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We want Ken Ofori-Atta's resignation but that won't revive Ghana’s collapsed economy

56328177 Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta

Fri, 9 Dec 2022 Source: Joel Savage

Ghana is in dire straits, facing the worst economic disaster ever anticipated in the country. The prices of commodities have increased significantly and businesses have collapsed, making life extremely difficult for entrepreneurs and the common people.

The fact that Ken Ofori-Atta is the finance minister, many Ghanaians are pointing fingers at him for being responsible. This is a true fact that can’t be ignored but the truth is the extent of damage Ghana’s economy faces, can heal now if Ofori-Atta resigns.

The fact that it is only a few Ghanaian politicians that care about the welfare of the people and the majority interested in the survival of the existence of the political party, it didn’t occur to both the majority and the minority parliamentarians that the appointment of Ken Ofori-Atta as the finance minister by his relative, Akufo Addo, who is the president, will lead to a political and economic disaster beyond remedy. I wonder why despite how intelligent Ghanaians are, many failed to see this.

Ken Ofori-Atta, assumed office as Ghana’s Finance Minister on January 27, 2017.

According to the publication, he brings to the Ministry over 30 years of experience in the Ghanaian and international financial sectors. It added that he was a Co-Founder and former Chairman of the Databank Group (an investment banking firm) in Ghana. He was the Executive Chairman from 1990 until his retirement on February 14, 2012, and the first African to be honoured as a Donaldson Fellow at Yale University in 2010.

I want to know if these sweet academic backgrounds and said honors are what inspired Ghanaians to believe that Ken Ofori-Atta is the finance minister Ghana needs to make the country one of the best in Africa. That was the biggest mistake Ghanaians did without any protest when he was appointed by the president.

They say never judge a book by its cover and never judge a man by his appearance but I am ripe enough to know that appointing a relative as finance minister will lead to economic doom.

I don’t want to lean on my opinion alone, fighting myself that Ken Ofori-Atta since related to Akufo Akufo will rather assist the president to make corruption and embezzlement easier for the family, so I first went to Google search, trying to find if I can find any finance minister of a country related to the president. I couldn’t find any.

There I know I am right, therefore, I need to make Ghanaians understand that the country will run into a dark tunnel of no return as long as Ken Ofori-Atta is the finance minister.

When assessing certain economic phenomena, we use the approaches of the most important economic science-political economy and the preparation of proposals for improving certain aspects of the economy. It is worth working together to analyze economic conditions and uncover the fundamental problems with many excellent business practitioners, including scientists, who worked in the field of applied economics.

There are many factors that lead to economic collapse in various countries, including the lack of domestic demand; the disadvantages of management of the economic function system, for example, corruption and bribery, the back door dealings; imbalance between export, import, and investment. However, in Africa, the two main factors are corruption and bribery. Chronic corruption has resulted in lack of employment and development in Ghana.

Corruption and bribery are not easily detected unless monitored by a camera. However, how corruption can easily be detected is the dispensation of finance for proposed projects. In the case of Ghana, everyone sees the huge debt that the country carries at the moment, yet no one can see which projects the money went to.

Thus; the fact that Ghana is in debt without accountability, means that massive corruption has taken place; through the cutting of several sods without any commencing projects.

But when analyzing how well Ghana serves its citizens, you will quickly find out that it is a country in which the common people have suffered a great deal politically and economically, since the time Kwame Nkrumah was deposed, due to chronic corruption, which affected all the sectors, including its judiciary system.

Being one of the largest producers of Cocoa, bauxite, gold, timber, etc, Ghana has all that it takes to be a very powerful country economically and politically in the world. The recent oil recovery in the country should have been a major booster to its economy, yet the impact of Ghana’s resources in the country is a disaster. Many people are extremely poor.

The impact of innovation, we see this word analyzed, outlined, sometimes even eviscerated, is rarely seen in Ghana, yet; innovation is fundamental and essential for every company today and has always been an essential condition for economic and social progress.

Ken Ofori-Atta’s request for resignation can’t revive the economy as many Ghanaians think. It can only reduce easy corruption and also lead to the exposure of corruption holes dug by Akufo-Addo and his family.

Columnist: Joel Savage