Move over Mr. Agyenim Boateng. Welcome Baba Jamal. This change of seating assignments resulted from a two-year complaint lodged by Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa to President Mills that he needs help at the Information Ministry. According to Ablakwa, Agyenim Boateng was too proper, shot too straight relatively speaking, and educated, qualities that disqualified him from holding the deputy minister’s position at a ministry whose mission has obviously been drastically redefined.

Just as the name suggests, the Ministry of Information’s mandate is to provide information to the citizenry and the world at large. It should be the warehouse for information about our country with immaculate and significant web presence. In fact, according to the ministry, its vision is “the attainment of a free, united, informed and prosperous society with good governance through development communication.” Please read the vision again.

The ministry’s Mission is “to facilitate a two-way free flow of timely and reliable information and feedback between the Government and its various publics and to assist in the development, co-ordination of policy; to monitor and evaluate the implementation of programs and activities by the Sectors Agencies.”

Its objectives are: strengthening institutional capacity for effective policy formulation and execution; ensuring free flow of public information in pursuance of the open Government policy; effectively and efficiently monitoring and evaluating public responses to Government policies, programs and activities and providing timely feedback to Government; projecting the image of the country in collaboration with other agencies to attract foreign investment in consonance with Government policy; and coordinating activities of the Presidency towards ensuring uniformity and focus in executing policies, programs and activities.

Instead what do we have? In Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa we have a deputy minister who, on more than one occasions characterized reports of imminent Mills cabinet reshuffle “someone’s imagination,” and that it was not true. Exactly 24 hours later, a cabinet reshuffle took place. In Ablakwa, we have a deputy minister who announces the creation of 1.6 million jobs only for the director of the youth employment agency to come out immediately to refute the claim. In Ablakwa, we have a litany of lies, fabrications, and misinformation enough to earn him the nickname of ‘deputy minister of misinformation,” and clearly contradicting the stated missions and objectives of the ministry that employs him.

But new addition “Jihadist” Baba Jamal would not be outdone. After all that is what he was brought in to do – to complement the efforts of Ablakwa. In the short span of his employ at the ministry of information, Jihadist Jamal has managed to amass an impressive list of accomplishments highly competitive to Ablakwa’s 20-month record. Jihadist Jamal announced that the five jets the Mills administration is buying, that can only land at airports with runways, would be used to “catch armed robbers” and ferry accident victims. In a clear attempt to out-do Ablakwa, not only is the Jihadist lying out of his own mouth, he is now forcing others to report lies and fabrications or face termination from employment. He even told them how to do it: “When the government buys a black sheep for a gift, report it as a white cow.”

Jihadist Jamal must be reminded that the objective of the ministry of information and its agencies is, in part, “projecting the image of the country,” and not to “make (a bad) government look good,” as he told employees at the Information Services Department. Misinformation deputy minister Okudzeto-Ablakwa must also be reminded that his ministry’s mission, which becomes his job duty, is to provide “timely and reliable” information to the public not to make pronouncements that are so laden with inaccuracies the public can no longer rely on. Apparently, with Agyenim Boateng’s removal from the ministry of information, the two current deputies, Ablakwa and Jamal, are locked in a battle of “survival of the best liar.”