AFCON 2023: Govt's ineptitude partly to blame for Black Stars failure - Moshake

A staunch member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Stephen Ashitey Adjei is asking Ghanaian football lovers to save their laments over the poor performance of the senior national team in the ongoing African Cup of Nations.

In a write-up reacting to the development, Mr. Stephen Ashitey Adjei, alias Moshake, said the loss is just a small part of the repercussions of curses that have come to beset the nation due to injustice and political wickedness.

“Ghana is suffocating under multitudes of curses because of the wicked injustice that we have come to culturalize as a country. You can’t have a situation where many people, including us, former employees of the GPHA, have been denied our rights while as much as US$8.5million was voted for the disastrous AFCON campaign by the Black Stars,” Moshake wrote.

According to him, the same repercussions is the reason why Ghana’s economy has been in a mess and patriotism has become scarce.

“Until our political leaders start being just and stop oppressing the poor, we will continue to wallow in the dishonour on every major global stage”Moshake’s take comes in the wake of revelations that a whopping US$8.5million, cedi equivalent of over Ghc105million, was the amount that was voted for the disastrous AFCON campaign.

This huge budget, Moshake points out, was voted for the soccer campaign when many poor people in the country have not been paid basic wages.

“Take us for instance, we were retrenched by the Kufuor government in 2002 without our benefits. We have fought for justice since then, and in response, President John Mahama sabotaged a process that was started by former president Mills to pay us. Do you think that the universe will be happy over such wickedness?”

In the period of the injustice, some of the ex-workers have died, some have lost families, some have become bed-ridden from sickness while a couple have gone mad.

“God’s blessings cannot be on a nation which is so wicked to its poor and marginalized.

John Mahama and Kufuor who made sure that we were not paid our severance benefits have received their ex-gratia and have since also been receiving their pension.

How do you expect things to go well?”

According to him, “the nation is wicked and it is paying for the wickedness it has been inflicting on the poor and less privileged.

The Black Stars disgraceful campaign is just one of the many ways that the nation is paying for its sins.”

Reiterating his advice, Moshake said the country has to go back to a system of fairness and social justice.

“This will not be difficult to do because we already have exemplary leaders like the late President John Evans Atta Mills who took the cause of the poor, and demanded that the state be accountable.”

“President Mills was the only president who sought justice for the GPHA ex-workers for instance, issuing a fiat for them to be paid before suddenly dying in office in 2012.

John Mahama who took over from Mills ignored the ex-workers case as a result of which they have still remained unpaid two decades after the retrenchment.

May God touch the heart of President Akufo-Addo to ensure that stubborn obstacles at GPHA and the Ministry of Transport are removed”, Moshake wrote.