This is the third and final part of this article and it focuses on Ghana@50 proper, with a few issues from the recent past under this government. Remember these are the woes of Narku Kojo. We'll get to talk about his joys sometime later.
President Kufuor on the eve of Ghana at 50 had the opportunity to prove to us that he was the father figure that we thought he was when he took over but he failed woefully. In a time when this country was hit with a cocaine scandal involving members and appointees of his government to public office, he took a nose dive straight into the gutter by trying to score cheap and downright stupid political points from a situation that has messed up the image of the country.
The president kept a rather long silence over the cocaine issue and when he decided to say something about it he chose a political rally of his party faithful as the forum to do so. Then as we say in Ghana poooaaaaa!!!!, he just displayed down right naivety and stupidity by pointing to the opposition NDC as the party that habours cocaine dealers.
Apparently a leading member of the NDC, Rojo Mettle-Nunoo had done some genuine business with one Venezuelan businessman who was implicated in the cocaine scandal and that was the president?s hard card in calling the NDC cocaine peddlers.
Meanwhile in the president's own backyard there was Eric Amoateng who is still languishing in US jail, Kofi Boakye, former Director-General of Operations, Ghana Police, the IGP himself and Asantehene Otumfuor Osei Tutu II mentioned in the cocaine case. All that meant nothing to the supposed gentle giant. He opened his big mouth to accuse NDC instead. Where was the wisdom in that? No wonder civil society descended on him with loads of cautious rebuke. But I pull back no punches, pardon me though.
The NPP managed to earn the name Narcotic Peddlers Party and the NDC (No Dealers in Cocaine).
Ei! less I forget, until the time when members of parliament sought for 20,000 dollars loan each to buy cars, the minority and majority had always been at variance with each other on practically every issue raised on the floor of the house, even including issues that bothered on public interest.
When it came to 20,000 dollars for all MPs, all of them agreed and approved it for themselves. Whom are we fooling thinking that these people go to parliament to really seek our interest? Is it not for their own political ambitions that they fight against each other just to kick the other and come into power and have access to state funds? Where is the wisdom in that?
I am sure there are a thousand and one things we can still go back to in Ghana@40 and even in Ghana@30. But now the fact is we are in Ghana@50 and the sad thing is that there are even more woes. Some of those woes have survived the decades and others have just reared their heads over the years and in more recent times.
In Ghana@50 Narku Kojo has more woes than his two little brains could contain.
Well it is said that if you are a 20 ?year old illiterate and you were offered the chance to start school from primary one at that age, take it because in the next six years you will be in class six and you would have learnt something you did not know at 20. But if you do not take it, those six years will still come and pass and you will still be as stupid as you were at 20.
Even though at 30 and at 40 we may not have achieved what we were supposed to have achieved, the years have still come to pass and now we are 50 and counting.
The question is, are we rich at 50? And the answer is a definite NO! Don?t let me remind you that if we want to boast of our natural endowment as our wealth then there is no need for almost 50 per cent of our 22 million people to be under the poverty line.
There is no need for the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS), Millennium Development Goals, accessing of the Highly Poor and Indebted Country (HIPC) initiative and the Millennium Challenge Account, which the sitting government has been boasting of lately.
As much as 40 per cent of our annual national budget is funded by donors, our economy virtually runs on loans, grants, debt forgives (HIPC completion) and handouts from so-called development partners who are actually neocolonial imperialists consolidating their attempt to hold us ransom.
Countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Algeria and a few more who started on the path of independence and self development with Ghana at about the same time have become spectacular economic successes, whiles Ghana continues to beg some of these countries and other European and Asian imperialists and socialists for chicken feet by the day.
Our sitting president has since his assumption of office traveled more times in six years than the former president probably did in his 19 years of reign. Guess what he does most during his travels, begging. In fact he does not even need to travel, because when diplomats from developed countries pay courtesy call on him at home he still uses the occasion to do the Oliver Twist thing ?we want more?.
I personally witnessed with great shame, one of our former Speaker?s of Parliament begging some Russian visitors who paid a curtsy call on him at the Parliament house some time back. He did it with shameful smiles, almost scratching his head. I was so sad; In fact that occasion made me feel less of a Ghanaian. I almost lost my pride as a Ghanaian on that day.
When are we ever going to say no to begging at a time when we should be rich and completely self sustaining? We have all it takes to be self sufficient as far as food is concerned but what is the reality, we still import lots of food, while our own locally produced food goes waste because we have not over the year built food security systems to store food for future consumption.
Busumuru Kofi Annan, Ghana?s illustrious son who recently retired from the UN after heading it for 10 years has pledged to help provide food security in Africa. In making that pledge he acknowledged that although Africa has the richest agricultural endowment in the world, it is the only continent which is not self sufficient when it come to food. Is that not a shame that we have all the natural endowments and yet we cannot feed ourselves?
Now there is something in Ghana called Friday wear, a concept which allows rpt allows not compels, public service workers, state functionaries and even some private organization workers to wear African or Ghana-made attires to work on Fridays. It is not compulsory for anybody to do so ? it is just government?s appeal for people to use Ghana made attires.
At first glance the idea looks great. But think about it, how could we limit Ghanaian wear to Fridays and use western gears all week long? Why can?t the policy insist on Ghanaian wear all week long and rather allow workers to wear what they choose on Fridays.
The answer for me is very simple -Because we are poor and we can't stop the importation of foreign ready-made attires like suites and others. If we dare cut down on our imports of foreign made attires our so-called development partners would also stop giving us handouts so we would rather kill local textiles industry and keep importing foreign goods in order to keep the chicken feet flowing in.
What a shame - No foreign aid has developed any country anywhere in the world ? it always rpt always took locally generated wealth to move a nation forward, but our leaders, whom Busumuru Kofi Annan calls 'big men with dead dreams' would not see this simple wisdom and pursue policies that would lead to locally made wealth. No wonder the cycle of poverty keeps lingering on.
Speaking of attires, have you read what the Accra Metropolitan Authority (AMA) is compelling commercial drivers to do lately? They are being made to wear navy blue shirts and blue-black trousers as uniform everyday. In fact the AMA has threatened to get those who do not comply arrested.
Some have questioned the rationale for two reasons; one, that taxi drivers are paid as low as 300,000 (US$34) a month by their car owners and it would therefore be difficult to buy uniforms from their meager salaries and secondly, that some taxi drivers use their cars as private cars on Sundays for church service so they cannot be arrested if they drive on Sundays to church without their uniforms.
Indeed, a group of taxi drivers calling themselves the Concerned Taxi Drivers have held a demonstration to protest the introduction of the uniform.
But what people have not really thought about is why AMA is insisting on navy blue and blue-black as the prescribed uniforms for commercial drivers. Don?t we have Ghanaian prints to give to our taxi drivers, if we have to compel them to wear uniforms 'Why must we insist on something plain, when we can make the wear something Ghanaian designs if they have to' Taxi drivers meet lots of tourists and they can be a channel to sell our culture in that direction.
Well, your guess is as good as mine; some politician is interested in the business of importing those western looking uniforms for taxi drivers so he is twisting their arms to wear them so he could make his money and in the process make some money for some foreign business at the expense of our already ailing textile industry. In effect a few politicians get richer whiles the whole nation goes poorer.
Oh! If you think I am just exaggerating about ask former NPP Chairman Haruna Esseku and he would be kind enough to admit that some billions of cedis was put in his car boot at the castle. This one I did not make it up, he said it himself on the infamous tape.
Currently there are a number infrastructure development going on in the country and that is laudable. But the question is; how many of those projects are being undertaken with locally generated revenue, virtually none. They are all loans, loans, grants (handouts) and more handouts.
Recently a number of African leaders including Ghana's president went to China to do the usual, beg for help. The Chinese played wise on them and decided to deal with each leader separately because they know that if they dealt with Africa as one bloc we have what it takes to bit them hands down.
Ordinary minds like mine and that of His Eminence Peter Cardinal Appiah-Turkson of the Catholic Church could read in between the lines and tell that the Chinese intentionally divided the African front for their own benefit, but our dignified, learned politicians, including our own gentle giant, did not see this old trick and went into that deal headlong.
How could we expect to be rich when our leaders sign out country's wealth away with such naivety? Let's put that deal in perspective. The bottom line is that in seeking help from the international community, we present our national develop plan, which for this time round is the 2015 middle income plan, be it MDGs, GPRS or whatever.
We go into the deal thinking of getting something that would benefit our 22 million people, which is just a minute and negligible fraction of the Chinese 2 billion and over population.
I don?t have all the facts, but trust me, China would not come into such a deal with some chicken development plan like we did. 2015 ends in the next eight years and I am sure China has a plan for about 20 to 30 years to ensure that after they have pumped all the money into Ghana for the next eight years, they would continue to milk us for an additional 20 years.
Our so called development partners (apologies to Third World Network) are no charities. They run their countries like corporate organizations. So for instance, China comes to the table as Corporate China to invest and make heavy profit. But our petty minded leaders go and sign away our wealth to them with smiles amidst drinking of Champaign and they make it look like China would come and play Father Christmas.
Ghana@50 Secretariat -this is one institution which for me is very interesting for two reasons. But before I continue let me quote the president in his recent state of the nation address to the one side parliament. He said of peoples complaints about Ghana@50 celebrations that 'Ghanaians behave like people who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing'.
Well he is right, but he forgot that he is also a Ghanaian and in establishing the Ghana@50 secretariat he did not consider the value of the Ghana Tourists Board and several other organizations whose roles the secretariat is so badly duplicating.
He did not find anybody than Tarzan Charles Wireko-Brobby who made a mess of himself as VRA boss, to head the Ghana@50 secretariat ? that was some valuable choice by the president indeed.
?Leadership is cause and everything else is effect?, so says Prof. Stephen Adei; this is exactly what we are faced with; if our leader makes the wrong choices and decisions, which shows that he does not regard the value of things and personalities, he gets the kind of response from the people, which only reflects his choices and decisions.
Couldn?t we have centred the organization of this celebration at Ghana Tourists Board, because all the secretariat is doing, really is preparing to welcome some tourists into this country anyway and nothing, absolutely nothing for we the local people. Upon all the millions of dollars and cedis they receive by the day, we only hear from greening project, Ghana as one by Agoo, Joy FM and some other organizations (which is at a cost of 2million cedis per head anyway) and what else, somebody tell because I truly don't know.
The city of Accra and in fact the rest of the country still remains as filthy as anything and the indiscipline on our roads continues unabated. Speaking of the other cities, have you head the cries by our majority folks in the regions that Ghana@50 is not Accra@50? Yes, that is the real situation, even those of us in Accra do not see nothing but an irony "we are supposed to be undertaking some greening project, which suggests tree planting but there is massive tree cutting going on in Accra in preparation for the same Ghana@50 celebration which is supposed to be an occasion for tree planting. Does anybody get it, cos I don´'t"
In conclusion let me tell you that if you ever thought that the woes of the Ghana@30 period, when the dictators were in power are over, think again. These days you would not be brutalized for challenging the status quo but you would be manhandled anyway and then the politicians will turn around and condemn the act. Nice huh?
Check with the civil and public servants, even in the era of free expression, there are people who monitor statements and report to some people who take decisions to transfer people considered as threats to the present government. I know exactly what I am talking about.
In Ghana@50, we have very beautiful terms to talk our way out of problems we bring on ourselves. For instance when a politician embezzles state funds and he?s caught and put before court, we call it 'political trial and vindictiveness';
When a subordinate at work performs poorly at work or is almost always late to work and he penalized for that he calls it victimization.
How about when the boss is caught putting his hands where he shouldn?t or doing his job in a manner that de-motivate his workers ? when the workers go after him for his obvious misdeeds, he calls it witch hunting.
Drivers drive recklessly, Customer Service Executives (Big post) think that their outfit is just a department rather than a service so they treat customers badly ? when you talk about such things they call you too known.
In fact Narku Kojo just realized that he cannot exhaust scribing all his woes in Ghana@50. But you can continue for him if you so wish.
While you do that, I am coming up with the joys of Narku Kojo in Ghana@50 soon.
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage. This is the third and final part of this article and it focuses on Ghana@50 proper, with a few issues from the recent past under this government. Remember these are the woes of Narku Kojo. We'll get to talk about his joys sometime later.
President Kufuor on the eve of Ghana at 50 had the opportunity to prove to us that he was the father figure that we thought he was when he took over but he failed woefully. In a time when this country was hit with a cocaine scandal involving members and appointees of his government to public office, he took a nose dive straight into the gutter by trying to score cheap and downright stupid political points from a situation that has messed up the image of the country.
The president kept a rather long silence over the cocaine issue and when he decided to say something about it he chose a political rally of his party faithful as the forum to do so. Then as we say in Ghana poooaaaaa!!!!, he just displayed down right naivety and stupidity by pointing to the opposition NDC as the party that habours cocaine dealers.
Apparently a leading member of the NDC, Rojo Mettle-Nunoo had done some genuine business with one Venezuelan businessman who was implicated in the cocaine scandal and that was the president?s hard card in calling the NDC cocaine peddlers.
Meanwhile in the president's own backyard there was Eric Amoateng who is still languishing in US jail, Kofi Boakye, former Director-General of Operations, Ghana Police, the IGP himself and Asantehene Otumfuor Osei Tutu II mentioned in the cocaine case. All that meant nothing to the supposed gentle giant. He opened his big mouth to accuse NDC instead. Where was the wisdom in that? No wonder civil society descended on him with loads of cautious rebuke. But I pull back no punches, pardon me though.
The NPP managed to earn the name Narcotic Peddlers Party and the NDC (No Dealers in Cocaine).
Ei! less I forget, until the time when members of parliament sought for 20,000 dollars loan each to buy cars, the minority and majority had always been at variance with each other on practically every issue raised on the floor of the house, even including issues that bothered on public interest.
When it came to 20,000 dollars for all MPs, all of them agreed and approved it for themselves. Whom are we fooling thinking that these people go to parliament to really seek our interest? Is it not for their own political ambitions that they fight against each other just to kick the other and come into power and have access to state funds? Where is the wisdom in that?
I am sure there are a thousand and one things we can still go back to in Ghana@40 and even in Ghana@30. But now the fact is we are in Ghana@50 and the sad thing is that there are even more woes. Some of those woes have survived the decades and others have just reared their heads over the years and in more recent times.
In Ghana@50 Narku Kojo has more woes than his two little brains could contain.
Well it is said that if you are a 20 ?year old illiterate and you were offered the chance to start school from primary one at that age, take it because in the next six years you will be in class six and you would have learnt something you did not know at 20. But if you do not take it, those six years will still come and pass and you will still be as stupid as you were at 20.
Even though at 30 and at 40 we may not have achieved what we were supposed to have achieved, the years have still come to pass and now we are 50 and counting.
The question is, are we rich at 50? And the answer is a definite NO! Don?t let me remind you that if we want to boast of our natural endowment as our wealth then there is no need for almost 50 per cent of our 22 million people to be under the poverty line.
There is no need for the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS), Millennium Development Goals, accessing of the Highly Poor and Indebted Country (HIPC) initiative and the Millennium Challenge Account, which the sitting government has been boasting of lately.
As much as 40 per cent of our annual national budget is funded by donors, our economy virtually runs on loans, grants, debt forgives (HIPC completion) and handouts from so-called development partners who are actually neocolonial imperialists consolidating their attempt to hold us ransom.
Countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Algeria and a few more who started on the path of independence and self development with Ghana at about the same time have become spectacular economic successes, whiles Ghana continues to beg some of these countries and other European and Asian imperialists and socialists for chicken feet by the day.
Our sitting president has since his assumption of office traveled more times in six years than the former president probably did in his 19 years of reign. Guess what he does most during his travels, begging. In fact he does not even need to travel, because when diplomats from developed countries pay courtesy call on him at home he still uses the occasion to do the Oliver Twist thing ?we want more?.
I personally witnessed with great shame, one of our former Speaker?s of Parliament begging some Russian visitors who paid a curtsy call on him at the Parliament house some time back. He did it with shameful smiles, almost scratching his head. I was so sad; In fact that occasion made me feel less of a Ghanaian. I almost lost my pride as a Ghanaian on that day.
When are we ever going to say no to begging at a time when we should be rich and completely self sustaining? We have all it takes to be self sufficient as far as food is concerned but what is the reality, we still import lots of food, while our own locally produced food goes waste because we have not over the year built food security systems to store food for future consumption.
Busumuru Kofi Annan, Ghana?s illustrious son who recently retired from the UN after heading it for 10 years has pledged to help provide food security in Africa. In making that pledge he acknowledged that although Africa has the richest agricultural endowment in the world, it is the only continent which is not self sufficient when it come to food. Is that not a shame that we have all the natural endowments and yet we cannot feed ourselves?
Now there is something in Ghana called Friday wear, a concept which allows rpt allows not compels, public service workers, state functionaries and even some private organization workers to wear African or Ghana-made attires to work on Fridays. It is not compulsory for anybody to do so ? it is just government?s appeal for people to use Ghana made attires.
At first glance the idea looks great. But think about it, how could we limit Ghanaian wear to Fridays and use western gears all week long? Why can?t the policy insist on Ghanaian wear all week long and rather allow workers to wear what they choose on Fridays.
The answer for me is very simple -Because we are poor and we can't stop the importation of foreign ready-made attires like suites and others. If we dare cut down on our imports of foreign made attires our so-called development partners would also stop giving us handouts so we would rather kill local textiles industry and keep importing foreign goods in order to keep the chicken feet flowing in.
What a shame - No foreign aid has developed any country anywhere in the world ? it always rpt always took locally generated wealth to move a nation forward, but our leaders, whom Busumuru Kofi Annan calls 'big men with dead dreams' would not see this simple wisdom and pursue policies that would lead to locally made wealth. No wonder the cycle of poverty keeps lingering on.
Speaking of attires, have you read what the Accra Metropolitan Authority (AMA) is compelling commercial drivers to do lately? They are being made to wear navy blue shirts and blue-black trousers as uniform everyday. In fact the AMA has threatened to get those who do not comply arrested.
Some have questioned the rationale for two reasons; one, that taxi drivers are paid as low as 300,000 (US$34) a month by their car owners and it would therefore be difficult to buy uniforms from their meager salaries and secondly, that some taxi drivers use their cars as private cars on Sundays for church service so they cannot be arrested if they drive on Sundays to church without their uniforms.
Indeed, a group of taxi drivers calling themselves the Concerned Taxi Drivers have held a demonstration to protest the introduction of the uniform.
But what people have not really thought about is why AMA is insisting on navy blue and blue-black as the prescribed uniforms for commercial drivers. Don?t we have Ghanaian prints to give to our taxi drivers, if we have to compel them to wear uniforms 'Why must we insist on something plain, when we can make the wear something Ghanaian designs if they have to' Taxi drivers meet lots of tourists and they can be a channel to sell our culture in that direction.
Well, your guess is as good as mine; some politician is interested in the business of importing those western looking uniforms for taxi drivers so he is twisting their arms to wear them so he could make his money and in the process make some money for some foreign business at the expense of our already ailing textile industry. In effect a few politicians get richer whiles the whole nation goes poorer.
Oh! If you think I am just exaggerating about ask former NPP Chairman Haruna Esseku and he would be kind enough to admit that some billions of cedis was put in his car boot at the castle. This one I did not make it up, he said it himself on the infamous tape.
Currently there are a number infrastructure development going on in the country and that is laudable. But the question is; how many of those projects are being undertaken with locally generated revenue, virtually none. They are all loans, loans, grants (handouts) and more handouts.
Recently a number of African leaders including Ghana's president went to China to do the usual, beg for help. The Chinese played wise on them and decided to deal with each leader separately because they know that if they dealt with Africa as one bloc we have what it takes to bit them hands down.
Ordinary minds like mine and that of His Eminence Peter Cardinal Appiah-Turkson of the Catholic Church could read in between the lines and tell that the Chinese intentionally divided the African front for their own benefit, but our dignified, learned politicians, including our own gentle giant, did not see this old trick and went into that deal headlong.
How could we expect to be rich when our leaders sign out country's wealth away with such naivety? Let's put that deal in perspective. The bottom line is that in seeking help from the international community, we present our national develop plan, which for this time round is the 2015 middle income plan, be it MDGs, GPRS or whatever.
We go into the deal thinking of getting something that would benefit our 22 million people, which is just a minute and negligible fraction of the Chinese 2 billion and over population.
I don?t have all the facts, but trust me, China would not come into such a deal with some chicken development plan like we did. 2015 ends in the next eight years and I am sure China has a plan for about 20 to 30 years to ensure that after they have pumped all the money into Ghana for the next eight years, they would continue to milk us for an additional 20 years.
Our so called development partners (apologies to Third World Network) are no charities. They run their countries like corporate organizations. So for instance, China comes to the table as Corporate China to invest and make heavy profit. But our petty minded leaders go and sign away our wealth to them with smiles amidst drinking of Champaign and they make it look like China would come and play Father Christmas.
Ghana@50 Secretariat -this is one institution which for me is very interesting for two reasons. But before I continue let me quote the president in his recent state of the nation address to the one side parliament. He said of peoples complaints about Ghana@50 celebrations that 'Ghanaians behave like people who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing'.
Well he is right, but he forgot that he is also a Ghanaian and in establishing the Ghana@50 secretariat he did not consider the value of the Ghana Tourists Board and several other organizations whose roles the secretariat is so badly duplicating.
He did not find anybody than Tarzan Charles Wireko-Brobby who made a mess of himself as VRA boss, to head the Ghana@50 secretariat ? that was some valuable choice by the president indeed.
?Leadership is cause and everything else is effect?, so says Prof. Stephen Adei; this is exactly what we are faced with; if our leader makes the wrong choices and decisions, which shows that he does not regard the value of things and personalities, he gets the kind of response from the people, which only reflects his choices and decisions.
Couldn?t we have centred the organization of this celebration at Ghana Tourists Board, because all the secretariat is doing, really is preparing to welcome some tourists into this country anyway and nothing, absolutely nothing for we the local people. Upon all the millions of dollars and cedis they receive by the day, we only hear from greening project, Ghana as one by Agoo, Joy FM and some other organizations (which is at a cost of 2million cedis per head anyway) and what else, somebody tell because I truly don't know.
The city of Accra and in fact the rest of the country still remains as filthy as anything and the indiscipline on our roads continues unabated. Speaking of the other cities, have you head the cries by our majority folks in the regions that Ghana@50 is not Accra@50? Yes, that is the real situation, even those of us in Accra do not see nothing but an irony "we are supposed to be undertaking some greening project, which suggests tree planting but there is massive tree cutting going on in Accra in preparation for the same Ghana@50 celebration which is supposed to be an occasion for tree planting. Does anybody get it, cos I don´'t"
In conclusion let me tell you that if you ever thought that the woes of the Ghana@30 period, when the dictators were in power are over, think again. These days you would not be brutalized for challenging the status quo but you would be manhandled anyway and then the politicians will turn around and condemn the act. Nice huh?
Check with the civil and public servants, even in the era of free expression, there are people who monitor statements and report to some people who take decisions to transfer people considered as threats to the present government. I know exactly what I am talking about.
In Ghana@50, we have very beautiful terms to talk our way out of problems we bring on ourselves. For instance when a politician embezzles state funds and he?s caught and put before court, we call it 'political trial and vindictiveness';
When a subordinate at work performs poorly at work or is almost always late to work and he penalized for that he calls it victimization.
How about when the boss is caught putting his hands where he shouldn?t or doing his job in a manner that de-motivate his workers ? when the workers go after him for his obvious misdeeds, he calls it witch hunting.
Drivers drive recklessly, Customer Service Executives (Big post) think that their outfit is just a department rather than a service so they treat customers badly ? when you talk about such things they call you too known.
In fact Narku Kojo just realized that he cannot exhaust scribing all his woes in Ghana@50. But you can continue for him if you so wish.
While you do that, I am coming up with the joys of Narku Kojo in Ghana@50 soon.
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.
