By Paul Ejime
When the news filtered in on Saturday, November 28th, 2024, that Prince Yormie Johnson, Liberia’s professed “President,” “Field Marshal,” “General,” and warlord-turned-politician, had died at the age of 72, many took it for a fluke based on similar reports in the past, including in Nigeria, where he spent some time during his country’s civil war.
Charles Taylor, Johnson’s fellow warlord and ally-turned-enemy, once told the world that he had killed Johnson, which proved untrue. Reports of Johnson’s death this time cited a domestic accident. It was said that he slipped in his bathroom and later died in a hospital in Paynesville, Montserrado – a tragic irony for a man who killed and supervised the killings of many during the war.
A soldier, who once preached that The Gun That Liberates Should Not Rule, Johnson later attempted to become Liberia’s president several times through the ballot box but, ended up as a Senator and a king-maker. PYJ, as he was fondly called by friends, hailed from Nimba County, in east-central Liberia, where he commanded a cult following.
In 1971, young Johnson joined the Liberian National Guard (LNG), which morphed into the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) following Captain Samuel Doe’s 1980 overthrow of President William R. Tolbert. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant, receiving military training in Liberia and the United States, and serving in military police duties in South Carolina.
Johnson was aide-de-camp to Gen. Thomas Quiwonkpa, the AFL’s Commanding General, and went on exile with him in 1983 after Quiwonkpa was accused of plotting to topple Doe.
Johnson later joined forces with Charles Taylor as part of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), initially serving as Chief Training Officer.
After their training in Libya, Taylor launched his rebellion against the Doe regime from across the Ivorian border on Christmas Eve 1989, igniting the two-stage civil war that ended in 2003, killing more than 250,000 people and displacing more than two million others.
Mobile phones had not been developed then. Taylor used satellite telephone, which was then in vogue to telling effect. He called the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London to boast that he was marching on Monrovia to remove Doe.
True to his word, Taylor stormed the Liberian capital with his NPFL forces but only met with surprises instead. He did manage to transform from a warlord to a president but later resigned and is now cooling his feet in jail in the United Kingdom, following his conviction by the international war crimes court at the Hague for supporting the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which waged a similar war in Sierra Leone, Liberia’s neighbour.
As the Liberian war raged, an internal power struggle led to Johnson’s quitting of the Taylor-led NPFL to form the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL).
Leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) weighed in by setting up the ECOWAS Ceasefire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG).
This writer and his journalist colleagues were embedded in ECOMOG during its maiden mission to Liberia in August 1990 through Port Elizabeth in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
We first met Johnson at the Monrovia Free Port area, where he held sway after chasing Taylor’s NPFL forces from there.
Taylor was vehemently opposed to ECOWAS’ intervention, but Johnson allowed ECOMOG under the Command of Ghanaian General Arnold Quainoo to land and establish its base at the Free Port.
He regaled those who cared to listen on how he fought one of his fiercest battles to fend off Taylor’s forces and paved the way for ECOMOG troops contributed by Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone and the Gambia to land on the maiden Mission.
Taylor’s NPFL forces, which operated from Gbarnga, Bong County, east of Monrovia, launched deadly attacks on the nation’s capital after unsuccessful attempts to overrun it.
Embattled President Doe was helmed in at the Executive Mansion, and Johnson, from his base, often well-armed with shotguns, pistols and a walkie-talkie, sand-witched by a battery of body guards, paid regular visits to the ECOMOG base for consultations on the war plans.
Johnson would occasionally throw wads of currency notes into the air to the admiration of his long-suffering and starving compatriots.
Although two journalist colleagues, Tayo Awotusin (Concord Newspapers) and Kris Imodibe (Guardian), who had gone on war reporting in Liberia, were missing, later confirmed killed by Taylor’s NPFL forces, the journalist in us – Segun Aderiye and his camera crew from the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Kayode Komolafe (Guardian newspaper) and this writer, then working for News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) – could not resist a rare invitation by Johnson to visit his Caldwell base.
That mission almost proved costly. On our way, the convoy of five vehicles accosted a car. The driver stopped and Johnson ordered all three occupants out, and next was the point-blank shooting dead of one of the occupants, execution style.
We were stunned but still mustered the courage to ask Johnson why, and he only muttered in a heavy Liberian accent pidgin English: “He took my woman.”
From then on, the journalists knew they were in for trouble and anything could happen. As the convoy moved around the Free Port, it came across a woman clutching a small bag. Again, the sound of bullets rang out from Johnson’s pistol, this time, apparently not to kill but to maim. The bag, containing a small portion of rice, dropped from the woman’s wounded and bleeding hands. The explanation from the warlord was: “I give them enough rice/food, but they come to steal from the port.”
By this time, the journalists had had enough of a macabre spectacle they never bargained for, yet the journey was only halfway. Informing Johnson, we wanted to return to the ECOMOG base at that stage would amount to cowardice. So, we soldiered on!
The INPFL base was a collection of soldiers, women and children, some of whom Johnson introduced as his wives, biological and adopted children. He then grabbed his guitar to impress the journalists with his singing prowess. But as the day wore on, with darkness descending, fear welled up in the journalists about how to return to the ECOMOG headquarters. They had no means of communication.
Eventually, the journalists felt “liberated” after Johnson instructed some INPFL solders to escort us. Then, the unexpected happened. Between Johnson’s Caldwell base and the ECOMOG headquarters, a cacophony of gunfire erupted from an ambush by Taylor’s NPFL rebels. We were forced to pass the night at a school manned by ECOMOG troops and only returned to base the following morning, terrified.
On the day the journalists were to travel to Freetown from Monrovia to off-load the stories they had accumulated for several weeks, Johnson struck again at the ECOMOG base.
Doe had found his way to the ECOMOG headquarters that same day and somehow, Johnson got wind of it and stormed the ECOMOG base. A shoot-out ensued with everybody, soldiers and civilians docking to escape bullets. Doe was captured and taken away by Johnson and his men.
The rest they say is history. Johnson subjected the Liberian former president to unprintable torture before killing him and briefly claiming Liberia’s presidency.
While ECOMOG leadership had some explaining to do on what happened on that day, it was obvious that Johnson, who started cruising around Monrovia in Doe’s presidential limousine, would squander his goodwill with ECOMOG.
Following the change in ECOMOG leadership with Nigeria’s Gen Victor Malu, as the Commander, Johnson was removed from Liberia “in his interest” and moved to Nigeria in 1992.
Johnson and I crossed paths again during his years in Lagos and after I had left NAN to become the Bureau Chief for West Africa of the Pan-African Wire Service, PANAPRESS.
While in Nigeria, Johnson became a Christian and reportedly reconciled with the Doe family through the intervention of Nigerian Pastor T. B. Joshua.
At a stage in Lagos, he became a shadow of his old warlord self. “My brother,” Johnson would plead: “I want to go back to Liberia. I am grateful to the Nigerian government for the sacrifices to end the war in my country. Help me appeal to the authorities.”
I used the NAN/PANA Forum which I coordinated to ventilate his concerns until he was eventually allowed to return home following Taylor’s resignation as president and the installation of a Transitional Government of Liberia in 2004.
In the 2005 general elections, Johnson contested and won a Senate seat representing Nimba County.
In its June 2009 final report, Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) established as part of the 2003 peace deal recommended Johnson’s inclusion on a list of 50 people who should be “barred from holding public offices; elected or appointed for thirty (30) years,” for their roles in the civil war.
However, in January 2011, Liberia’s Supreme Court dismissed the ban as an unconstitutional. This paved the way for Johnson to run for the presidency as the candidate of the newly formed National Union for Democratic Progress (NUDP). He came third, with 11.6% of the vote in that election won by President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.
Ahead of the 2014 Senate election, Johnson was expelled from the NUDP but still won re-election as an independent.
By 2017, he formed a new party, the Movement for Democracy and Reconstruction (MDR), which supported the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) candidate George Weah in the subsequent presidential run-off vote, which Weah won.
In December 2021, Johnson was sanctioned by the United States Department of Treasury for alleged political corruption, claiming he would sell votes in elections for financial gains, allegations he denied.
Johnson was re-elected Senator in 2023 on the platform of the MDR, which this time switched support to the United Party candidate Joseph Boakai to win the presidency.
Ironically, the Boakai government is putting in place the machinery for the trial of Liberians implicated in the civil war. Johnson would have had a case to answer, but would now be watching political developments in his country from his grave.
Adieu Brother, Field Marshal, General, President PYJ!
As we commend all those who contributed to ending the civil war in Liberia, it is also in order, to bid farewell to soldiers, journalists, civilians and unsung ECOMOG Journalists who passed to glory during and after the war. Johnson’s death is another reminder that the living deserves recognition while alive.
•Ejime is a Global Affairs Analyst, War Correspondent and Consultant on Peace & Security, and Governance Communications.
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