The Light County. Bomi = Light in Gola
(WARREN L. D'AZEVEDO).
In 1983, twenty years after the creation of the new county system throughout the former hinterland of Liberia, a tenth county named Bomi was proclaimed by the Commander and Chief and Head of State Samuel K. Doe, leader of the military coup of 1980 and a determined aspirant to the civilian presidency under the provisions of the new Liberian constitution.
This move was cautiously welcomed by the leaders of the predominantly Gola chiefdoms in the northwestern interior of the country for whom the establishment of a county encompassing all of
the territories controlled by the Gola in the nineteenth century had been a longstanding preoccupation. Their hopes had been dashed by the death of President Tubman in 1971 a few weeks before his anticipated announcement of the new administrative unit. His successor William R. Tolbert aroused their ire by first supporting the plan and then opposing it in 1978 as potentially a danger to national unity.
Following Tolbert's assassination and the emergence of the People's Redemption Council, dominated by members of Krahn ethnic groups considered to be hostile to the cultures north of the St. Paul River, the prospects for the new county seemed more remote than ever. But events soon revived the Gola sense of a manifest destiny by which the ostensible eminence of their culture and political power would be reasserted within the context of the Liberian nation.
From the 1820s-when the first black American colonists established a precarious holding on the coast of West Africa-the aggressive Gola chiefdoms constituted the most recalcitrant barrier to the full extension of colonial and, later, Liberian national jurisdiction in the western interior. Through territorial expansion by means of population infiltration, temporary intertribal confederacies, and a strong sense of cultural distinctiveness, they succeeded in imposing hegemonic influence over much of the western interior.
In consequence, they were in direct and almost continual competition with the colonists on the coast as well as with other neighboring peoples such as the Vai, the Dei, and the Mandingo who sought also an advantageous position with regard to trade between the coast and the hinterland.
This situation altered drastically in the early twentieth century when the settler-supported Liberian government developed sufficient military and economic power to subdue the last pockets of strenuous resistance among the indigenous peoples of the interior. The settler government instituted a system of indirect rule linking tribal authorities to an apparatus of hinterland administration.
It was not until the Tubman administration of the 1950s and 1960s that this system was transformed by the program of "national unification" which further weakened traditional political
structure through direct government intervention or controlled "elections," through the use of patronage to gain the compliance of leaders, and through reorganization of the hinterland tribal territories into "districts" and "counties" whose boundaries often ignored existing ethnic alignments.
During this period, the ruling class, consisting of a small population of the descendants of early colonists and their government, contrived to consolidate not only their holdings along the narrow strip of the coast but to extend firm jurisdiction over lands claimed by hundreds of formerly autonomous chiefdoms whose peoples spoke eighteen or more indigenous languages.
Many of these groups, like the Gola, had formed strong intra- and intertribal confederacies to resist Liberian expansion and to maintain political and economic control over strategically important sections of the interior. But these entities were not sufficiently cohesive or enduring to withstand the steady pressure of government military and diplomatic actions. Over the years, the successful government campaigns in the interior, the subversion of tribal authority, and the system of patronage by which important families and individuals were diverted from local
loyalties by gifts and "pensions," enabled the new nation to validate an image of national authority whose symbols and stated goals elicited a political allegiance transcending that of local cultures.
Thus Liberia presented a situation in which few indigenous enclaves sought either autonomy or advancement of interests outside of the national framework after the period of vigorous native resistance in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nor did the polyethnic situation in Liberia involve any major movements that could be considered instruments of "Balkanization" in which traditional ethnic groupings of the interior were potentially aligned into opposing territorial or political segments in competitive pursuit of power in the national arena. In this, Liberia's political and social history appears to be relatively unique among other African nations whose legacy of colonialism was quite different and whose national emergence is more recent.
The significant and relatively distinctive factor in Liberian national development is that the ruling elite was able to forge a state out of this highly heterogeneous situation without effective rivals for confederate power from the indigenous African sector. It succeeded early in establishing a government and a single party system as a centralizing authority, commanding through its
administrative apparatus and emblems a loyalty to the nation often superceding that of local cultural units. There has been little evidence in the recent past of major movements in the traditional sector for complete autonomy or secession, but rather a striving for upward mobility within the national structure and a maneuvering for political favors on the part of special interest groups. This was expressed not so much as a competitive struggle among distinctive ethnic units for unilateral recognition within the national arena, but as a generalized effort of the denigrated classes to enter into the "civilized" community and to share its goods.
The concept of "tribes" encompassing larger territories of the interior than
were ever occupied by culturally homogeneous or politically cohesive traditional
entities was a creation of government polity during the arduous period of national
emergence. The early hinterland provincial divisions and designations of tribal
territories were an expediency of administration as well as a consequence of
European-derived misconceptions of native societies. Eventually, however, these
often arbitrary divisions were to be coalesced in the national consciousness as
"tribal" areas incorporated into sections of government jurisdiction. The dominant
ethnic populations within them, regardless of actual pre-colonial conditions, came
to conceive of these imposed territories as representing the bounded areas of
traditional cultures. In the mid-twentieth century, as political representation of these
interior sections increased, or as they were transformed into "counties" of
theoretically equivalent status within the nation, there was an increasing tendency
for sectional interests to be expressed in ethnic or "tribal" terms. Aspiring leaders of
local traditional groups, as well as of the government, often appealed subtly to these
sentiments as a basis for developing constituencies. Recognition of the dangers
which this new "tribalism" presented to the policy of "national integrations," as
projected by current Liberian administrations, directly motivated President Tolbert's
obstruction of the Gola plan for establishment of a "Bomi County" in 1978.
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The Gola represent one of the ethnic clusters in Liberia whose hegemonic
expansion in the nineteenth century was impeded by the growing power of the settler
society. They were effectively deterred from their insistent encroachments toward
the coast where their chiefdoms had sought to control the trading stations, and they
were frustrated in their determination to prevent Manding penetration and
competition from the east by Liberian aspirations to establish direct commerce and
political alliance with these powerful peoples of the far interior. In this early period,
the Gola were never united as a centralized "tribe," but comprised a widespread
distribution of eighteen or more small chiefdoms which occasionally formed brief
and shifting sectional alliances for purposes of defense or aggression. These
confederacies frequently included chiefdoms of neighboring cultures such as the
Dei, Vai, Mende or Bandi. But such arrangements seldom persisted beyond the
course of a specific goal or the lifespan of a particularly charismatic leader. These
groups were just as frequently at war among themselves, or united with non-Gola
against other Gola chiefdoms. Throughout this early period, the Poro secret
association functioned as an instrument of intergroup diplomacy and ritual affinity
among the northwestern cultures, helping to produce a network of relations and
common values which characterizes this section of the region.
The momentum of Gola expansionism and competition with the Manding immigrants and Liberian settlers continued to as late as 1918 when the government was able to quell a major attack from a confederation of northern Gola chiefdoms by forming an alliance with a number of Gola and other chiefdoms adjacent to the coastal settlements. For the next fifty years the potentiality for confederation among the chiefdoms of the northwest was suppressed by Liberian administrative reorganization of the interior, the activation of a frontier militia, the creation of new
districts with government-appointed commissioners and Paramount Chiefs, and direct intervention in all local and intergroup politics and economic activity. The decline in traditional systems of authority and competitive commerce was accompanied by a general economic deterioration throughout the interior as the urban settler class drained the resources of the region. Through the monolithic instrument of the True Whig Party, with its networks of official agents armed with access to the rewards of presidential patronage, loyalty was assured and the
competitive scramble for favors from the government encouraged factionalism within and a deepening insulation from surrounding groups.
In the 1960s and 1970s, however, the attempts of the Tubman and Tolbert
regimes to integrate the "tribal element" into the national fabric set unforeseen forces
in motion. The giving of political representation to the former hinterland provinces,
and the appointment of native leaders to important government positions, provided
opportunities for large sections of the interior to operate as constituencies for
officials connected by ties of kinship and relatively common cultural background.
Moreover, urbanization and new government programs of educational scholarships
to persons of tribal origin helped to create a restless class of aspirants seeking
limited numbers of posts and the promised improvement of status. Government
slogans of "unification" and Africanization" inadvertently awakened recognition of
the potentialities of ethnic heritage as a political instrument for the command of
larger spheres of influence and official incumbency in those new counties that had
been created out of the former hinterland districts.
Concepts of ethnicity that had been latent, or retained as merely local
expressions of solidarity, began to emerge as significant factors in national political
life and were transformed by the expediency of the times. In the 1970s and 1980s,
for example, appeals to "Golaness" by Gola leaders was more effective than it might
have been in the past. The vague notion of a common homeland or the common
origin of all Gola-speaking peoples had never been a rallying cry of unity among
warring chiefdoms or in the formation of confederacies. but in this new political
atmosphere the idea of uniting the forces of the scattered Gola chiefdoms into a
viable entity within the structure of the Liberian county system provided incentives
for developing a "pantribal" consciousness and the emergence of a dominant Gola
constituency in the northwest interior.
This emergent "tribalism" is a recent feature in the Liberian national arena,
and movements similar to that of the Gola are developing in other sections of the
country where ethnic factors have begun to play an increasing part in local and
national politics. The Go la instance is an especially intriguing one because of the
explicit program of appeal to ethnic coalition. This movement, as well as others like
it elsewhere in the country, may be given additional momentum by the recent
military insurgency. They are taking place within an African state whose former
government had managed to develop a national consciousness and dependence on
centralized authority despite the ethnic complexity of its population and its
inequitable class structure. The national entity and the system of government was
accepted as an essential reality by all sectors for-even as the military coup of 1980
has indicated-the impulse to change was not aimed at total transformation, but
rather at the replacement of a corrupt and despotic elite with new personnel.
Yet thebureaucratic apparatus remained intact and many of the former officials retained
their posts. The revolutionary program called for major social and economic reforms,
ostensibly involving elevation of the status of the native African peoples who were
referred to as "the poor and oppressed masses." This euphemism circumvented any
suggestion of ethnic interests, and the new government declared its displeasure with
appeals to concepts which might stimulate "disruptive divisions" among the people.
Thus, Liberia provides a dramatic illustration of a nation in which long
dormant ethnic interests and rivalries have been awakened in new forms by the
contradictions inherent in government attempts at amelioration and "notional
unification." Rather than the obliteration of ethnic politics in the interests of
"modernization" and a non-ethnic federal pluralism, the Liberian nationalization
process fostered an unanticipated emergence of tribalism and sectional claims.
It is in this context that the Gola case takes on particular significance. With
the appearance of the expanded county system in the 1960s, the newly federated
divisions of the country had become, in effect, the officially defined pluralistic
entities of the national enterprise. The Gola leaders of the Lofa-Gola Paramount
Chieftancy-a cluster of Gola, Dei, and mixed Mandingo traditional chiefdoms near
the coast-believed that they had been ignored by the Tubman administration and
betrayed by their enemies.
The four new counties, established in the former hinterland region where the indigenous African population predominated, constituted-in their view-government recognition of historic areas of tribal hegemony. Despite official disclaimers and explicit government polity which aimed
at minimizing the ethnic implications of the new county boundaries, the Gola as well as other peoples of the interior spoke of the new Lofa County as an administrative unit providing the Loma people a powerful advantage in national affairs, as did the new Bong County for the Kpelle, Minba County for the Gio, and Grand Gedeh County for the Krahn.
Though the old colonies along the coast had been the early centers of Liberian settler jurisdiction, Grand Cape Mount County was nevertheless seen as an area inhabited mainly by the Vai people, Grand Bassa County by the Bassa, Sinoe County by the Kru and Maryland County by the Grebo. The Gola, however, whose distribution extends over a major portion of the northwestern
interior, and who had long aspired to government recognition of their territorial (and ostensibly "tribal") integrity, now found their traditional chiefdoms and claimed lands fractionated by the boundaries of four counties-Lofa, Cape Mount, Montserrado, and Bong.
For over two decades this matter had constituted one of the major, though
cautiously pursued, political concerns of the leading elders of the southern Gola
chiefdoms and their official representatives in government, including the western
educated urban tribal members associated with them. These leaders and constituents
have persistently fostered a myth of Gola pan-tribal origin and unity which
effectively employed traditional lore in support of a new county in which "Go la"
interests would predominate and which would provide administrative equality with
other ethnic groups believed to have been tacitly favored by government policy. The
fact that the Gola had never in the past constituted a united or centralized ethnic
entity was irrelevant (and perhaps forgotten) in the face of the compelling idea that
the consolidation of the scattered sections of Gola occupation was a matter of
historical destiny which might be at last on the verge of fruition. Among older
persons of the conservative interior Gola areas the idea of consolidation rekindled
the bitter core of nostalgic retrospection about the unfulfilled hegemonic aspirations
of the nineteenth century when Gola expansionism gave promise of creating a
confederacy capable of competing successfully with the coastal Liberian settlers.
These aspirations were disrupted by effective government military actions and
diplomacy in the early twentieth century which created disunity between the interior
and coastal Gola chiefdoms, and resulted in final subjugation after the defeat of the
Gola rebellion of 1917, a change in fortune which remains an epochal tragedy in
Gola historical narrative. To the younger generation of leaders, however, these
historical matters are of less importance than the political and economic advantages
of consolidation within the national arena of competing groups and interests. Theirs
has been an explicit strategy of seeking the development of a viable administrative
apparatus for which substantial government funds and new prestigious positions
would be allocated. In a nation where opportunities for advancement and positions
of power are scarce, creation of new administrative units offers considerable
promise. Moreover, competitive ethnic interests provide both an incentive and a
justification for a Gola program of seeking a position of equity with other "tribes."
The idea of a separate territory dominated by the Gola was originally pressed by Gola political figures in the early 1950s as part of local campaign strategy prior to the elections of 1955. These efforts were confounded by factionalism within the Gola chiefdoms due to the emergence of a strong and vocal anti-True Whig Party and anti-Tubman element which sought alliance with the
opposition party of ex-President Edwin Barclay and ex-Minister of the Interior David Coleman, both of whom had Gola connections by marriage and association. With the defeat of Barclay by Tubman in 1955, Gola prospects were in a state of disarray, with the pro-Tubman faction calling for recriminations against the Barclay supporters Within weeks of the election, however, the mood turned to general panic when David Coleman was accused of plotting to assassinate President Tubman, and was discovered in hiding among relatives and former supporters near a major Gola village. They were killed on the spot and their bodies placed on display in Monrovia.
This event produced a profound schism in the Gola area which has continued to this day. It was more than a year after its occurrence that the proTubman faction dared to approach the president again with the question of a separate territory; for it was said that he had expressed an extreme distrust of all Gola and had made the remark that "these people have been the cause of more trouble and unrest than any other tribe in the history of Liberia." Certain chiefs, therefore, who had been most active in the True Whig Party and who were trusted by Tubman for their vigorous harassment of the opposition were delegated to broach the matter to him.
Consequently, a series of delegations were sent to petition the President from 1957
to 1963 at Executive Council and other meetings held in Bopolu, Voinjama, Kolohun, and Sannequelli. In each instance they were given a hearing, but Tubman consistently took the position that the Gola had not proved themselves ready for such a move; they were too disunited; there were anti-administration elements among them; if he were to grant their request, other tribal groups among them such as the Vai, Dei, Mandingo and Kpelle might object, etc.
These audiences were taking place while Tubman was formulating his plan
to create four new counties in what had been called the Liberian Hinterland
Provinces, giving them full and equal representation along with the five original
counties along the coast. This plan was enacted into law in 1962 and took effect in
1964. It was at the Third Biennial Unification Council at Kolohun in 1963 that the
President proclaimed the new county system as a harbinger of a still more extensive
reorganization involving the coalescence of the counties into a number of states
within the Republic "as a measure of decentralization . . . with a certain amount of
sovereignty in each." The implications of this agenda were not lost upon the Gola
leaders present who saw their own prospects declining while those of other major
Liberian ethnic groups were caught up in the momentum of Tubman's grandiose
vision. Their insistent appeals had been to no avail. The new county arrangement
incorporated a large section of what they believed to be their most ancient territory
into the new Lofa County which included the populous Loma tribes of the
northeastern interior.
The important Lofa-Gola chiefdoms near the coast were incorporated into an expanded Montserrado County containing the main settlements of early Liberian colonial jurisdiction, the national capitol of Monrovia, and the remnants of the Dei tribe. A third section of the old Gola area, adjacent to the Vai on the border of Sierra Leone, was to remain within the boundaries of the old Cape Mount County.
This administrative separation of major segments of the Gola tribe infuriated
many of the Gola leaders who interpreted it as a punitive move on the part of the
President who had announced to them that he could not agree to a separate inclusive
"territory" or "county" for all the Gola on the basis of their proclaimed tribal
interests, for this might encourage "every little tribe in the country" to make similar
demands. Other Gola elders and political leaders, however, urged patience and
persistence. By 1968 this strategy prevailed, and Tubman signed an act creating an
administratively separate "Bomi Territory" of the old Lofa-Gola Paramount
Chieftaincy over the strenuous opposition of powerful government officials of
Montserrado County whose control over the interior sections of the county were
delimited by the act. At the same time, Tubman let it be known that if the new
territory showed clear signs of development, he was ready to entertain the idea of
establishing a tenth county.
The reaction within the southern Gola chiefdoms was one of triumphant
enthusiasm. Within two years hundreds of new positions were filled by aspiring Gola
candidates from both rural and urban sectors, some even returning from studies
abroad to seek placement. The sprawling mining town of Bomi Hills was remained
"Tubmanburg" and became the administrative center of the territory. New buildings
were rapidly erected and a number of development projects initiated. By 1970 plans
were being implemented to invite Tubman to the territory for a birthday celebration
in 1971. Increasing pressure had been placed on the President to fulfill his promise
of establishing Bomi as a new county. Efforts were made to solicit the support of
Gola chiefdoms in Cape Mount and Lofa counties for their inclusion in a county
which would reach from the St. Paul River to the Sierra Leone border, uniting all the
major Gola-speaking groups and their territories under a centralized administration.
In that Tubman had accepted the invitation to a birthday celebration, it was
anticipated that he would make the announcement for the tenth county on that
occasion. In the midst of the preparations the President died.
Though this was a profound setback, the momentum of planning and
expectation was undiminished. The issue was put before the new President, William
R. Tolbert, almost immediately. He responded with an assurance that the Gola would
once again have a unified territory (though, in fact, the traditional chiefdoms had never been permanently united politically, this being a concept emerging with the tribalistic revival of the twentieth century). Moreover, President Tolbert appointed a special commission to develop a proposal for the formation of a new "Bomi County" (named after the sacred mountain of the Senje chiefdom), which would include the old Gola sections of Kone in Grand Cape Mount County, the ancient chiefdoms of Godje and Kongba in Lofa County, the more recent Lofa-Gola
chiefdoms to the south, and the Dei chiefdom. At the same time, he recognized the
Gola as the major custodians of the powerful Sande and Poro societies in western
Liberia and made a number of appointments of Gola leaders to national government
offices.
It is not surprising, therefore, that this move to create a new county
reawakened old rivalries and counter political strategies among well-entrenched
administrative officials of the previously existing counties and, particularly, among
non-Gola leaders in the western interior. The creation of "Bomi County," as
proposed, would constitute an unprecedented instance of an aboriginal ethnic group
to have consolidated its ancient territories and traditional chiefdoms under a single
administrative division of the Liberian nation. There was concern in Vai and
Mandingo sectors of a revival of Gola expansion and dominance which had preceded
Liberian subjugation of the Gola in the early twentieth century. These groups had
benefitted from the suppression of the aggressive Gola chiefdoms and the
administrative separation of the widely distributed Gola sections into different
interior jurisdictions.
Nevertheless, every effort was made to organize the support of Liberian
politicians with kinship or other obligations in the Gola area, and young Gola who
held government positions were made aware of the advantages which could ensue
from the expanded administration of a new county. There is some evidence that the
major thrust of the proposal for "Bomi County" came from this group of young
government officials in Monrovia who were more interested in the opportunities for
personal political advancement than in the ethnic concerns of their interior
tribesmen. At the same time, however, there were other government officials pressing
the interests of the Vai and Mandingo who were pointing out to the President that
approval of the proposal would constitute a dangerous precedent which might
awaken "tribalistic" aspirations in other sections of the interior. The President was
also warned (as had been many Presidents before him) that the Go la had always
sought dominance in the region, that they once had been a major obstacle to
government jurisdiction in that sector, and that the present proposal was a stratagem
consistent with their historic character.
The situation was further complicated by the presence, on the President's committee to investigate the proposal, of a number of young Gola officials who had positions in the administrative apparatus of existing counties into which certain of the more remote Gola chiefdoms had been incorporated among dominant populations of Vai, Bandi, Manding, or other peoples. These men sought to arouse their Gola constituencies against the plan, warning that
their interests would be overshadowed by more aggressive Go la centers to the south.
They were, of course, concerned of the possibility that they would lose their own
posts in the administrative reorganization.
At the end of 1978, while preparations were being made among the Gola chiefdoms to celebrate the anticipated announcement of the new county, the President's special commission reported to him its inability to recommend a feasible plan, and the President immediately withdrew his support. In explaining his actions, he is reported to have stated that the issue would not be considered by him again during his presidency. The reaction in the central cluster of Go la chiefdoms was one of shocked dismay. The report of the Commission and the President's action were seen as yet another example of betrayal through the political machinations of their
enemies, particularly those representing the Mandingo interests. The President was not blamed but rather was seen as a man whose "hands were tied" by his advisors and the dissenting members of the commission. Much criticism was directed to those Gola public officials involved who failed to act decisively because of mixed motives and gerrymandering on the part of opponents of the proposal.
The coup of April 12, 1980 brought a violent end to the settler dominated
regimes which had controlled the country since the early nineteenth century. The
assassination of President Tolbert and the public execution of leading members of
his government was a totally unexpected consequence of decades of increasing
popular discontent, and the reaction was one of mixed apprehension and exultation
in various sectors of the nation. Young rural and urban Go la joined in the
revolutionary fervor under the leadership of Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe and the
abhorred group of enlisted men from the Krahn tribe who had participated in the
coup and now formed the People's Redemption Council of the military government!
However, many older people-particularly the tribal and territorial officials of the
interior-were in a state of panic. As leading members of the former True Whig Party,
they were besieged by angry contingents of local dissidents. Many fled into the
forests and were tracked down with the aid of soldiers. Chiefs were publically
humiliated and numerous officials were deposed and replaced by appointees of the
PRC government.
Most alarming to the population of the traditional interior sector of the Gola
area was the government decision to quarter the Sixth Army Battalion at
Tubmanburg, the administrative center of Bomi Territory which had been named in
honor of President Tubman (but was soon to be renamed Bomi City). The new
superintendent of the territory was a Krahn army officer who immediately suspended
all "political" meetings, and issued a warning against Poro activities. Extensive
looting and harassment of the population took place, markets were conscripted by
the army, and within days the thriving economy of the town and its outlying villages
had been devastated. A sense of shock and helplessness pervaded the region.
An event of unprecedented punitiveness from the Gola perspective is said
to have occurred in 1981 when a leading Dazo of Gola Poro was assaulted in the
midst of the most sacred opening rites for the Sande initiation session in the town of
Bola near Tubmanburg. A group of soldiers sent by the new superintendent stripped
the Dazo of his vestments and paraded him nude before the shocked multitude of
villagers. He was charged with partaking in an illegal assembly. Though apologies
eventually were made from the office of Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe in
Monrovia, rumors of the incident swept a wave of horror throughout the Gola
sections. The Dazo refused to carry out the necessary rites, and the commencement
of women's initiation sessions was delayed for over a year before he could be
persuaded to appear again.
Prior to this affair, the old political schisms in Go la society had re-emerged
with unusual vigor. The long-suppressed faction of former Barclay and Colemen
supporters had seized the opportunity provided by the coup to overturn local
incumbents of office who had been loyal to Tubman and Tolbert. But the desecration
of a Dazo and the disruption of Poro and Sande rites coalesced most of the
population into sullen and frightened disapproval of the new regime. Moreover, the
long-standing network of former True Whig Party and Masonic organizations in the
interior provided a continuing apparatus of secret communication with effective
links to traditional Poro activities throughout the western interior, as well as with
Gola leaders holding official posts in Monrovia. It was in this context that a view was
widely expressed to the effect that the "Gola tribe had been conquered" by the alien
Krahn. Ancient lore concerning the mysterious non-Poro peoples south and east of
the St. Paul River was revived and animosity intensified. The predominantly Krahn
membership of the top leadership of the military government and the ethnic
favoritism shown in official appointments had convinced many that this was the
basis for the suppression of Poro and the undermining of Gola strength in the
northwestern interior.
During 1981 and 1982 the Gola area seemed politically quiescent and
stunned into passive acceptance of the most drastic subordination experienced since
their miliary defeat by Liberian government forces in 1917. Nevertheless, the idea
of the tenth county continued to be discussed in the private networks of Gola
leadership. Its fruition was seen as impossible until a new civilian government was
formed under the revised constitution. However, by 1982 it became apparent to some
that Samuel K. Doe (now Commander-in-Chief) was harboring ambitions to become
the first president of the new civilian regime. Certain Gola officials in the
government indicated that the time might be ripe for approaching Doe about the
matter. It was suggested to him that such a move would be a most timely gesture
toward improving his image among the people of the northwestern sections and,
perhaps, giving him a important constituency for the impending elections.
Quite abruptly, and with little advance notice, Head of State Doe announced
in October of 1983 the formation of a tenth county to be known as Bomi County.
Though there was some disappointment that this new unit would comprise essentially
only the southern section which had been known as Bomi Territory, the
announcement was met with victorious celebration in the Go la interior. Hundreds of
young aspirants to new county administrative positions returned from the urban
areas and from abroad to campaign for local election. Krahn appointees were quickly
replaced and the Gola area reawakened to a sense of opportunity and self esteem.
Meanwhile, vigorous though cautious proselytizing had been initiated in the
excluded Go la areas in the Pokpa section of Cape Mount County, the Kongba and
Godge sections of Lofa County, and even in the old Deng section of Bong County.
The Gola groups of these areas were urged to petition the government for inclusion
into an expanded Bomi County.
Within the context of Liberian national life the phenomena illustrated above
of a vigorous Gola cultural heritage and the development of a pan-tribal
consciousness are remarkable, particularly as they were expressed in terms of means
and goals derived from an anticipation of changing national polity. In the course of
Liberian nationalization, most of the larger ethnic entities have been fractionated and
re-oriented to the dominant symbols and the institutions of the national culture. This
process was facilitated by the extreme multilingual and polyethnic complexity of the
indigenous chiefdoms and confederacies at the time of colonization, constituting a
frontier situation of heterogeneity, mobility, and unstable social units. The already
existing tolerance of ethnic pluralism and shifting centers of political dominance
were amenable to the development of a national program by the centralizing agency
of a relatively weak Liberian government. The Gola case, however, is something of
an anomaly insofar as it represents the development of a distinctive ethnic ideology
reinforced by an emergent pan-tribalism. It also reveals the remarkable persistence
of a myth of ethnic solidarity which has, over the past twenty to thirty years, been
transformed into an instrument of competitive political opportunism within the
changing structures of the Liberian national process.
WARREN L. D'AZEVEDO.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
d'Azevedo, Warren L. "A Tribal Reaction to Nationalism." Parts 1-4. Liberian
Studies Journal. Vol. 1(2), Vol. II(1), Vol. III (2), Vol. IV (1), 1969-70.
"Tribe and Chiefdom on the Windward Coast," Rural Africana 15:10-29, 1971.
Dunn, D. Elwood. The Foreign Policy ofLiberia During the Tubman Era, 1844-1971.
London: Hutchison Benham, 1979.
Holsoe, Svend. "The Condo Federation in Western Liberia." Liberian Historical
Review 3(2): 1-28.1966.
Johnson, S. Jangaba M. The Traditional History and Folklore ofthe Gola Tribe in
Liberia. 2 vols. Bureau of Folklore Series: Department of Interior,
Monrovia, R.L. 1961.
Sawyer, Amos. The Emergence ofAutocracy in Liberia. ICS Press: San Francisco.
1992.
Effective Immediately-Dictatorship in Liberia, 1980-1986: A Personal
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