Thomas Quiwonkpa

Thomas Quiwonkpa, a Gio from Nimba County, was a Commanding General of the Armed Forces of Liberia and founder of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia.

Born in the town of Zurlay in 1955, Quiwonkpa was the son of subsistence farmers. At the age of sixteen, he joined the AFL in order to further his life. After finishing high school in 1978 through a programme at the Barclay Training Center, he received an assignment to the AFL's records department. He first came to prominence on 12 April 1980 when he assisted Samuel Doe in a military coup that overthrew the Americo-Liberian government of William R. Tolbert, Jr. About a month later, the revolutionaries arrested AFL commander-in-chief Edwin Lloyd and other military leaders on charges of planning a countercoup. By mid-May, Quiwonkpa was proclaimed a major general and made the new AFL commander, although two months later he was using the title of brigadier general. Before long, he fell out with Doe; in 1983, Quiwonkpa was demoted and subsequently charged with an attempt to overthrow the Doe administration. The charges forced Quiwonkpa to flee the country.

On November 12, 1985, one month after elections were held, Quiwonkpa, supported by about two dozen heavily armed men, covertly entered Liberia through Sierra Leone, and launched a coup against President Doe. Bad timing, Quiwonkpa's unorthodox methods, and lack of support from the United States resulted in the disastrous failure of the uprising. Quiwonkpa was later captured, killed (November 15) and mutilated by Krahn soldiers loyal to President Doe. His killers then dismembered his body and reportedly ate parts of it. The body of the former AFL boss was publicly exhibited on the grounds of the Executive Mansion in Monrovia soon after his death.

Joe Wylie, later Deputy Minister of Defense in the NTGL, was among the group who launched the coup.

In a massive campaign of retribution against the coup plotters and their supporters, Doe's government launched a bloody purge against the Gio and Mano ethnic groups in Quiwonkpa's Nimba County, raising alarm about a possible genocide. Doe's slaughter of an estimated 3,000 people provoked ethnic rivalries that later fuelled the First Liberian Civil War.