Oh Yes, Mr. K.B. Asante, Ghana would Turn Around in Your lifetime

If there is one noble and intelligent person I would like host for dinner, it is Mr. K.B. Asante, a former diplomat and minister in the President Nkrumah administration. Of course, I would not have the privilege because I am not his co-equal. He is 90 years old. I am only 40. Mr. Asante is one of the few sages this country can count on when the goings get really tough. But are things not too tough already? Many Ghanaians are paying a punitive price for mere existence, as the few opportunities they see around them spirit away before their tired eyes. In the end, we have memorable cases of Ghanaians denouncing their citizenship in obstinate defiance to the natural order of things.

Writing in his popular ‘Voice from Afar’ column in the 14 July, 2014 issue of the Daily Graphic, Mr. K. B. Asante intelligently dissected the mood of Ghanaians and the quality of the interventions the present administration is putting in place to improve the situation. Under the title ‘Mood of despair retards improvement in the economy,’ Mr. Asante lifted off with a tamed roar: “Many have gloomy forebodings about the economy. I share many of their concerns and fears. But on sober reflection I think the economy is not that bad and that with a few bold steps we can turn the corner even in my lifetime!.” Mr. Asante’s hopes had been buoyed by a newspaper story headlined ‘Economic Prospects High’, in which the Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Kofi Wampah, had stated that “in spite of exchange rate pressures and a decline in major commodity prices, mid-term economic prospects are high.”

At this point, Mr. Asante got a bit concerned, wondering how Dr. Wampah could solve the ‘present extraordinary situation’ with ‘normal procedure,’ expecting that “inflows of more than US$3 Billion from the sale of Eurobond this year and receipt from the annual cocoa Syndicate loan to shore up its reserves in a bit to stem the persistent fiscal and exchange rate pressures.” Mr. Asante resolved that as unskilled as he may be in “modern financial practices” he suspects the “information was not properly conveyed”, advising that “Pubic confidence in the government machinery is needed if we are to overcome the present economic and social malaise.”

Isn’t this what we have been doing wrong all along? Often our casual and not very decisive approach to protracted problems leaves us with many difficulties. Before we realise that the approach was terrible, we had already shot ourselves in the foot. There will be several committees of inquiry to dig into the matter, even if the matter had already been determined. The committees would have terms of reference similar to those of yesteryears. So usually, the many committees of inquiry become needless expeditions that produce more questions than answers. And who bears the final Golgotha? Nobody. The cycle reinvents itself until another committee is formed.

At 90, Mr. Asante has seen a few things that many of us can hardly dream about. In our traditional family setting, the forebodings and suspicions of old people are not treated lightly. Our old folks are like the Teresaises of the Greeks who can look into the womb of time and predict how the future will shake down. The old folks are also usually truthful and sincere; they say it as it is in the hope that things will improve.

Frankly, things are difficult at present and everybody feels the difficulty. My mechanic tells me he is uncomfortable ‘charging’ his trusted customers for his services on their cars because he can genuinely feel their difficulty and misery in the dire economic situation in the country. There are no jobs for thousands of students who graduate from our universities every year. There is strike everywhere, and for the first time in the history of Ghana, upper middle class citizens–the educated elite and professionals in well-paying jobs–got together to present their misery to the presidency. That was the boldest civil action any government would dare to ignore.

And just what is happening to the Ghana Cedi? In 2013, the Cedi was the third worst currency in the world in terms of value. We only did better than the currencies of Kazakhstan and Argentina. Our currency is the worst around the world in 2014. We are doing poorer than war-torn countries in unstable political climates. Interestingly, tax revenues are reported to have improved. We remain an oil producing country but we just recovered from a petrol shortage. Certainly, things are not getting easier in Ghana, and no amount of spin is good enough at this point.

Now, John Mahama is a very nice and sincere person. Look him straight in the eye, and you see a well-intentioned fellow who would pour rose water on a toad just to see it live another day. You can also see a retail politician who has a good understanding of the issues. Before the Cedi slumped, he admitted that the meat was down to the bone. And since then, there have some attempts to diagnose the problems and proffer some solutions. The most recent of these efforts is the Senchi Consensus.

While we try a committee here, and a trial there, the situation is not getting any better, and hope looks quite distant. To be able to turn things around in the lifetime of Mr. K. B. Asante, we need what Barack Obama calls the fierce urgency of now. Mr. Asante has told us that we could not solve extraordinary problems with ordinary efforts. If we cannot borrow the American Mojo, let’s get a black mojo of our own and work through the options pretty fast. In his lifetime, it should be possible for Mr. Asante to sigh in an armchair and proclaim ‘Alas, free at last, free last, thank God Ghana has regained her former economic glory. Thank God Almighty.’

Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin

bigfrontiers@gmail.com