November 12, 1985 : THE MILITARY COUP THAT FAILED IN LIBERIA AND THE DAY GOD SAVED MY LIFE
By Kabs Kanu
In the early morning of Tuesday November 12 1985 , the church was on a week-long fast and we were having a prayer retreat at the BWI Picnic Grounds in Kakata, 45 miles from Monrovia. The picnic grounds was about a mile or two from the BWI/ KRTTI campuses. We went there by 6am and were holding hands and had prayed for few hours when we saw an old man passing through the dirt road leading further into the deep forest, with his radio glued to his ears. .
On his radio tuned loudly, the national anthem of Liberia would be played and then somebody would speak and the radio would be playing martial music and then stop. Then the whole process would be repeated . The old man was going up and down the road. He was not going away.
Because of the chaotic state of Liberia at the time, with a disputed and contentious election just held in which Gen. Samuel Doe was declared winner , though veteran politician Jackson Doe had actually won it, we knew that something must have happened . Liberia was on edge and people were not staying out late at night. Everybody was expecting something to happen.
Why was the national anthem being played repeatedly ? The old man passed us but after a while he came back and we asked him what was going on, and solemnly and sarcastically he replied : “Why , you people do not know ? You’re here praying in this bush and do not know what has happened in the country today ? Quiwonkpa has invaded Liberia .He has overthrown the government and Doe is in hiding . You’all continue standing out here praying. They will come for you “ , he added sardonically and glued his ears back to his radio .
When the old man made us listen earlier , I had distinctly heard a voice I recognized as that of fugitive former Commanding General of the Liberian Army, Thomas Quiwonkpa , and he was saying that “the patriotic forces “ had surrounded the whole city and that Doe was in hiding but there will be no escape for him . Wow, this was serious, we all said. Quiwonkpa was a feared military general who had fallen out acrimoniously with President Doe, staged an abortive insurrection from Nimba and escaped into exile. There had always been fears that he would come back, with more deadly consequences for Doe. So, Quiwonkpa had really returned ? So, there had been a coup in Monrovia and President Samuel Doe had been overthrown and he had fled and was in hiding ? We were stunned but not surprised . “We better get out of here”, we decided .
We scrambled for our bibles and belongings and headed back to town, whereupon we met the whole town upside down with jubilation. Hundreds of people were on the streets dancing, some with bodies painted like warriors and waving palm fronds. Monrovia was in raptures , we were told.
We got home and turned on our TV and the whole of Monrovia was in joyful ecstasy , with thousands of people out in the street dancing and celebrating what everybody thought was the overthrow of C-I–C Dr. Samuel Doe at last. Former Army Chief Brig. Gen. Thomas Quiwonkpa, one of Doe’s pards with whom he had staged the bloody April 12, 1980 coup that overthrew the government of President William Tolbert, whom they assassinated, but had been fired by Doe two years previously, and fled into exile, had returned to exact vengeance and redeem the Liberian people from Doe’s human rights abuses and dictatorial rule.
As we would learn later, Quiwonkpa had invaded Liberia from Sierra Leone with Liberian army deserters and rebels as well as Sierra Leonean police officers ( ISUs ) provided by President Joseph Momoh. They had seized the radio station and the military barracks ( BTC ) and Quiwonkpa was announcing at regular intervals that his patriotic forces had invaded Liberia and taken over and that Doe was in hiding but there was no escape for him. He was a friendly and patriotic military officer who was a favourite of the masses. Therefore, thousands poured into the streets to welcome his coup and celebrate the downfall of the hated Doe.
As we watched with breathcatching anxiety on TV, we saw ministers and government officials who had been arrested being brought to the ELBC radio and TV station naked. Some, like the Justice Minister, J. Jenkins Scott, had been badly beaten . Quiwonkpa himself appeared at the radio station walking around , holding a walkie-talkie and saying that he had no grudge for Doe but had been forced by the dictator’s abuse of power to overthrow him. Quiwonkpa said Doe will be put on trial. He said he will formally address the nation later in the evening.
Liberians had reconciled themselves to the reality that President Samuel Doe had been overthrown by the lovable Gen. Quiwonkpa, who was the good guy and the people’s conscience in Doe’s military junta before both men fell out in 1984 and Doe demoted Quiwonkpa from Army Commanding General ( Force Commander ) to Secretary General of the military government, the People’s Redemption Council ( PRC ) , which Quiwonkpa turned down, forcing Doe to fire him. Home cocktail parties were being planned. The celebrations had already kicked off in living rooms, porches and backyards. Another day of redemption had been wrought in Liberia.
But the coup and jubilation lasted only for about 8 hours. Shortly after 2 pm, things went terribly wrong. Col. Moses Wright of the Schefflin military brigade, one of Doe’s trusted military officers came on the air and shocked everybody by announcing that the coup had failed and Doe was back in power. People were still on the streets dancing, oblivious of the new development .Only we at home watching on TV knew that the coup had been reversed. Doe himself even came briefly on the air to announce that it was not true that he was in hiding and that he was still President and Commander-In-Chief of the army and would afdress the nation later.
WAHALA FODOM
Doe’s soldiers from Camp Schefflein , who had with the help of Israeli military instructors , reversed the coup , went out into the street . When the jubilant crowds saw the soldiers approaching in their army trucks , they thought it was the soldiers who had redeemed them that day, not knowing these were soldiers loyal to Gen. Doe. They were stunned when the soldiers opened fire on them. Then started the running battle between the soldiers and the crowds that led to many deaths.
Things had changed dramatically and the soldiers were going around arresting and in some cases putting to death suspected coup sympathizers , rebel soldiers and members of the public who had been earlier seen on TV rejoicing. Quiwonkpa fled into hiding . He was caught two days later and publicly executed near his hiding place and dismembered and his mangled body displayed at the Executive Mansion. In a macabre show of revenge, he was castrated and his private part hung and displayed on the bonnet of a military jeep that was driven around the city by jubilant pro-Doe soldiers. It was alleged that Quiwonkpa’s body was eaten by soldiers and some members of the public who thought that because he was considered a very powerful man, his powers will be transferred to them. Somebody came to Kakata sucking his hacked – off thumb.
The failed coup led to monumental reprisals attacks on suspected anti-Doe people and members of the Gio and Mano tribes in Monrovia, other cities and especially in Nimba County where hundreds of them were allegedly slaughtered by Doe’s soldiers , fueling the resentment and tribal anger that led to the Liberian civil war four years later.
As I look back on another very traumatic and dangerous day in Liberia, I thank God for saving my life and the lives of my family.
Out of necessity that day , I had to violate the curfew that President Doe had declared , with orders allegedly to his soldiers to shoot any violator as his troops searched for the coup-makers. Not knowing how long the chaos would last ( I did not want my family to starve, in case we had to be locked in for days ) and because we were fasting that week and had not done any serious food shopping, I decided to go out that evening to buy some foodstuffs from market women living around the KRTTI campus where I taught and lived in the teachers’ quarters. I was s professor of Educational Psychology in the University of Liberia/ Ministry of Education In- Service Teacher Training program at the Kakata Rural Teachers Training Institute ( KRTTI) . I thought since it was a campus in the upcountry, enforcement of the curfew would not have been rigid. It is a small town and market women lived close by in sm area called Bassa Community . I wish I had not taken the risk.
My luck ran out . A military truck with some heavily-armed soldiers came rumbling round the bend and they asked me why I was out and if I did not know a curfew was in force. I said I knew but was just coming to buy some foodstuffs from market women living around the campus. Because of my Sierra Leonean British accent and the fact that Sierra Leonean mercenary police were involved in the attack on the country earlier in the day, the soldiers accused me of being a one of them . Nothing I said convinced them. I showed them my identity cards but they described them as fake. They started asking me lots of questions which if they were not satisfactory would have led to me being shot. But God was on my side. I continued pleading that I was a Liberian. They rejected my claims until one soldier, tired of the whole back-and -forth, decided to cut matters short . He said : “OK, my mehn, en you say you Liberian mehn and you live here ? Then, do one thing for us. If you do, you will convince us, If not, we will take you down. Sing the Liberian national anthem. If you are really a Liberian, you will know how to sing it . ”
My heart leaped for joy at last. I had thought I was a goner. I had thought my charmed life had come to an end at last. But the Liberian national anthem I could sing because after teaching in the country for 7 years then ( A total of 12 by the time of the war in 1990 ) , I had learned it , not only listening to students singing it during our regular Friday assembly programs at Monrovia Central High and during events here at KRTTI, but consciously since I had actually naturalized as a citizen earlier.
I cleared my throat . They waited impatiently . I prayed to God not to panic. I started singing and God was with me and I sang the whole first stanza of the Liberian national anthem so euphoniously that the soldiers were impressed and were convinced that even if I was not a Liberian as I had claimed, one thing was certain : I lived in the country and was not one of the invading mercenaries that overthrew the government briefly that day.
As some were still unconvinced, mulling what to fo to me, another army truck approached and I got scared that the soldiers in that truck would order their colleagues just to finish me off and resume their operation. But when the truck came, guess who alighted from it ? A girl called Fatou Sirleaf, I had taught years back at the Monrovia Central High School. She had joined the army. She asked me : “Mr. Kanu, what are you doing here ? “ The soldiers asked: “Oh, you know him? “ . The girl explained excitedly : “Yes, he was my teacher at Charlotte Tolbert “ ( The name for MCHS before the 1980 coup ). The soldiers said they were just about to kill me because I had a Sierra Leonean accent and they thought I had entered the country with the mercenary Momoh Police to overthrow Doe. The girl commended me highly as a good man . I will explain that in another article. It is always nice to be good to people, especially young ones. I saved that girl from a big crisis in school. It is another gripping story but will suffice for another day
The soldiers then warned me sternly to respect curfews in future because other soldiers would have just shot me down . They offered to take me back to my quarters in their truck.
When my fellow teachers saw the army truck entering the campus, many ran for their lives. They thought the soldiers were coming to attack the campus to look for renels. I put my head out of the can of the truck and yelled to them : Don’t run. It is your mehn, Leeroy . They caught me for curfew but were giving me a ride back” . Probably bothered my their conscience for what they had put me through, the thoughtful soldiers shared their food supplies in their truck with me . They had been looting whole day, since the coup was announced. One of the soldiers said he will be returning to school soon, and who knew ? As a teacher, I might help him to get a place in school. They gave me a bag of rice, bulgur, some palm oil and eddoes ( Yams, as Liberians called them ).
With that, they drove away, leaving me thanking God for my life. Hundreds of people were not luck as I was . Their encounters with the vengeful soldiers that day ended in their deaths. But God saved me yet again. I vowed to respect curfews from that day onwards.
The Doe government successfully put down the abortive Quiwonkpa coup and in January 1986, Doe was inaugurated as civilian President of Liberia in a colorful and resplendent program.
YOU WILL READ THIS AND OTHER STORIES IN MY BOOK ON MY ODYSSEY IN LIBERIA THAT WILL SOON BE RELEASED . It is already written.
