Ghana at 58 - The Crossroad Reckoning!

The Founder of Ghana was deposed with an overdrawn bank balance less that 10 New Ghana Cedis by today's inflation index; with no Yamoussoukro Palace-Size Cathedral to pay homage to the colonial religions; with no modest house or apartment for a deserved family vacation in Brixton/England, Harlem/America, or Nkroful/Ghana. Forget about Switzerland, Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Syndicate Mansions, Grand Theft Bank Balances and Woyome-sized accounts, and Oteng-Adjei-Toyota-Luxury-Lexus to boot).

But military dictators-turned politicians and sundry absent-minded civilian politicians, since 1966, sold the productive assets to their friends and themselves and the people received little in return. The assets they kept they did not add to, maintain, or improve upon to today's standards and measures.

All 1960-era innovations and improvements in education and scholarship are long wasted and students, academics, politicians, and public administrators, among them judges and scientists, now operate with 17th century mindsets and prehistoric paraphernalia. Many are absent-minded about practical solutions even from the 20th century. They are unable to think directly or compose coherent prose and policy prescriptions without drowning themselves all out of size and place with Koranic and Biblical verses. So they await divine interventions and heavenly sacraments to feed the poorer multitudes, and to solve even Tree-School and Densu-Kiddie-drowning problems.

The Mahama-Bagbin-NDC syndicate, with Betty-Mould dark sunglasses, unwilling to win a simple Woyome fraudulent claim enough to electrify powerless factories and half-fill workers' now empty pockets, have no love for Ghana's Freedom of Information (FOI) Bill, contrary to their lying promises to the People one election year ago. Nor will same Mahama-Woyome-inspired syndicate ensure timely transparency of public contracts and obligations, contrary to healthy sunshine requirements and good governance principles. Asset Declaration they can never be bothered with! And so, they stay at arms-length from the waffling Auditor-Generals. The Auditor Generals, out of the kindness of their poor hearts, report to them on papers and letters with disappearing ink addressed to the incompetent Justice Minister. But the Justice Minister is not the peoples' justifier, we know. No, Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong just loves the part-time of the Attorney-General's hat and the title. Yes, the part she knows is most closer to where the Woyomi-type money and brew are, and real power, and good living off the voiceless people, away from pedestrians without shiny shoes for wheels.

And so it grinds on and on - One Dum-Sor Day to another Dum-Sor Night!

Still, the same Mahama-Bagbin-NDC government-syndicate,was unable to safely maintain and operate a single executive aircraft, or professionally report a single incident except with the voice of hitch-hiker "security-implications" Kofi Baako. So. all the other administrations after that maiden coup d'état of 1966, including the delusional and illiterate military juntas, all of them, left to the people themselves the important task of developing and implementing useful national development plans. But to all of that, they never provided funding streams half-sufficient for the tasks, in all the two generations, past.

And so, precious little of all that "development" was achieved compared to the decade before the overthrow, as the people looked at one another and wandered from one junta to the next, from one scandal government to another. The people, thenceforth amiss, wondered why projects long seen in the government turnover books at the level of the villager's eye (road-to-street, street-to-highway, schoolbuilding-to-airport runway and apron), all of that sat fallow as every expended capital withered in waste and Woyome-size losses to the state.

Opposite the tables with the losses to the state, the military juntas and their pseudo-intellectuals and sundry political personalities who never cared a pesewa about the common man and common woman, were all fit and healthy as they massaged themselves and each other's gigantic egos and swollen heads. They were comforted by their distended bank assets and accounts and dispersed their declarations to their nieces, nephews, friends, dogs, and long dead goats. Ever more ego-depraved personalities, assigned, then re-assigned, they are descending and sitting on the public scene and on the peoples' consciousness, in rudder and extra-unconscionable fashion, There are those who clutch their religion on their foreheads to shine as beacons of self-made success, answerable to themselves alone and their partners, children, friends.

And so, while the Mahama-Bagbin-NDC syndicate and all their top personalities ignore OccupyGhana, IMANI, and condone for the longest the thoughtless acts at CHRAJ in "Yentie" fashion, they nonetheless can still retreat to their taxpayer funded abodes to enjoy their good fortunes under their 10,000-Watt power generators. Yes, they've got power power, even if the Second Lady is remorseful.

But for the people, as rainy day follows harmatan night, eating, breathing, and drinking under Dum-Sor becomes an occupation by default. It is an occupation they must pay and repay in reverse, waiting for divine rain to drink, to bathe, and to fill-up Nkrumah's Dam to the pre-overthrow levels of that year. But the Mahama pseudo-intellectuals and sundry political personalities and communicators, those on the no-loss table, it is they who know that it is the people who have too many mobile phones.

It is they who are draining all the power with their mobiles and using so much of the available water, still. But, on this last "rain-gauge" point, according to Ananse the Spider, in reality, rain had been falling on Accra and on the Akosombo land like pregnant arrows, more than it ever did on and before the maiden military dictatorship that reared their subversive and crooked heads two generation, removed from today's people, their Visionary, Inspirer, and uncompromising defender.

So now, without jet-lag and any qualms, and in dead-goat-Asiedu-Nketia-fashion-coat style, Mr. Mahama, all the way from sunny and water-parched Botswana, at their Dikgathlong water lake, is rubbing it in for all of the people outside government without shiny shoes for wheels, or water, or and power power. Mr. Mahama is rubbing it all in deeper and deeper, redder and redder, bluer and bluer, and hollering with a pompous voice all out of place at his side of the Ghana table divide, shouting:

Africa Needs More Water, Botswana!

Africa Needs More Water, Botswana!

Africa Needs More Water, Botswana!

Africa Needs More Water, Botswana!

A record!. And what a fitting soundtrack for the next Osibisa-Bob Marley Wailers-Ramblers-Sonny Okosun heritage record and beat, with all the Jerry Hanson Horn Section trimmings:

-------------WATER&POWER CROSSROAD--------------------

Water and power crossroad, people, Oh, Yeah!

Wishing there was so much water and power in Ghana today

Wishing there was so much water and power in Ghana lady

Wishing there was so much water and power, people

Sim, yes, like so much Coffee in Brazil

Sim, yes, like so much Coffee in Brazil

Sim, yes, like so much Coffee in Brazil

Yes, yes, like so much water in Botswana dam

Water and power crossroad, people

Oh, Yeah!

---------------WATER&POWER CROSSROAD-------------------

Talking about could-have-beens, would-have-beens?

We must not be honest or serious with ourselves, with all the peoples' children, with the collective futures of all in Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana!

Or are we?

©Prof Lungu is Ghana-centered/Ghana-Proud. Prof Lungu is based in Washington DC, USA. Brought to you courtesy www.GhanaHero.com©15 Mar 15.