By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Jan. 1, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
His New Year’s Message was terse and simple and of the predictable sort. Still, it was quite poignant and meaningful if also because it was the unvarnished truth. I also hope that the man who appointed him to the job would take a cue from Mr. Amin Amidu Sulemani, the Upper-West Regional Minister, in the heated lead-up to Election 2016. An apparent wise man that he is, Mr. Sulemani stressed the fact that the greatest enemy facing his people was three-fold, namely, poverty, disease and ignorance (See “Our Greatest Enemy Is Poverty, Ignorance – UW Minister” JoyNews.com / Modernghana.com 1/1/16).
The same could be aptly said for the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian people. Mr. Sulemani was also quick and shrewd enough to point out that 2016 is an election year, which means that there is bound to be a lot of frenzied activities on the national political front. The implication here, of course, is that whatever side of the political divide they may belong to, Ghanaians would do themselves and the destiny of their nation great good if in making ideological and partisan political decisions, they also bore in mind the need to vote for the party with a track-record of being relatively more effective at tackling the fundamental issues of poverty, disease and ignorance.
In simple terms, which of the two major political parties has a proven track-record of having remarkably enhanced the quality of life and the general living standards of the Ghanaian people? Closely linked to the latter, of course, is the sticky question of employment opportunities for the nation’s youth, particularly those who have studiously and meticulously followed all the laid-down rules for achieving success and prosperity in society and life but, nonetheless, find themselves stuck on the gray margins of mainstream society and are acutely threatened with penury and destitution.
The problem of disease is obviously inescapably linked to that of poverty, which readily brings into sharp focus the track-record of both the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) vis-à-vis the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). I very much doubt that the Upper-West’s Regional Minister would agree with me on this count, but the fact of the matter is that it is his own party, the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress, that has done comparatively much less to advance the healthcare system and industry in the country. For instance, when the idea of a National Health Insurance Scheme was originally tabled on the electioneering campaign agenda by the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party, Messrs. Mills, late, and Mahama promptly shot down this noble proposal as a pipe-dream.
The irony here, though, is that both the late University of Ghana Law School professor and his lieutenant, also a graduate of the same institution, claimed to be bona fide “social democrats.” They would also zealously and shamelessly continue to push the Cash-and-Carry healthcare agenda that was absolutely no progressive public healthcare policy at all, but one that may well have resulted in the deaths of more Ghanaians than any single deadly epidemic that has ravaged our country since the postcolonial era.
On the educational front also, the erstwhile Mills-Mahama regime, and now Mahama/Amissah-Arthur government, has focused almost exclusively on the construction of school buildings at the same time that it has callously stripped teacher-trainees of their allowances, with the general working conditions of the Ghanaian educator, at all levels, worsening by the day. For instance, educators at our tertiary academies have had to threaten the government with industrial action on a yearly basis in order to have their research and book allowances, or professional incentives, paid up by a government that claims to have done more to advance the quality of our nation’s educational system since independence than any other government.
In his New Year’s Message, Mr. Sulemani also underscored the glaring fact that as a people, our present living standards left too much to be desired for us to have the luxury of playing politics with our destiny. But, of course, what the Upper-West’s Regional Minister did not directly say, but may very well have implied, is the incontrovertible fact that there is at least one better political and / or ideological alternative to the democratic governance of the country besides the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress. And that more viable alternative, of course, is the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party.
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