulai Kromah, say they view education as their chance to atone for their part in the brutal civil wars that rocked the small West African country. Kromah said he chose to study sociology.

“A sociologist is a human manager; I wish to work with social groups to help my society,” said Kromah, who fought for forces loyal to Liberian ex-President Charles Taylor in the second civil war, which ended in 2003.

“I am just confused over the situation; I feel bad,” Kromah added.

Randolph Yini, the group’s secretary-general, said that donor funds were enough to cover the students’ tuition.

“Instead, this money became elephant meat and people came from all over to cut their parts and they left the ex-fighter reintegration program undone,” he said.

Liberia ’s drawn-out conflict began in 1989 left about 200,000 people dead and displaced half the country’s population of 3 million. The country — created to settle freed American slaves in 1847 — is still struggling to maintain a fragile peace with the help of U.N. peacekeepers.