Former President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama
Ironically, former President Jerry John Rawlings of blessed memory is said to have founded the NDC based on the principles of probity, accountability, and transparency. And yet sleazes and corruption permeated every facet of the outgone NDC administration.
I remember sometime in 2017 the founder of the NDC, the late Rawlings, asserted somewhat audaciously and pertinently that Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, unfortunately, inherited national corruption at its worst from the erstwhile National Democratic Congress administration led by former President John Dramani Mahama(see: Akufo-Addo inherited ‘corruption at its worst’-Rawlings; ghanaweb.com, 2/11/2017).
The late Rawlings opined: “By the time this administration came into office, the country was literally drowning in the practice of corruption with impunity. This administration has, therefore, inherited national corruption at its worst.”
Observers thus believe that sleazes and corruption, as the late Rawlings would aptly articulate, were so pervasive in the outgone NDC administration to an extent that the NPP government had no option but to arraign uncountable suspects before the law courts.
That notwithstanding, to relentlessly grumble, write, and squall about the sorrowful state of Ghana’s economy under the erstwhile NDC administration which the loyalists bizarrely perceive as innocuous or inconsequential, is to be regarded as a political extremist, or even as a radical conservative, who is mischievously seeking to discredit their beloved party.
It is indeed disheartening to point out that the founders of the NDC accused and exterminated people with unfounded allegations of sleazes and corruption, including eight army officers.
Suffice it to stress that if we honestly juxtapose the alleged corrupt practices of the murdered army officers in the 1979 coup d’état with the sleazes and corruption which took place in the erstwhile NDC administration, we cannot help but to conclude that the Generals were “shot for less”.
The sleazes and corruption, so to speak, were so widespread to an extent that, the founder of the NDC, the late Rawlings, once shrieked and grouched openly: “I want to remind people that we could not have possibly forgotten that Generals were executed. The greed, corruption, and injustice of today are a thousand times more than what these Generals were executed for, and if we are unable to restore a firm measure of integrity to our dealings, then the blood of many would have been shed in vain” (Rawlings 2017).
The story is told, that in their desperate attempt to lustrate the country off the perceived sleazes and corruption, the founders of the NDC fiendishly elbowed their way through Ghana’s political scene via a series of coup d’états, ruled despotically for eleven years, and then formed the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
In fact, despot Rawlings and his disciples proselytized and brainwashed many unsuspecting Ghanaians into believing that the people they deposed emptied the national coffers with an unabashed disgust, and therefore the only way forward was to purge the country of the perceived injustices.
The late Rawlings and his cohorts carried out what they termed “house cleaning exercise”. Rawlings and his conspiratorial plotters went ahead and dealt with the perceived offenders arbitrarily.
Rawlings and his cabal regrettably killed innocent people, many of whom were accused of legitimately borrowing meager sums of money from banks to support their businesses.
As a matter of fact, Rawlings and his NDC apologists kept trumpeting their ethos-probity, transparency, and accountability to the annoyance of their political opponents.
Dearest reader, isn’t it therefore ironic that the same people, who claim to abhor sleazes and corruption and have therefore made probity, transparency and accountability their prime mantra, would then cause the collapse of Ghana’s economy through wanton sleazes and gargantuan corruption?
How can the good people of Ghana forgive the holier-than-thou NDC apparatchiks who have been committing the same crimes (sleazes and corruption) that their party founders accused and killed innocent people for?
Where is the fairness when the people who committed the atrocious scandals (such as Woyome’s GH51.2M, $300M STS largesse, Millions of Ghana Cedis embezzled by the officials of SUBA, GYEEDA, SADA, and the National Service Secretariat 1and all the dubious judgment debt payments amounting to GH800M) are all walking freely?
Clearly, their much trumpeting ethos of probity, transparency, and accountability is a charade. It is rather an illustrative case of preaching virtue and practicing vice.
The sleazes and corruption, as a matter of fact, and observation, pervaded every recognized department of the erstwhile NDC administration, and hence earning the famous descriptive epithet, ‘create loot and share’.
