By IPS Correspondents
MONROVIA, Feb 9 2004 (IPS)

When former Liberian President Charles Taylor took up Nigeria’s offer of exile last year, he left behind a country where the flow of information had slowed to a trickle – particularly in rural areas.

Prior to his departure, Taylor served for six years as head of state, an office he was elected to after staging a rebellion against the government.

“A few months after President Charles Taylor assumed power, he withdrew the shortwave frequency of the mainstream private radio stations and subsequently banned them. As a result, we have been living on rumours and misinformation dished out to us by supporters of the former president,” says Gedemina Forkpa, a schoolteacher from central Liberia.

“For six years, we were virtually cut off from current events that emanated from the capital, Monrovia.”

For Mambu Sonni, a social worker in the west of the country, “It was a period in which the walls of terror and banditry were erected.”

Sonni adds, “The Taylor misinformation factory – the Liberia Communication Network, in reality a network of lies, confusion and deceit…succeeded in not only depriving us of actual information on happenings in Monrovia, but also instilling fear in us.”

The Liberia Communication Network – run by Taylor – included newspapers, radio and television stations that previously dominated the nation’s media.

Short-wave broadcasters like Star Radio – an independent outlet funded by non-governmental organisations (NGO’s) – and Radio Veritas, a Catholic-run station, were amongst the first victims of Taylor’s efforts to restrict freedom of speech. The broadcasters were accused of wanting to “destroy Liberia”.

When civil conflict resumed in 1999, rebels also vandalised outlying radio stations.

Now, the country’s airwaves are being freed as part of efforts to give Liberians a voice in reconstruction and development. As a result, the number of community radio stations is on the increase – once again with some assistance from international NGO’s.

Mercy Corps is one of these aid groups. The organisation’s Country Director, Sam Gotoma, says the idea is to ensure that “community residents have a say in the development of their areas and get the kind of information they need to function properly. The purpose is to give voice to the voiceless”.

Radio Veritas has taken to the airwaves once again, broadcasting programmes about political developments and religion on both FM and shortwave. Eternal Love Winning Africa (ELWA) – another religious station – is funded by American evangelists.

Workers from the Firestone rubber plantation, some 50 miles south of Monrovia, run a community station called Stone 105 FM. Previously, staff used a car battery to power the station, which focuses on news and entertainment. Now, a generator and modern equipment enable the broadcaster to serve its audience.

Stone 105 relays political and general news from radio stations based in Monrovia to communities located within a 30-kilometre range of its office. This amounts to a population of 60,000 listeners.

The Director of the Broadcast Division at the Ministry of Information, Jacob Hina, has welcomed the establishment of community stations, describing it as a way of allowing people to shape their futures. “The exercise is a great step towards enhancing the constitutional provisions under fundamental rights”, he added.

Article 15 of Liberia’s constitution states that the public should have free access to information about the government.

Hina said the country’s transitional government, set up after Taylor’s departure, was aware that “the lack of information, insufficient information, distorted information and biased information were some of the ills responsible for many problems confronting the nation”.

With general elections for a permanent administration scheduled for October this year, community stations are set to play an even more important role in Liberia.

“We will use the community radio stations now being established in areas under the control of the UN force to carry out voters’ education,” said elections official Henry Cherue.

But, while community stations blossom, the state-owned radio is limping along.

An executive of the Liberia Broadcasting Corporation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said government wasn’t providing much assistance to the organisation – and that matters had been made worse by a steady decline in advertising revenue over the past few years.

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