President Mahama, We Need Better Leadership Than This

There has been a public outcry about Legon's decision to charge tolls to pay for loans the school took to construct roads on the campus. The Minister of Roads and Transport has said communities should do the same thing that Legon is doing even though the legality of this move is in question. As usual, our strong President Mahama has nothing to say about it.

We can only assume that this is the President's policy; being made by his Ministers, and his Ministers being left to defend it on their own. I am waiting for the Minister of Health to tell communities to build their own hospitals and charge people who patronize them. Of course I won't be surprised if the Water and Sewer department told communities to build their own sanitary sewer systems and charge for them. Oh, actually communities along the coastal areas have their own sanitary sewer systems. They are the beaches. The inland areas, I'm sure, have theirs too in the woods. What do these people think Government is for?

Legon is a public university built with public money and owned by the public. The fact that government can't maintain the roads is shameful. It is even more shameful that the leaders of Legon and government leaders chose to break the people's trust and possibly the law in their quest to find ways to construct and maintain the roads on campus. Paying money to someone to come onto property I own along with fellow Ghanaians is extortion. Is there lawlessness in Ghana?

It has long been clear to me that our leaders have been short in the thinking department. Their answers to all our problems have been to take loans and to seek foreign investors. I thought that leaders at Legon would excel at the thinking department and help lead our country by thinking up excellent solutions to our problems. They have demonstrated clear that they fall short in the thinking department too. You would think they would think up other alternatives besides taking loans, but if you can take loans, why think?

I don't claim to be much on thinking myself, but the little thinking that I did revealed this to me:

No one buys a car to go drive in the woods. If you buy a car, you must expect to drive it on roads. Someone has to construct the roads, and someone has to maintain them. Who else will pay for constructing the roads and maintaining them but you? If you own a car, you must pay at least an annual fee to help maintain roads. Isn't this fair? I believe the people who own cars will have no problem helping to pay to construct and to maintain roads if our leaders came to them with such an idea. Leaders at Legon don't seem to have thought of this; Minister of Transport doesn't seem to have thought of this; and President Mahama doesn't seem to have thought of this. If our leaders can't come up with ideas, they should look elsewhere for them. I wrote about this idea on Ghanaweb in 2009. Mr. President, I will say it again, have car owners pay an annual fee to own a car in Ghana.

The Director of Road Fund Secretariat (big title), said that the country needs between GH¢ 600- 650 to maintain Ghana's roads, and they get only about a third of that. Of what they get, he said about 70% comes from taxes on fuel and 15 to 17% comes from tolls on the roads. On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with this, but if you look into it, those who drive more pay in fuel tax and tolls. Those who don't drive much, but own cars pay very little in fuel tax and tolls as it should be, right? Well government has to maintain all roads and have it ready for those who don't drive their cars much when they are ready to drive. These people are not paying their fair share to have the road ready for them when they chose to drive on them. It is up to our government to make sure every car owner helps to pay to maintain the roads.

The Director also said among others that there is lack of maintenance by engineers after construction. If we need more engineers to be on the roads to help identify road problems before they become high cost maintenance items, it spells jobs to me. I am sure a young engineer coming out of KNUST or other universities will appreciate the job. Mr. President, here is an idea that can help you on the road to a more tangible policy that will help maintain our roads and create jobs instead of screaming for foreign investors and cowering to foreigners who threaten us with job cuts if they have to pay windfall taxes. Mr. President, we need better leadership.

Before I go away, I'd like to address those who think that all that Ghana has to do is for government to let everything be done privately. This, I believe, comes from the American idea of capitalism. We cannot let capitalism take hold of our lives when we have somewhat limited understanding of it. Those who advocate capitalism for Ghana advocates that government should not do anything. Let it be done privately. The fact is that capitalism would not work even in America if government did not play a part.

The best example that I can give is the cell (mobile) phone that many people have in their pockets in Ghana. No American capitalist has put a satellite in the heavens yet. Space exploration was a government project paid for by government. Satellites were launched by government agency called NASA. Through NASA's work, the US government made it possible for private cell phone companies to exist. Capitalism as we think of it in Ghana would not have made it possible for these private companies to exist today.

IBM became IBM when it got a US military contract to develop and supply them business machines i.e. typewriters. President Obama was in Raleigh, North Carolina to hand North Carolina State University a grant of $140 million to lead a technology consortium. Mr. Obama announced that there will be 3 or 4 more colleges that will get grants to join in the consortium. The technology that comes out of the consortium will end up in the hands of private companies.

When was the last time Ghana government handed out grants that created jobs? The fact is that government has a part to play, and at this time of our development, our government has even bigger part to play. Government hasn't played the part that it should play, at least not in recent years and that's why we have the problems that we have, yet if you listen to the likes of Mr. Rawlings, government will never play the part it needs to play and we will hang around the edges of capitalism and think we are doing something that will move the country along.

Talking about consortium, how about an African consortium for anything? African unity anyone?

Tony Pobee-Mensah