Kufuor Playing The Nero -While We Languish In Degradation

The New Patriotic Party(NPP) government under President John Agyekum Kufuor has become legendary for the careless abandon to which it puts our national resources, whiles a large majority of us languish in abject poverty and degradation in this wealthy country of ours. On the 26th of July, 2007, the government again presented a supplementary budget in the sum of ¢8,273,900,000,000, to Parliament for approval.

It was laid less than 24 hours before Parliament rose for its mid-year recess on 27th July, 2007. How such a very important financial document was properly scrutinized, the necessary questions raised and answers obtained before it was approved within such a short period of time remained to be known.

However, what is really at stake here are the sources of funding and what the various amounts sought in the supplementary budget by the NPP government were earmarked to be used for. Information available and cited from the document submitted to Parliament indicated clearly that the main sources of funds were proceeds from the sale of Ghana Telecom and WESTEL for 500 million dollars and also money to be raised from burrowing on the international capital markets to the tune of 750million dollars.

Some of the most outrageous expenditures to which the funds will be applied include the following:

a. Outstanding debt relating to African Union and AGOA conferences - ¢93,840,000,000 ( $ 10.2M)

b. Subsidies to VRA for selling power below production costs to VALCO - ¢174,800,000,000 ( $ 19.0M )

c. Purchase of crude oil for emergency power plants - ¢1,380,000,000,000 ( $150M)

d. Fees and expenses relating to capital market burrowing ¢ 327,221,500,000

The first question which comes to mind is; what kind of government is this that finds it prudent to sell the nation’s prized asserts only to pay for expenditures on frivolous undertakings such as the African Union and AGOA conferences while the people wallow in such poverty?.

We have every right as bonafide Ghanaians to ask our government to account to us for their stewardship, particularly in the use of our asserts such as these. If we take the African Union and AGOA conferences for which we are now being asked to find the amount of 10.2 million dollars to pay the debt incurred, one will find that it was merely for the gratification of President Kufuor on whom the title of President of the African Union was conferred a year earlier in Sudan. No significant purpose was achieved for Ghana or for Africa as a whole.

It was three days of mere talkshop, and wining & dining that saw Heads of State and Governments and their wives drank the best European and American wines, brandy, whisky and gin, and ate the best of Australian mutton, veal, beef, South African ostrich meat and generally enjoyed themselves at our expense, self adulation and ego gratification of our dear President. The same goes for the hosting of the AGOA conference. The only reason why Ghana offered to host that conference was to satisfy her American masters to whom our pride as a nation is mortgaged as obedient and faithful servants.

As if asking us to pay for the debts incurred for organizing the African Union and AGOA conferences was not enough burden on us already, we also are now saddled with paying for the bogus decision to buy and wanting to operate the dead horse of a company, VALCO. We now have to cough up the unimaginable amount of ¢174,800,000,000 as subsidy to the VRA for the Kufuor government’s directive to sell electric power to VALCO below the cost of production. I simply cannot fathom the reason for this weird decision. The Kufuor NPP government boasts that they have the best financial and business brains in this country yet when it comes to taking simple intelligent decisions in the interest of the people on whose behalf they exercise power, their actions are very questionable. Even my illiterate grand mother will not have taken that kind of decision to buy off VALCO.

The Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation which owned VALCO knew that the good days of VALCO were long gone since, and for good, simply for the reason that you cannot operate an aluminum smelter profitably without a very cheap source of electric power. That cheap source of electric power was abundantly available to them in Ghana some 45years ago during the infant years of Akosombo, when the demand for electric power in Ghana was very low. Were we so daft that we could not take a simple cue from the fact that if a company like KAISER CORPORATION could not operate VALCO profitably, then there was no way we could do better? The NDC learnt that lesson long ago. But not this NPP government.

We were all witnesses to the fanfare, insinuation, and innuendos that greeted the so called re-opening of VALCO. Today the whole stupid adventure has exploded in our faces like a baby’s Christmas balloon, and Ghanaians are paying for the mismanagement of the NPP government. Last year, we were made to subsidize VALCO to the amount of 320.1 billion cedis for their valueless operations( see page 110 of 2006 supplementary budget). So within the two-year period of 2006 and 2007 we the poor people of Ghana have spent a whooping amount of 497.60 billion cedis on the operation of VALCO without realizing one pesewa from it. What kind of business is this? VALCO has become one of President Kufuor’s albatrosses around our necks.

The present precarious energy crises facing us has its roots in the compulsory sale of electric power to VALCO by VRA as decreed by the Kufuor government. To meet the huge needs of VALCO, the Volta River Authority (VRA) had to operate at least three of the six turbines . That meant a much faster depletion of the reservoir than would have been the case. The result was the acute power crises that we have to endure over a year without let.

In an attempt to cover up the mess they have created in the energy sector, the Kufuor government in a panic reaction has gone for what they call emergency power plants. Experts in the energy sector including Dr. Wereko Brobbey a former Chief Executive Officer ( CEO) of the VRA under this NPP government, and Dr. Kwame Ampofo Adviser on Energy to Professor John Evans Atta Mills the Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) have all advised the Kufuor government on the unsuitability of those emergency power plants to no avail.

The cost of running these plants which Dr. Brobbey has described as "toy" machines is in the region of ¢ 1.402 trillion for the next three months alone. The DAILY cost of operating these 126 toys is estimated at ¢ 1.513 billion as they consume some 178,000 litres of fuel a day. To date an amount of over ¢ 3.0 trillion has been spent by our government on these toy emergency power generating plants. These expenditures are clearly unsustainable in a fragile economy such as ours, and they emanate from the negligence and incompetence of this NPP government.

And it is not as if the government was not aware of the need for steps to be taken to redress Ghana’s energy needs much earlier. In the year 2002, the National Energy Commission advised the Kufuor government, and warned of an impending energy crisis in the nearest future and outlined specific steps to be taken to forestall that situation. Nothing was done about it for five years and the cost of that negligence is what we are faced with today.

To cover up their incompetence, the NPP government is now hiding behind the Pubilc Utilities Regulatory Commission(PURC) to wreck further economic havoc on already suffering Ghanaians by asking PURC to increase utility tariffs before the end of the year, as stated by Honourable Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu the Minister of Finance while laying the supplementary budget before Parliament on 26th July, 2007.

As we endure all these situations of complete incompetence, mismanagement of our financial resources, lack of foresight and vision in planning, pure ego gratification, self adulation and arrogance, don’t we wonder what the future holds for us under this callous NPP government?

If we look at the total amount of money which we are being made to pay compulsorily for the debts incurred for organizing the African Union and AGOA conferences, and the subsidies that we have made available for the operations of VALCO, and take into consideration our almost insatiable needs in education, health, infrastructural development, portal drinking water for our people, etc,etc, isn’t it criminal that the NPP government is mismanaging our resources?

How long shall we remain mute and docilely look on as our resources are squandered on useless and self gratifying ventures by a government that cares nothing about our suffering. For, like NERO who continued to enjoy himself while ROME was burning, this NPP government under President Kufuor continues to dabble in frivolities and self gratification while we suffer.

But, shall we continue to suffer such degradation and shame without let, while the NPP government, NPP party officials and their hangars on, friends, family, cronies, and associates live in vulgar opulence?

You know better than I do, as 2008 beacons us. We have to regain our dignity and self respect as Ghanaians.