The sad passing of Senator Prince Yormie Johnson on 28th November has created an irreplaceable void in his family and in our country -- Liberia. My deep condolences to the bereaved family and the leaders and people of Nimba County as well as the Liberian Legislature.
Indeed PYJ was and will remain many things to many Liberians and some other people the world over.
I have heard references to him ranging from one extreme to another such as the prince of peace, the good, the bad and the ugly. I have heard people calling him father, son, liberator, leader, Senator, a good man and a bad man, a man of God and a man of the devil. Simply put in our Liberian expression, PYJ was a HELLUVA man. He called me "Distinguished" and I never failed to call him "Chief" as many others did.
We served together for nine of his nineteen years in the Liberian Senate. We consulted on critical matters.
We were in the same age group that qualified us as "Crowd of Boys". While he would remind me that I was their " distinguished leader" as students, I got to know of him as a "lord" during the first few months of the Liberian war in 1990.
Although he actually participated in less than three years (December 1989 to October 1992) of the fourteen years' violent and devastating armed conflict, PYJ stood out as the most pronounced figure in competition with four others. One of these is Samuel Kanyon Doe who led the coup d'etat that tragically ended the more than a century old rule of the True Whig Party; and who led a reign of terror for ten years from 1980 as military ruler and "elected" President until his violent death on September 9, 1990.
Following General Doe is Charles McArthur Ghangay Taylor who led the longest and most vociferous armed rebellion in Liberian history. He recruited PYJ but PYJ insisted that "the guns that liberated must not rule". In PYJ's absence, the people eventually surrendered Taylor's coveted prize of the Presidency in 1997 until President Taylor was forced out of office in August, 2003. Taylor is currently serving a 50 year jail term in Europe for war crimes in Sierra Leone.
The other staunch figure was Dr. Amos Claudius Sawyer, a renowned academic and respected political leader who led the Interim Government of National Unity for four critical years (1990 - 94) when large parts of our country were occupied by rival armed rebel factions. President Sawyer ran the free part of Liberia under the security protection of Nigeria-led West African armed forces, called ECOMOG, following the violent end of the Doe Regime. Difficult as his relationship was with President Sawyer and ECOMOG, PYJ was key in preventing Taylor's military takeover of Monrovia.
And then there is Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman to be elected President in Africa. This was the election that followed the Peace Agreement of August 18, 2003 formally ending the war. As a very influential political figure with the most profound national, African regional and international connections spanning the administrations of President William R. Tolbert to the present Joseph Nyumah Boakai's, the iron lady is associated with the twists and turns of our country's history.
Such is the difficulty in discussing the life of PYJ which finds a hold in each of these great historical figures and among every section of our people. PYJ's influence was felt throughout the war years.
During my work as a peace negotiator I travelled far and wide to many parts of Africa and especially taking me face to face with Nigerian President Sani Abacha and Libyan Leader Moamar Khadafi. I then closed those rounds by meetings with PYJ and Ghangay. It was at the end of my meeting with PYJ at his temporary Caldwell Base that he demonstrated the meaning of the war by displaying to me the skull of a man who tried killing me in mid 1981.
It was then and there that I concluded that PYJ was indeed a HELLUVA MAN PEKIN. He then made a firm commitment to enduring Peace in Liberia if Taylor would keep the peace and not attack him and ECOMOG. Judge Luvenia Ash-Thompson and I continued our peace mission to Taylor's base in Gbarnga in that same February, 1992.
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Shortly after, Dr. Sawyer dispatched me and Dr. Joseph Saye Guannu to Tripoli to arrange a meeting with Brother Leader Khadafi. Against the support of certain powers, Dr. Sawyer made the visit to Tripoli.
This significantly altered the course of the war by Burkina Faso President Blaise Campoare halting crucial arms supply to the Taylor's NPFL.
It is reported that it was this development that provoked Taylor's launch of the notorious Octopus attack on Monrovia in October, 1992 beginning with the capturing of Johnson's Caldwell Base. PYJ only fought back to save himself, his men, the war orphans and innocent civilians who took refuge at that Base, with himself escaping by the whiskers to ECOMOG and eventually being taken to Nigeria. True to his word to me, Marshall Prince Yormie Johnson never took up arms again in Liberia.
He never fought war again. He fought as a politician winning three Senatorial races and making three Presidents from three different counties and only producing a Vice President from Nimba County.
Go Well, PYJ! THE REAL HELLUVA MAN for peace!!
