By Frank Sainworla, Jr. fsainworla@yahoo.com
“Since 1990, Mr. Paye-Layleh was a key member of the NPFL propaganda machinery,” Liberia’s Information Minister Nagbe said in an interview with the state Radio ELBC in Monrovia on Monday.
But less than 24 hours after the CDC government Minister’s outburst, a former top NPFL executive and later NPP Senator from Grand Cape Mount County, Abel Massalley has rubbished Minister Nagbe’s allegation against the respected Liberian Journalist.
In addition to Massaley, a number of people who worked for the former NPFL propaganda machine, the now defunct Liberia Communication Network (LCN) have also expressed surprise to hear Nagbe (a one-time NPFL senior propagandist) claiming Paye-Layleh was part of the rebels’ propaganda team.
The NPFL is the defunct National Patriotic Front of Liberia rebel group, which later metamorphosed into the National Patriotic Party (NPP) led by now jailed former President Charles Taylor.
NPP went into a tripartite coalition with President George Weah’s Congress for Democratic Change to form the Coalition for Democratic (CDC) that won the 2017 presidential election.
“You can quote me as the Minister of Information of Liberia. I am saying that Mr. Paye-Layleh was a part of the NPFL machinery that was advocating for the position of the NPFL at the time, and Mr. Weah was urging disarmament. Isn’t that being against something somebody was pushing? Wasn’t him one of the first editors of the Patriot newspaper and of the NPFL’s Ministry of Information? I was there. I also served as an editor of the Patriot newspaper.”
However, when asked whether the Information Minister’s claim against the BBC and AP Monrovia Correspondent was true, former Senator Massaley told www.newspublictrust.com on Tuesday: “That’s lie. He (Eugene Nagbe) is telling a black lie. People must stop lying on people like this.”
Massalley, an Israeli-trained security, clarified that Paye-Layleh only found himself in the NPFL-controlled territory during the 1990s but functioned as an independent Journalist throughout the war.
“He was in the NPFL territory as a BBC Stringer. He was never involved in any NPFL Propaganda or information machine. Jonathan Paye-Layleh was the only Reporter who was brave enough to cover the frontline. Sometimes they (rebel fighters) used to threaten him but he used his knowledge of the local language to his advantage. And his reports covered what he saw and it was the reality,” the former NPFL stalwart said.
Former Senator Massalley then said it was wrong for the Information Minister to embark on a misinformation campaign against the long-time BBC Journalist.
“Eugene Nagbe and others are trying to look for survival,” he said.
Minister Nagbe’s claim is the latest in a series of wild allegations from the Liberian presidency and high government cycles linking Liberian Journalist Paye-Layleh to promoting the horrors of the 14 years civil war in Liberia.
On March 22, 2018, President George Weah at a live news conference with the visiting UN Deputy Secretary General accused the BBC Correspondent of being against him during the civil war, when he (Weah) was promoting human rights and peace.
The President’s utterance (the fourth of its kind) was few days later followed by an Executive mansion press release accusing Paye-Layleh of being one of those who were “giving a positive image of the carnage”.
It was on the back of those utterances and increased threats by some elements within official government and CDC cycles that Paye-Layleh said prompted him to flee Liberia for the United States, where he’s currently.
Minister Nagbe described his decision to leave the country for the US as “deceptive “in his ELBC interview on Tuesday as defended the Liberian leader’s original claim that the BBC Reporter had always been against him during the course of the Liberian civil war.
“President Weah citied what he (Paye-Layleh) did in the past. The BBC has already made some inquiries to us and we have already responded. But I am disappointed in Jonathan because he was in Gbarnga in 1990, ‘91, ‘92, ’93 when all the shootings were going on. People were bombing, shooting and he didn’t run away. He didn’t even get scare for his life, but because the President answered the question that he asked him? Then he jumped up and said he’s going for political asylum. These people are being deceptive. It is unfair for you as a journalist to try to create a situation that there is a clamp down on Liberian press freedom when there is none. Nobody is running behind him,” the Information Minister retorted.
But the account of Minister Nagbe is disputed by some who closely associated with the NPFL propaganda outlets during the Liberian armed conflict as broadcast Journalist Korvah Beyan who told www.newspublictrust.com on Tuesday, “that’s not true.”
Mr. Beyan, who worked with Taylor’s LCN-a parent body of the Patriot newspaper—said: Ït’s not nice to say such a thing. As far as I can remember, I’ve never hear it. I think they are proceeding wrongly.””
Mr. Eddie Harmon, another broadcast Journalist who worked with the NPFL-run Kiss FM operated by the LCN told www.newspublictrust.com on Tuesday: “I have no knowledge that Jonathan Paye-Layleh was working with the Patriot or LCN. The only Jonathan I can remember there was Jonathan Sahn-a TV cameraman and Journalist.