Ghana’s government has congratulated Liberia on its 176th anniversary of independence.

“Indeed, if there is any country in West Africa that has shown resilience and the will to persevere in the face of numerous challenges and obstacles, there is no better example than Liberia.

“Furthermore, Liberia has the great distinction of being the only nation on the continent that has never suffered foreign colonisation,” President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said in a post on Facebook, on Thursday.

On the political front, President Akufo-Addo stated that Liberia has demonstrated excellent leadership in the organisation of free, credible and transparent elections since the implementation of the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

“I am confident that the impending presidential and legislative elections, due in October, will follow in this noble tradition.

“The people of ECOWAS wish you well in this regard,” President Nana Akufo-Addo said.

Meanwhile, the President of the ECOWAS Commission, Omar Touray and the Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, Sidie Tunis, have congratulated the Liberian government and people on their 176th anniversary of independence.

They expressed the Commission’s support for a fair and free general election in the country on October 10, 2023.

They made the remarks during a delocalized sitting of the ECOWAS Parliament’s Joint Committees in Monrovia, Liberia. Liberia is Africa’s first independent and oldest modern republic.

It was one of two African countries, along with Ethiopia, to retain sovereignty during the Scramble for Africa.

Liberia originated in the early 19th century as a project of the American Colonisation Society (ACS), which felt that black people would have better possibilities for freedom and prosperity in Africa than in the United States (US).

More than 15,000 liberated and free-born African-Americans, as well as 3,198 Afro-Caribbeans, relocated to the West African country between 1822 and the commencement of the American Civil War in 1861.

The settlers carried their culture and heritage with them as they gradually developed an Americo-Liberian identity.

As a result, the country declared independence on July 26, 1847, which the United States did not recognise until February 5, 1862.