Ghana’s biggest day of shame remains 31st December 1981

Identifying one’s self as a revolutionary enthusiast or for that matter, an ideologue of transparency, probity and accountability, is not a bad idea. But it somehow becomes extremely troubling and hypocritical when a group of people who claim to be the exponents of such ethos would then turn round and dip their hands into the national coffers as if tomorrow will never come.

Of course, the NDC loyalists would never agree with some of us for persistently analysing the current affairs through the lenses of the past. But I am afraid we cannot make sense of the present happenings if we refused to take stock of the past events.

Why won’t I shriek, censure and highlight the revoltingly risible tendencies of the so-called devotees of the 31st December 1981 revolution?

It would be recalled that when the revolutionary enthusiasts (the founders of NDC) burst onto the scene, they tempestuously tortured and murdered people with more than two vehicles.

However, the same revolutionary enthusiasts are hypocritically in possession of not less than two vehicles per household.

Shockingly, the vast majority of house owners were punished severely for having more than one toilet facility in their homes.

But the last time I checked, the vast majority of the so-called revolutionaries have uncountable toilet facilities in their luxurious mansions.

Moreover, the founders of the NDC impertinently exhibited their communist ideals by going into war with business men and women in the country.

The founders of NDC, regrettably, tortured and murdered innocent business men and women, many of whom were bizarrely accused for legally borrowing meagre sums of money from banks to support their businesses.

Strangely, however, the so-called revolutionaries who repugnantly collapsed innocent peoples businesses now own business outlets all over the place.

Some innocent business men and women, so to speak, were abhorrently humiliated and their businesses were either seized or destroyed by the despotic NDC founders.

Worst of all, billions of cedis (in 50 cedi denominations) were seized from ordinary Ghanaians without trace.

The NDC founders, ironically, replaced our educational system with that of a communist model, while deceitfully turned round and sent their children abroad to study in what they saw as a superior educational system.

Apparently, I have previously informed readers that I used to be an unsuspecting disciple of Jerry John Rawlings, who succeeded in proselytising some of us with his sugar-puffed propaganda.

Of course, like many other students back then, I naively thought J.J Rawlings was a Messiah sent from the Heavens to intercede for the downtrodden, and how wrong I was. Indeed, I am among those admirers who have come to their real senses.

Certainly, I mulled over Jerry John Rawlings real intentions for usurping power and inevitably overcame my ‘benightedness’.

It is important to note that Rawlings bamboozled onto the scene under the pretext of redeeming Ghanaians from the existential economic mismanagement and wanton corruption, but he couldn’t even get rid of the rampant sleazes and corruption in his NDC government, let alone the entire nation.

The founder of NDC, J. J. Rawlings, paradoxically, goes about preaching probity and accountability, but fails to practice. For isn’t it somehow ironic that someone who bamboozled onto the scene under the pretext of eliminating the widespread sleazes and corruption would turn to a fantastically corrupt former Nigerian president Abacha for a hard cash gift?

For more news on Nigeria’s former president Abacha’s alleged gift to J.J Rawlings, see: (Nigeria’s Abacha gave me $2 million and not $5 million-Rawlings: citifmonline.com/.../nigerias-abacha-gave-me-2m-not-5m-rawlings-conf... ; ‘Abacha’s $2 million gift to Rawlings: Vitus Azeem is only after the truth’,: www.ghanaweb.com/.../Abacha-s-2m-gift-to-Rawlings-Vitus-Azeem-is-o... ; ‘Rawlings must return Abacha’s $2m gift-Nigerian journalist’: www.ghanaweb.com/.../Rawlings-must-return-Abacha-s-2m-gift-Nigeria...).

It is worthy to note that Rawlings and his conspiratorial plotters, who were later to become the founders of the National Democratic Congress, as a matter of fact, unfairly kept criticising the then president, Dr Limann’s administration for what the coup makers perceived as economic mismanagement, until Rawlings and his jailbreaking geezers decided to depose Dr Limann.

Subsequently, J. J. Rawlings and the other obstreperous jailbreakers took arms and succeeded in deposing the democratically elected government of Dr Hilla Limann on 31st December 1981.

And, Rawlings and his friends formed a government which they called the Provisional national Defence Council (PNDC) and appointed Rawlings as the chairman.

Although the PNDC and NDC administrations back then paraded some seasoned politicians, the vast majority of the military personnel who headed important Ministries were novices in the political scene.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Rawlings’s administration adopted a seemingly calamitous Economic Recovery Programme (ERP), which was introduced under the auspices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Regrettably, the vast majority of tangible national assets, including the state owned enterprises were allegedly sold to friends and families for pittance.

In practice, the apparent unfavourable Economic Recovery Programme culminated in a catalogue of hardships. And, on top of the harsh programmes and policies which threatened the economic fundamentals, the population had to brace itself for food shortages, a situation which was comparable to the concurrent Ethiopian famine that resulted in millions of deaths.

Perhaps, more than anything else, the initiation of the Programme of Action to Mitigate the Social Costs of Adjustment (PAMSCAD) did nothing to improve the unfortunate situation as untold hardships permeated many households.

Starvation, in all honesty, visited the vast majority of Ghanaians, and hence developing revoltingly ugly collar bones which the humorous Ghanaians renamed as “Rawlings Chain”. That was indeed the pernicious extent of the hunger.

In their weird attempt to get rid of sleazes and corruption, many Ghanaians were unjustifiably murdered or tortured mercilessly for apparent infinitesimal offences.

Regrettably, however, some market women were stripped naked in the public and whipped for either hauling their products or selling on high prices. While their male counterparts were wickedly shaved with broken bottles and whipped for offences that would not even warrant a Police caution in a civilized society.

As if that was not enough, three eminent high court judges and a prominent army officer were barbarically murdered by PNDC henchmen on 30th June 1982 for carrying out their constitutionally mandated duties.

The PNDC apologists savagely murdered the three eminent high court judges because their judgement did not go in their favour.

Ghana’s revolution days under the jailbreaking founders of the NDC, so to speak, could be likened to: “in the China of “the Great Helmsman,” Kim Il Sung’s Korea, Vietnam under “Uncle Ho” , Cuba under Castro, Ethiopia under Mengistu, Angola under Neto, and Afghanistan under Najibullah”.

Even though Rawlings and his conspiratorial plotters supplanted power under the pretext of acting as a peripheral Panacea, they slyly spent a little over eleven years before lifting the ban on political parties in 1992.

Rawlings, as a matter of fact, succumbed to internal and external political pressures for him to step down and allow multi-party democracy.

Subsequently, he lifted the ban on political parties in 1992 and resigned from the military simultaneously so as to contest election.

Subsequent to his retirement from the military, Rawlings and his jailbreaking cabals went ahead and formed a political party, which they named as the National Democratic Congress (NDC), a progeny of PNDC.

To the amazement of discerning Ghanaians, the power intoxicated founder of the NDC, J. J. Rawlings appeared as a chameleon by idiosyncratically metamorphosing into a civilian president in 1992.

Disappointingly, however, former President Rawlings memorable achievement was to send us to the membership of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC).