He took on fatal advocacies as a teenager between early to mid 2000 for young people who lost their lives. In other instances, he raised his voice for justice and the wellbeing of every citizen particularly young people. These endeavors took place long before the name Jefferson Koijee made entry into the political limelight.
Jefferson Tamba Koijee, the 37 years old politician who is ruffling feathers of old politicians in Liberia would all of a sudden become a villain in the minds of those these political actors who see him as the biggest threat to their desperate quest for state power.
He would not be seen in the beer parlor or smoking like most of his critics. The name Koijee has never been mentioned in acts of corruption or backbiting but he is uncompromising in whatever he believes in and would do everything to stand by his words -work tooth and nail to ensure that his beliefs are sine qua non to anything that come in conflict with them.
Politicians will, notwithstanding, construe his adamant stance on his beliefs as license for being a troublemaker. At one point, he would be branded a “murderer” and at another, he would be called ring leader of a pseudo death squad. All of these tags have never been found to be true.
In all these tantrums, Koijee has been trudging through the tempest of storms ever since he came to political prominence. Having being cognizant of the absence of international security in Liberia due to the departure of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) just at the time when the George Weah’s Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) led government came to power. Jefferson Koijee employed a strategy to give former key players of the Liberian civil war a place to fend for their families no matter how small the efforts. This was necessary given the fact that although the war has ended but leaving these folks idle was a gamble the government would dare play because desperate politicians could use them to undermine the peace of the country. The young politician sees this as his way of giving the ex-fighters a stake in national development -the surest method that would underpin sustainable peace.
More than that, nobody saw it coming that a country like Liberia that is inundated with class system would have a “Koijee” as Mayor of the City of Monrovia. This has sent a shocking wave down the spines of traditional politicians so much that they are averring “you can’t give big people job to a small boy”. In effect, they are saying that the job of City Mayor only belongs to the elites and not the ordinary people. This, pundits believe, has been the prime source of the avalanche of attacks and slanders against the Mayor of Monrovia Jefferson Koijee -because every other accusations have proven futile including the one from the former Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Cllr. Jerome Verdier that he was a child soldier and requesting the International Criminal Court to prosecute him [Koijee]. The International Court found no basis to give the complaint credence because it lacked substance.
There are abounding evidence that Mayor Koijee in his days at Student Activist was among few young Liberians that worked with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to raise awareness about the need for warring factions to abhor any violence. “No matter how bad the economy of a nation is, it is always better to go to bed in peace than to toil in violence that would stall every good thing.
In the build up to the 2023 presidential and legislative elections, the dust is still not settling on these political maneuvering considering the gleam of their chances of clinching the power at the polls against the incumbent President Weah. They still don’t see that Koijee is a dark horse in the political arena of Liberia by conjecturing that he is heading a death cult to get rid of people deemed potential threat to President Weah’s re-election bid.
Again, the table is turning with testimonies coming from Liberians of all walks of life that a smoking gun that these politicians are on a blackmail spree.
