Cut out mediocrity, Mahama/NDC. Ghana deserves better

Presidents and Ministers don't justify their achievements by listing the number of hospitals, traffic lights, school buildings and generating plants they have built and are building and. Every government does these things. Listing of achievements as NDC lazy intellectuals have been doing in the media/press of late is an insult to the intelligence of Ghanaians.

Such NDC childish tactics are not new. It is recalled that, in the same dirty vein, in 2011, the late President John Ata Mills carried this NDC cowdung politics into the international arena. When addressing the UN National assembly, President Mills, without shame was at his best telling the august assembly of Heads of States and top officials of international bodies about his achievements in the number of schools under trees he had converted into standard schools and the number of school uniforms distributed to school pupils. What have Ghanaians done to merit such low levels of mediocrity in national governance in these modern times? How can we be bombarded with a list of activities and achievements in national governance at that level?

Admittedly, even High school students know that at such high levels of analysis, indicators commonly used in economic management and governance are GNP Gross National Product, GDP Gross National Product, The growth levels of the economy, The debt management situation, THE debt/GNP ratio, the debt/GNP ratio, the poverty reduction levels etc. Towards the end of the last century the Millennium Development Goals MDG indicators also became vital or the norm. So in international circles, Presidential and Ministerial and High Profile governance levels, we expect to hear achievements of the administration on these lines for public analysis. It was against this backdrop that the previous Kufuor administration also saw governance in poverty reduction levels and developed the GPRS documents accordingly to guide his administration in the national and international political spectrum.

President Mahama gives the impression he is a good student of Mills and coping his meaningless examples. Theirs is always taking a line of least resistance and thereby depicting themselves as lacking vision. President Mahama himself is at it using this lazy approach listing activities performed and the garrulous Deputy Minister of Information, Hon Ofosu Kwakye and the impudent butterball Sam George, a so-called Presidential staffer and their uninformed propagandists, as if they have been regimented, are all over the radio/Tv doing the NDC lazy ways to bamboozle and confuse the people; listing projects such as; Kwame Nkrumah circle interchange, Awoshie-Pokuase dual road, Nungua dual, Kasoa Interchange, Burma Camp Dual road, Dansoman Dual road, East Legon-Madina Dual, Accra East Roads, Legon- Madina dual, Spintex Road, Ridge Hospital Expansion, University of Ghana Medical school Hospital, Tamale airport etc etc — to flaunt Mahama achievements in two years despite the fact that they were all Kufuor or Mills designed projects. (Whether these SOLE-SOURCED projects, contrary to the stipulations in the Procurement Act,2003 can pass proper audit called the VALUE FOR MONEY AUDIT is an issue which has to be tackled in another article. For instance, Tamale airport being expanded to international status costs $100m. In contrast, Ethiopia is building 3 new international airports at a TOTAL COST of $64m at 3 cities, namely, Hawassa, Robe Goba and Shire. Also the overlay of runway of Kumasi airport and establishing of landing lights cost a whopping $29m. Ghana is thus, clearly heading towards decimation under Mahama recklessness, arbitrariness and lawlessness).

Now, coming back to the main point of the indiscriminate listings of achievements, NPP should insist on asking the NDC communicators what Ghana has gained overall with those projects, as far as the economic indicators are concerned. For instance, these several projects are all there and the overall effect of those projects is growing the economy by a meagre 3.5% in the 2015 budget. It is a wonder how an amount of more than $25b have been pumped, internally and externally into the economy since 2009, the advent of Mills/Mahama, and the economy is rather sinking badly.

NDC are full of contradictions. How ironic. How perplexing. They are running an oil economy which they have used as a springboard and have thus succeeded to indiscriminately borrow nearly $20b- albeit at cut throat interests- in 6 years. Mahama forgets that the one who goes aborrowing indiscriminately goes asorrowing in the long run. They have all the projects going, as listed by their yobbos but the economy is still sinking in terms of growth. On the contrary, Kufuor administration, without these luxuries grew the economy consistently up to 8.5% by 2008. Mahama is sending the economic growth down to 3.5% in 2015 by their own budget projections despite his 1000 projects. Bank interest rates are rising in the face of all these projects. The ropes around the necks of private sector movers are getting tighter and tighter. Mahama and his cohorts, confronted with these bleak conditions, still contend they have done very well and arrogantly they want another term because they are listing projects, most of them unviable and uneconomic. Are we in the realm of recklessness, by heartism, bugabuga and mediocrity? Or we should say wanton and blatant misuse of the tax payers' resources whereby scarce public funds which can build four (4) hospitals are used to build only one (1). And similarly, funds which can build four (4) school buildings and four (4) international airports are used to build only one (1) of each?

Every government builds roads and hospitals. NDC should tell us how their 1000 expensive projects which defy scientific VALUE FOR MONEY ANALYSIS have affected the overall economy in growth, in debt relief management, in poverty reduction, in lifting the lives of the people, in the level of the cedi currency which has been described as one of the worst in Africa.

In any serious country of 20m people, if more than $25b has been sunk into the economy in 6 years, the economy should be seen to be fast-tracking in leaps and bounds. Mahama/NDC defy logic. They are a contradiction. They are a deceitful bunch of mindless and regimented propagandists. They list all their ''unprecedented'' propaganda 1000 projects and they can only grow the economy by 3.5%. This is shameful. The 3.5% economic growth for 2015 only pleases NDC foot soldiers, like the Central Region NDC Chairman Allotey Jacobs, one of the NDC By –heart butterballs who has put pintsized and visionless Mahama at the same level as Kwame Nkrumah.

Ghanaians are wide awake and the NDC will surely pay the electoral price for their recklessness, deceit and mediocrity -- come 2016. NDC do not love Ghana any more than NPP. The calling of NPP, who have been cautioning against recklessness, arbitrariness and unbridled misuse and stealing huge public funds; names such as; nation wreckers, matemeho, bomb throwers, saboteurs, wanting to make Ghana ungovernable, tribalists etc. will never help them again. Ghana must rise above mediocrity and name-calling.

John Yawose