Ghana faces imminent implosion - Kofi Bentil warns

News Desk Report Kofi Bentil, Vice President of IMANI-Ghana, yesterday warned that the nation faces an imminent implosion, following the failure of the middle class to check the mismanagement of the nation’s resources by the political class. Mr Bentil, who is also a legal practitioner, fears a day will come when the neglected and forgotten sections of the society will rise up and demand their share of what is good, adding that they will see the middle class as collaborators of the politicians. “They will march on us and slaughter us,” he warned.

Speaking on Joy FM, he noted that the current situation where people are compelled to find personal solutions to the difficult public problems, rather than demanding accountability from the appropriate authorities, was unsustainable.

He therefore challenged the middle class to their economic and intellectual power to hold the political elite accountable when public services are not being provided in the right quantities and quality deserving of the people.

Mr Bentil accused Ghanaian leaders of lacking character, passion and trust, adding that a leader “is somebody who has the character, you know it is not within him to cheat you and he has the passion to achieve something…The reason why we have the society we have right now is because our leaders have cast out restraint; they are thinking about themselves only; we don’t trust them.”

He challenged the middle class to take immediate steps to demand concrete results from the political elite, adding: “Every country is built from the middle; the middle class of educated and politically aware elite demand things of the political class.”

Mr Bentil regretted that “the middle class that must demand things of our colleagues who are in government has checked out.”

“What they have done is [that they have] gotten themselves jobs that pay well, so they don’t feel exactly the way everybody feels in the market; they’ve got themselves polytanks so they are able to get water all the time; they’ve gotten themselves gen sets so when the lights go off they switch them on; they’ve gotten themselves private hospitals, they can call their friends who are doctors to come and give them treatment at home. So somehow we live in this country but some people don’t feel [the problems and the pain others go through],” he emphasized.

The educated, economically secured, he argued, must therefore start demanding answers from the politicians. A good point to start, he suggested, is cutting the privileges of the political class, adding “there should be no minister who has to fly out of the country for medical reasons; if you have to do that, you have to pay for yourself.”