Reading and listening to comments made in the media and by friends, Ghana seems to be gripped by a pleasant euphoria over the nearly $550 million Millennium Challenge award (MCA) that has been bestowed on the people by the US government. The country’s ecstasy is understandable. It is all right to relish this once-in-a-lifetime award. This is great news for Ghana, considering the uniqueness of the award, the source, and the planned targets for the use of the funds.
For a small up-and-coming country like Ghana, this award is much more than a drop in the bucket. Its materiality, its significance shows how far we have come in a very short time. If all go as promised, Ghanaians should begin to notice signs of MCA’s implementation soon. Yes, the Ghana government has committed itself, according to President Kufuor, to take the lead in providing progress reports on direct spending targets to the people and to the US government without being asked, if that’s what Mr. Kufuor means by transparency. Used wisely and without the taint of corruption and blatant thievery, solid expansive development structures can be erected as a springboard for further steady socio-economic growth across the country.
But, if history serves me right, I can clearly picture how a few corrupt officials are salivating right now, slobbering all over themselves, and cannot wait to get their paws on these funds.
Seriously, though Ghanaians may be ecstatic over the MCA award, there is no need for outward glee and open merrymaking. We should not jump up and down in joy but we should from this time forward pinch and remind ourselves regularly that every foreign aid by a superpower has more than tolerable strings attached. And that those proverbial strings are usually wrapped tightly around the receiving countries much longer than the duration of the award. Remember the old adage: For whom much is given, much is expected! History also cautions us to be wary of all gifts and the expected price to be paid.
The reasons for self control come from the words of the personalities involved in the award ceremony. First of all, President Kufuor is quoted as saying “…the [Ghana] Government retains an oversight commitment to ensure the resources are transparently and effectively deployed.” GHANAIANS SHOULD ALWAYS REMEMBER TO HOLD THE CURRENT AND FUTURE GOVERNMENTS TO THIS VERY SERIOUS COMMITMENT.
Secondly, listen carefully to the US Secretary of State, Dr. Condoleezza Rice when she says: “More than just good intentions, President Bush [the US government] wants real results that transform the lives of the poor.”
And then, from the Chief Executive Officer of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, Ambassador John Danilovich, comes this most important advice: “We are confident that Ghana will continue its commitment to good governance and to building and strengthening the institutions that will deliver results to the Ghanaian people.”
With nearly $550 million in hand, it is necessary for Ghanaians to pay attention to these words, not let up but to hold your government to the highest standards of accountability concerning this award. This means that Ghanaian authorities (all of them), according to Dr. Rice and Ambassador Danilovich, should be on their best behavior or these good tidings can whittle away as quickly as they appeared.
Why caution Ghanaian authorities over this award? Because the country has recently swallowed a bitter pill in its economic restructuring in order to get to where it is today. A much more serious answer lies in the behavior of the African political, military, and other law enforcement leaders who are notorious for having callously and without care soiled their reputations by their skillful connivance in diverting state resources for themselves and their cronies.
At the top of the most conspicuous and offensive theft and misuse of foreign aid by African leaders is the example of Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. This man’s personal fortune was estimated to have amounted to nearly $5 billion at the time of his death in 1997. It was mostly American aid that shored him up and protected his reign. He managed to siphon off so, so much of Zaire’s wealth and diverted almost all of the foreign aid funds into his personal bank accounts in Switzerland. He build for himself and his family mansions in Europe and many palaces in Zaire and owned a fleet of super-luxury vehicles while his country defaulted on international loans, infrastructure in Zaire collapsed, and his people mired in poverty, starved and died. All of this was possible because during the cold war period, Mobutu’s inexcusable transgressions were conveniently overlooked and it was the means by which the prevailing superpower enhanced its imperialist hold on the continent. The superpowers, both western and eastern, turned a blind eye to all forms of abuse by Africans on the African continent as long as the imperialists were in control.
The culture of corruption, especially theft in office, has always been massaged and encouraged by both western and eastern superpowers, in their cold war battles, so much so that it has embedded itself solidly in the African psyche up to today, and it has now become extremely difficult to remedy.
Now, what Ambassador Danilovich is trying to tell Ghanaians is that we should all cherish and protect the enormous changes that have taken place in Ghana in the last fifteen or so years, though these changes have not succeeded in eradicating the endemic theft and corruption in the country. Still, the culture of open corruption is on its way out and the old ways of doing business should stop if Ghana desires any semblance of sustainable social and economic improvements. After many years of continent-wide disruptions and instability fraught with social, political and economic imbalances topped off with numerous violent military interventions, Ghana now enjoys a decent democracy, however fledgling. It has expanded print, electronic and broadcast media in order to promote the freedom of speech, and the ever-growing access to communication tools such as land and mobile phones. Transportation systems are slowly improving, and the people are gradually being introduced to today’s technology.
The other implied message behind Ambassador Danilovich’s statement is that Ghanaians should not ease off on the pressures that are now directed to the entrenched corrupt authority figures, groups, old ineffective institutions, government agencies, and old practices that have allowed, since independence, for the ease with which sanctioned bad behavior occurs at the top with impunity. They (the corrupt thieving officials) equally deserve the current barrage of criticism coming at them from the citizens who now do it without fear of crass, illegal, and brutal retribution.
The discomfort and embarrassment that are generated from the constant hammering of individual politicians, law enforcement personnel, the legal system, and even regular civil servants to change their old ways indicates that only unrelenting steady barrage of constructive attack will bring about real change in the country. Ghanaians should always seek to protect and expand on the newly established democratic and media institutions.
It will be the demise of the whole country to allow these excellent freedoms to slip away. It is only a generation ago that we lived with a single radio station, a single television channel, and only a handful of land telephones available to a select few. Those were the bygone days when conditions made it possible for any hot-headed soldier to take up arms and violently affect a change in the government. All that was needed at that time was to seize the seat of government, the single radio and television station, and arrest and, at the soldiers’ whim, execute politicians and notable Ghanaian personalities in order to consolidate their violent control over the vulnerable. After that they stayed in power for God knows how long.
The idealistic and sometimes honorable intentions for change and realignment of the prevailing power imbalance that usually drove these soldiers to the use of violence to overthrow governments dissipated soon after they assumed power. They even became extremely corrupt. The African soldier-politician has been found to be even more corruptible than the career politician. The clear difference is that the soldier carries a deadly weapon and his nemesis does not. They don’t often get the opportunity to fight external wars to protect their countries, so they turn their pent up frustrations on their own people under the righteous guise of doing good for their country. This turns the African soldier into a much more brutal crook than the career politician. Mobutu does not stand alone. Numerous examples are well documented all over Africa .
In addition to protecting the institutions currently in place in Ghana to foster stability and growth, there are other concerns that the whole country needs to consider and examine seriously. Ghana’s recent political and economic fortunes are now well known in Africa, and that Europeans, Americans, and Asians have also begun to take notice. The concern here is that, just as much as we are responsible for our own destiny, we should not be so self-centered as to become an island unto ourselves in our drive for stability and progress. Ghana cannot sustain a lasting political and economic growth in isolation of its neighbors. Of course, we have no choice as to our location and each African nation-state cannot help but forge ahead somewhat independently with its own growth policies. It is not Africa’s fault that each independent heterogeneous nation-state on the continent was dreamed up and drawn up by our former colonial masters. We have to live with our foreign-imposed constraints until someday when we may reach the ‘promised land’ or the ‘utopia’, well known as AFRICAN UNITY. In the meantime, any progressive achievements in Ghana surely places the country in a competitive advantage over its struggling neighbors and our singular upward mobility may end up to be our own worst enemy if we ignore the region.
Ghana has already experienced what the author terms as an ‘economic hemorrhage.’ Nature is conditioned to seek greener pastures wherever they can find them. As a result, Ghana’s recent fortunes have attracted cross-border immigration (legal, illegal, and refugee), and with it has been the importation of unwanted, uninvited, and abhorrent violent criminal activities, including the growing illegal narcotic drug business that has now held Ghana captive. The hemorrhage occurs when the country’s limited resources cannot support sudden high spurts of population explosions caused by the untimely influx of neighboring Africans. Again, the solution lies in a relative comparative regional growth instead of a blockade against regional migration.
What is now happening between the US and Mexico is self-evident, the clear result of what decades of economic disparity can create. Looking up north, there is no influx of Canadians desperately seeking greener pastures in the US or vice versa. The two countries have comparable economic standards. On the other hand, after years of disregard for its neighbors to the south, the United States is being bombarded with the so-called economic hemorrhage through mass illegal immigration from Mexico, Guatemala, and other southern American countries. However small we are, Ghana should learn from the North American experience.
In the meantime, my fellow Ghanaians should not relent in the pursuit of their leaders for good behavior. Ask for more media outlets (more FM and TV stations) and increased media access. Ask your government everyday to tell the country about what they are doing with the MCA funds. Call your radio and television stations often with your comments. Write clearly how you feel in the newspapers and on the internet with the civil hopes that that will engender a measurable change for the good of all. At the same time, please, desist from the vituperative haranguing, the vitriolic personal insults, and the tribal invectives that are spewed by many on the internet, especially. This is not the rightful way to go after the Ghanaian leadership. Take them to task on the issues. Stick to the issues at hand. Ask the appropriate questions and demand verifiable answers, however discomfited and embarrassed your leaders may feel.
In the long run, Ghana will be better for the continued pressure brought to bear on the police, the soldiers, the politicians, the customs officers, the civil servants, and everyone who is vertically or horizontally in the midst of the crime and corruption wave in the country.
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