Dear President Mills

Dear President Mills,

You have had a chance to prepare well as Vice President, and two campaigns, before taking office, and one would have expected you to hit the ground running with all your projects being managed under the right managers and directors, right from Jan. 2009 and by this time yielding fruits to show for a re-election.

As of now Ghana does not even have a street addressing and real property identification system, and no national identification number system by which one can computerize and do budgetary, economic and any future planning such as retirement. People living in affluent areas who can afford to pay, are denied reliable electricity, water, libraries and public parks, decent roads and covered sewage systems as you have seen done in other nations you have lived and visited. Everything is so centralized that even rich towns like Abetifi, where there is a Presbyterian University, does not have an elected town council who have power to budget and plan for the needs of the town and waiting for you to dish out some money to them to get upgraded equipment and expansion of their water system. Since the system was established in the 1960s under Nkrumah, just as in Accra, there has been no major expansion of the supply water! Are we not the same human beings as in other nations to plan and to deliver and empower our people to do for themselves?

Mr. President, decentralization should have been the first thing for you to do if you sincerely loved the people of Ghana to empower them and not merely control them as being done during the dictatorship of Jerry Rawlings of which unfortunately you worked!

In addition road and bridge tolls collected were given to private companies who have pocketed the money and not benefitted the State. Add this to the massive awards to private individuals for so-called breach of contracts, amounting to over $100 million, and you should have known that people would not be happy for these.

I am not sure if you will get to read these sincere comments but I met you personally when you were at Stanford as a student and we have mutual friends. I have to tell you the truth. The people around you are going to be the same people who will let you down when history is written. It is up to you how that history is written but up to date in about 88% of the time allotted to you in your first term, water and electricity in our cities are still on the list of top problems showing your performance in solving problems and delivery of basic infrastructures for development has been very poor and unsatisfactory. Some of us have to liquidate our assets in Ghana due to these issues and using petrol or diesel generators in the finest areas of the capital city is not a good testimony of your better Ghana Agenda.

All the best, even though I wish you had not sought a re-election.

(Submitted Sunday May 6, 2012 at 10:23am at: http://www.presidency.gov.gh/ask-president )

Kwaku A. Danso, M.Eng., PhD

Livermore, California, USA & East Legon-Accra, Ghana

President - Ghana Leadership Union (NGO), Moderator-GLU and GLF Forums.

http://groups.google.com/group/glu-ghana-leadership-forum?hl=en?hl=en

Author: Leadership Concepts and the Role of Government in Africa: The Case of Ghana