Ernest Addison
As far back as anybody old enough can remember, the post of Governor of the Bank of Ghana, our nation’s central treasury, has always been held by government appointees directly named by the extant President of our Republic. When President John Agyekum-Kufuor exited the scene, he did so with Dr. Paul Acquah, whom he had appointed to the post.
At the time, the now-Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia was one of the several Bank of Ghana Deputy Governors. To be certain, it was Dr. Bawumia who headed the committee that supervised the Cedi Re-Denomination Exercise. So poorly had Chairman Jerry John Rawlings and his cronies managed the economy that the cedi had lost most of its value; it had effectively become what economists call “shinplaster.” One needed a giant brief case or a portmanteau in order to carry the cedi equivalent of just $ 100 (one-hundred dollars).
I don’t ever recall President John Evans Atta-Mills asking Dr. Bawumia to take over the governorship of the Bank of Ghana. President Mills had promptly named his fellow Fante clansman as Bank of Ghana Governor. Indeed, at the time when the possibility of Dr. Bawumia’s being named to the post was raised, this very idea was swiftly and sharply shot down by the vindictive and cynical likes of Messrs. Koku Anyidoho, Johnson Asiedu-Nketia and Kofi Adams.
The fact that Dr. Bawumia had paired up with then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on the presidential ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), was mentioned as a good and the most salient reason why the Oxbridge-educated Dr. Bawumia had to be denied the job. Nobody among the vanguard ranks of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) listed the professional competence of the Mamprugu native as a desirable performance trait or quality that needed to be seriously considered.
“You starve your enemy; you don’t feed him fat so that he may grow stronger and defeat you at the next general election,” went the mantra of the leadership of the National Democratic Congress. But even more importantly must be highlighted the fact that at the time that he was selected as the running-mate of then-Interim President John Dramani Mahama, Mr. Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, another of the Cape Coast boys and buddy of the late President Mills, was the substantive Governor of the Bank of Ghana.
Were Mr. Amissah-Arthur just a professional public servant, as Mr. Kofi Portuphy, the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, would have Ghanaians believe, why would he had been rushed in to fill the vacuum left on the NDC’s 2012 presidential-election ticket? The fact of the matter is that Mr. Amissah-Arthur was readily selected as the running-mate of Interim-President Mahama, because the former was a card-carrying member of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress, and not merely a “professional public servant,” as Chairman Portuphy would have unsuspecting Ghanaians believe.
It is also widely known that both Dr. Henry Wampah, another one of the Fante-Cape Coast boys, and the latter’s successor, Dr. Abdul Nashiru Issahaku, are both card-carrying members and/or passionate partisans of the National Democratic Congress.
And so what is so terribly wrong about President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s asking Dr. Abdul Nashiru Issahaku to step down so that the former BoG Governor, who also happens to share the same ideological suasion with former President Mahama, his homeboy and bosom buddy, could be promptly replaced with someone who shares the same neo-liberal market-oriented ideological principles and policies with both President Akufo-Addo and the property-owning democratic operatives of the ruling New Patriotic Party?
Indeed, it is rather pathetic to observe that the proprietary arrogance or arrogant sense of entitlement on the part of NDC leaders like Mr. Portuphy has conveniently blinded them to their idolatrous and dogged practice of hermetic partisan political culture. And this is why they tend to envisage President Akufo-Addo and the members of his administration as second-class citizens.
And precisely why are these NDC apparatchiks so desperate to have Mahama appointees dominate the Akufo-Addo government, if they were not hell-bent on systematically sabotaging the same? The fact of the matter is that “professional public servants” like Dr. Abdul Nashiru Issahaku are ideological socialists and faux-socialist ideologues whose perspectives on how to grow and advance Ghana’s economy are divergent and diametrically opposed to the free-market neo-liberalism of the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party.
We must also highlight the fact that his ethnicity and his northern natal provenance, may well have heavily factored into the appointment of Dr. Issahaku as Governor of the Bank of Ghana. After all, hasn’t it been said innumerable times that “Birds of same feathers flock together”? Mr. Portuphy and his deviously scheming associates cannot fool levelheaded Ghanaians one bit.
