Controversy Unlimited: Karma and The Ghost of Limann

Calus Von Brazi

One fine day in the year 1998, the British Broadcasting Corporation aired a programme which the presenter ended with the following words: “unlike many other places, in Africa when an old man dies, a whole reference library is wiped away”. I have kept this in memory for so long, maybe because I love history to bits, so much so that I have created a bank of institutional memory on so many events in this Land of Our Death. It has been said severally, that Ghanaians have short memories and although there might be some truth in that statement, it is also true that not all Ghanaians have short memories. By the Grace of Jehovah who makes his Holy Spirit cause us to remembrance, some of us have escaped the realm of forgetfulness, so that we have been preserved to remind those who need reminders about what once upon a time, Ghana was and with that, get a better understanding of the reasons for which certain occurrences have become unavoidable.

Once upon a time, we had a litany of military governments, following each other in rapid succession. Indeed between the years 1970 and 1979, when many people of voting age in this country were not even blood clots circulating in the loins of potential fathers and mothers as they then were, Ghana was unfortunate enough to be saddled with as many as six, yes six governments, four of which were military that had seized the reins of political power through violent means. These governments of the military nomenclature had the unfortunate lot of having to cope with the two most famous crude oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, the reasons for which the entire so-called Third World found itself firmly ensconced within the clutches of stifling indebtedness, at the same time as the oil economies of this world reaped a massive windfall of profits, some of which the wise used for development and the foolish used for arms buildups, the same way that the rather bellicose man in Caracas is arming his country to the teeth, even as his counterpart in Dubai is turning his patch of desert into an earthly paradise so that when the oil runs out, his country can survive on tourism. In 1979 however, the good people of Ghana, having fought the military dictatorships for sometime again opted for the ballot box, despite the scheming and manipulation of the Operation Feed Yourself Czar, who propounded a theory of Union Government, as if Ghana was disunited at the governance level. Of course by that weird proposal, General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong had unwittingly shoved the majority of Ghanaians into a pact to rid the state of his doomed programme and with it, any semblance of military participation in the political affairs of the state. It is within this context that his successors, namely General Akuffo and Flight Lieutenant Rawlings all served briefly as Heads of State before handing over political power to the duly elected Government of the Third Republic of Ghana under the Presidency of Dr. Hilla Limann. That is where the thrust of this article really is.

Largely through a twist of fate, Dr. Limann was yanked from relative obscurity to political prominence, having served as a top-notch diplomat for the State of Ghana in several places. It is plausible that his relative obscurity within the political circles of Ghana gave some forces the erroneous impression that he would be a pushover, someone who was needed just for the winning of an election and thence confined to the realm of protocol while the real power brokers went about their frenzied business of pursuing parochial interests to the detriment of the nation. Unfortunately for such people, Limann knew the import of his elevation to the high office to which he had sworn an oath, hence his diplomatic way of rebuffing all subtle attempts to neutralize his Constitutional powers or influence his programme of action. This failure to hold him captive to the machinations of centrifugal forces within his party is what began the slide into the abyss for the last remaining true incarnation of Kofi Nwaiah’s party.

Schemers and Schemes

Under the guise of reining in errant appointees of the People’s National Party and checkmating those who were made to look like professional kleptomaniacs in the PNP government, certain political godfathers of that tradition unveiled a plan of action aimed at securing their interests, notwithstanding Limann’s “intransigence” and with that, unexpectedly activated the self-destruct button. Agitations of unreasonable nature were induced against a government that had to cope with the concomitant effects of the aforementioned oil shocks of the 1970s, especially that of 1979, which itself was created by the seizure of 52 American diplomats and their confinement for a total of 444 days by the Khomeini led Islamic regime in Tehran, with the US imposing sanctions against Iran, bungling of the rescue operation, itself leading to the fall of Jimmy Carter and the rise of Ronald Reagan to political power in the US. The significance of this recollection is to point us to the challenges faced by the infant government of Dr. Limann, given that Ronald Reagan, having been prevented by Congress to raise additional taxes, had to find a clever way of funding his promise to bring the “Evil Empire” down, thereby prompting his Federal Reserve Chief Paul Volker to increase interest rates within the US. That action, as all political economists would attest to, had the effect of attracting dollars across the globe to the center and thereby further emasculated hemorrhaging economies such as Ghana’s. How then could Limann have performed the ‘magic’ he did if not by sheer determination? Is it not the case that within the 27 months of his Presidency, he managed to buy 3 ships for the Black Star Line, the only DC 10 we ever owned as a nation and removed the embargoes placed on Ghana by the international community? Did he not begin the process of stabilizing the cedi and with that, the economy at large? Yet, his recourse to our drawing rights as a sovereign nation under the IMF is what so infuriated some of the very people who hailed the PNDC’s subsequent swallowing of that pill to the extent of facilitating his overthrow.

Karma vs. Ghost

Today, we are where we are, as Dr. Nduom would say. The Youth Wing of the PNP (as recent events in some contemporary political parties are starting to show) was instigated, induced and provided with the wherewithal to make governance ungovernable for Limann and his Cabinet Ministers. Spreading their tentacles further, the reactionary forces within the PNP succeeded in getting Limann’s budget thrown out and increased agitations within the worker front. These series of events, in addition to the defiant stance of the Youth Wing of the PNP culminated in that (in) famous conference at Labone Secondary School where in my humble opinion, the ‘death sentence’ of the PNP government and Dr. Limann as a person were effectively sealed. It thus was a matter of time for the December 31 1981 coup to take place as the grounds had been adequately prepared for a quasi-national de facto “no confidence” indirect vote to be meted out to the PNP. I shall not recount herein, aspects of this Limann debacle vis-à-vis the role of the likes of the late Colonel Winfred Annor Odjidja and several others for security reasons. What I shall assert however is that it was not surprising for the leaders of the PNP Youth Wing, including Messrs Ato Austin and the like to find themselves as Secretaries of State in the immediate aftermath of the coup. If my own Uncle Ato Ahwoi and his friends Totobi Quakyi among others gained national political prominence in the early 1980s, it certainly had a lot to do with “Labone and its aftermath”.

Payback

Today, we are at the same position Dr. Limann faced in 1981, with very little modification. The very people who spearheaded the man’s unfortunate demise from within his own party are themselves at positions of trust while the current Youth Wing leaders and activists of their beloved NDC party baying for their white blood cells. Interestingly and rather coincidentally, these occasionally irate groups of youthful activists are publicly calling for the self-same Flight Lieutenant Rawlings as Founder of the National Democratic Congress to “come to their aid”. Is that Dr. Limann’s ghost serving a dose of their own potpourri? Or is it just Karma catching up several minutes too early? Take it that Ghana has indeed found oil, which as stated in earlier articles cannot flow to us before 2012; is that a good backdrop against which Limann’s troubled ghosts is exacting revenge on Uncle Ato for example who Chairs the Board of the GNPC? I was never a science student till fairly recently when for certain reasons, I had to brush up on some things. One of the facts I found out was a certain Newton’s Third Law, which states inter alia that action and reaction are equal and opposite. Are we about to experience the full fury of this Newton principle? Is it a case of Limann having the last laugh at those who think they have gotten away with their machinations against him, at least while we stay here on this earth? Are coming events casting their shadows long before the day of reckoning comes? When the NDC at Sekondi in 1998, inserted the “Founder’s Clause” in its Constitution, against the protestations of Clend Sowu, who was labeled “Reform” at the time, was Limann smiling at the beginning of their end from his Gwollu grave, having died on January 23 of that same year? Did Ato Austin leave any warnings to his colleagues to make restitution at least to the family of Dr. Limann before taking leave of us? How can the restless youth of the umbrella party be pacified in the midst of nothingness when they can clearly see the “Team B” players and “Greedy Bastards” smiling their way to the banks at their expense and telling them strange stories that do not gel with what they are seeing?

I have always maintained that Flight Lieutenant Rawlings, like John Kufuor after him, despite his shortcomings has always meant well for Ghana, even if it is hidden under some strange ways of doing things and ends up being too costly to the lives, aspirations and liberties of our people. His close associates have never stopped trying to convince us that he has copious doses of compassion in his solid frame, which they justify by his donations to the University of Development Studies, his adoption of some children and a host of other examples too numerous to mention. Now what makes anyone think, that his compassion for the youth of his party would cease or diminished, ostensibly because the party and candidate he campaigned for now control the levers of political power, or simply because he dislikes “Greedy Bastards” some of who he appointed and elevated from rags to riches in the first place, or that he must be blinded by the misguided antics of “Team B” players? I hasten to add that if former President Rawlings is the self-same person who sang “we no go sit down make them cheat us everyday” with the workers of Ghana in times gone by, we can be sure, that willy-nilly, he will make his peace with Dr. Limann not because he has necessarily regretted removing him from power, but more because as it is, not a single shred of evidence has been brought against Limann or any of his appointees till today, ironically while some “Greedy Bastards” are bastardizing the tenets of June 4 and December 31 with reckless abandon just because they happen to have found themselves in close proximity to the levers of Ghanaian political power. The form that peace-making deal will take excites me no end: the chickens have come home to roost in a loosely organized orgy of retribution, Karma and the calculated games of a ghost that fortunately or unfortunately, is definitely bound to have the last laugh against the sons of men. Jehovah Naheh have mercy on those who would be smitten in the unavoidable coming inferno.