01/09/2026
I Love My SUP Business, Ay Yah Ay!
Article Written and owned By: George Kronnisanyon Werner, Former Education Minister
Today, the Student Unification Party (SUP)—the Vanguard Party—took paintbrushes to the University of Liberia’s Capitol Hill campus. To some, it looked like red graffiti splashed across weary walls. But that reading misses the point. This was not about aesthetics. It was political theater—deliberate, disruptive, and unmistakably a protest.
On social media, SUP members were explicit about the symbolism. They pointed to the Capitol Building—burned by fire and subsequently catered for in the national budget. They pointed to the Unity Party’s newly refurbished headquarters. And then they pointed to the University of Liberia: peeling paint, aging lecture halls, and infrastructure long overdue for a facelift. The comparison was intentional. The message was sharp.
This protest lands in a country that is overwhelmingly young. Liberia’s population is just over 5 million people. Roughly 3 million are under the age of 25, and close to 4 million are under 35. This is not a marginal demographic; it is the country itself. Yet youth unemployment and underemployment affect well over half of working-age young people, many surviving in informal, low-income, and unstable work. For millions, education is presented as the ladder out.
That ladder runs squarely through the University of Liberia.
UL enrolls close to 19,000 students and produces teachers, lawyers, engineers, economists, and public servants. It is the intellectual factory of the republic. Yet for decades it has struggled with chronic underfunding, overcrowded classrooms, outdated laboratories, deferred maintenance, faculty strikes, and irregular academic calendars that routinely stretch four-year degrees into six or seven.
Public budget information reinforces the point students are making. The Approved FY 2025 National Budget, totaling about US $851.7 million, allocated roughly US $119.7 million to the entire education sector. Within that envelope, UL received approximately US $33–34 million. While quarterly and mid-year ex*****on reports exist, the final FY 2025 outturn—what was actually released and spent in full—has not yet been published publicly. The approved figures, however, remain a valid benchmark for national priorities.
There is another dimension often overlooked in this debate: the University of Liberia has one of the strongest and most economically established diasporas in the country. UL alumni populate universities, hospitals, law firms, multilateral institutions, corporations, and governments across Africa, Europe, and North America. Many are well-resourced, professionally influential, and emotionally invested in the institution that shaped them.
And yet, the burden of sustaining UL cannot—and should not—fall on alumni goodwill alone. A strong diaspora is an asset, not a substitute for state responsibility. Alumni giving works best when it complements a credible public commitment, not when it fills gaps created by neglect. When classrooms crumble and infrastructure decays, even the most loyal diaspora hesitates—not out of indifference, but out of concern that contributions will be swallowed by systemic dysfunction rather than anchored in a clear national plan.
The irony of this moment is hard to ignore. The current Speaker of the House of Representatives, Richard Nagbe Koon, is a lecturer at the University of Liberia. Many lawmakers, ministers, commissioners, and senior officials are current or former UL students. Some continue to study there even now. This is not a distant problem affecting “other people’s children.” It is unfolding in the same classrooms where the political class teaches, studies, and earns credentials.
This is why SUP’s action resonates. When millions of young people are told to be patient, to get educated, and to wait their turn—while the very institution meant to prepare them visibly deteriorates—frustration finds expression. SUP understands symbolism. Painting the campus red was never about fixing walls. It was about forcing a national question into view:
Why does money move swiftly for political power, emergency prestige repairs, and party comfort, but stall when it comes to public education and youth futures?
Critics call the act vandalism. They speak of order, legality, and respect for public property. Those concerns deserve consideration. But they must be weighed against a harder truth: neglect is not neutral. When a state repeatedly finds resources for symbols of power while allowing its premier public university to decay—despite being staffed, attended, supported, and relied upon by the governing class—it is making a political choice.
In that sense, the red paint functions as a mirror. It reflects years of deferred maintenance, constrained financing, and a development model that treats youth as a demographic statistic rather than a national investment. SUP did not create that reality. It dramatized it.
There is something profoundly Liberian about this moment. Reform here has rarely come from polite requests alone. Students, workers, and ordinary citizens have often had to disrupt comfort to demand attention. SUP’s action sits squarely in that tradition. It reminds us that universities are not just spaces for lectures and exams; they are arenas where national priorities are contested.
Still, symbolism cannot substitute for solutions. Paint will not modernize laboratories, stabilize academic calendars, or create jobs for the millions of young Liberians entering the labor market. That responsibility lies with the state—supported by, but not outsourced to, a willing diaspora.
Until that happens, the red walls will keep speaking.
And for a generation that numbers in the millions—unemployed, underemployed, and impatient—the chant carries weight:
I love my SUP business, ay yah ay!
©️ 2026 George Kronnisanyon Werner. All rights reserved.
This article is the original work of the author. No part may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission, except for brief quotations with proper attribution for review, commentary, or academic purposes.
