Summary: Janga Kowo, Congress for Democratic Change Acting Chairman, recently appeared in a live interview and claimed that the State-run University of Liberia and all public universities were benefiting from the tuition-free policy by this time (July 2018) when former President George Weah assumed office. We have fact-checked this claim and found it to be misleading.
On July 28, Jango Kowo, Acting Chairman of the Congress for Democratic Change appeared on Spoon Talk and claimed that by July 2018, the University of Liberia and all public universities were benefiting from a tuition-free policy introduced during former President George Weah’s regime.
His statement was a comparison between the achievements of former President Weah during his first six months in office with that of the current President Joseph N. Boakai.
His exact words were: “The University of Liberia was enjoying free tuition by now and all other public universities around the country”.
“The National Examinations that cost each student around 60 United States Dollars was free, the government was financing that.” The claim was made here at 2:16:58 on the show.
It is important to note that former President Weah was sworn into office on January 22, 2018.
Rating Justification
To verify this claim, we conducted an extensive online search of press releases, news contents, videos, and articles regarding former President Weah’s declaration of the free tuition policy at the University of Liberia and all public universities.
We found a video on the Facebook page of the Executive Mansion dated October 25, 2018, titled: President Weah Declares Free Tuitions at Public Universities.
An excerpt from the video shows the former president saying: “I, therefore, wish to declare tuition-free for all undergraduate students at the University of Liberia as well as all other public universities in Liberia”.
The video was a coverage of President Weah’s visit to the Capitol Hill campus of the University of Liberia where he made the free-tuition pronouncement.
Other relevant sources to confirm the time the tuition-free pronouncement was made by President Weah can be found here, here, and here.
Conclusion
Based on this, we conclude that the claim by Mr. Kowo is misleading. President Weah did not declare free tuition for public universities by this time (July) in 2018.
Evidence gathered from online sources including the Executive Mansion Facebook page shows that the tuition-free policy was announced on October 25, 2028 – nine months into the administration of former president Weah.
This report is produced with funding from the USAID Media Activity. The funder has No say in the editorial decisions leading to the production of this content
