“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back” (author, Carl Sagan).
I start my article with this quote in an effort to understand the mind-boggling and mystifying phenomenon of how a decent percentage of the Ghanaian populace still defend and support incompetent Mahama. Before anyone starts throwing insults my way, I am no NPP hack; neither do I have any blind affiliation for NPP. I am just a concerned citizen who is pissed at the train wreck we find ourselves. Go back to the archives of Ghanaweb and one could easily associate my persuasions more with the NDC. I harshly criticized president Kuffour and was so much against Nana Addo’s bid in 2008. With this current administration as a guide, I humbly accept I was wrong. This is my mea culpa to Nana Addo and his team. Incompetent Mahama is an understatement. Clearly this president is out of his league and he’s governing the same way he first got in; by chance. According to transparency international, as of 2006, Ghana was making some impressive strides raking in corruption. This positive trend began to take a retrograde hike back to the good old days of “loot and share”. I dare say, Mahama will go down the annals of Ghanaian history as one of the most incompetent and corrupt. Asking for proof is like asking me to prove that sea water is salty. It is just so transparent.
I used to criticize how President “Sleepy Eyes” Kuffour was boring and uninspiring. However, this current president makes the former looks more like Ronald Reagan. As a former communication man of the NDC, its amazing how boring and how off message he could get. On corruption, lets start with GYEEDA and work our way down to the spending of good money on branding Metro Mass buses. The Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Agency was established with the hope of addressing the swelling ranks of the unemployed youth in our nation. Obviously, there is a correlation between an increased crime rate and this unemployment canker. This effort was sabotaged and riddled with unwarranted payments to contractors for no work done. Meanwhile, dozens of “cocoa road” contractors who have paved roads to transport cocoas are still fighting years later to get paid for what they rightfully earned. Savannah Accelerated Development Agency (SADA) is another such project, which was a fiasco. Did I say SADA was about rearing guinea fowls? My best guess is these guinea fowls were futuristic enough to escape the impending harsh conditions courtesy of the JM. These guinea fowls absconded to Burkina Faso (my best guess). A guinea fowl economy in this 21st century. What a joke. The president has instructed the Attorney General to retrieve these monies and to be fair, some have been retrieved. However, if the history of Woyome is anything to go by, I advice we shouldn’t hold our breaths.
This president appears to have a somewhat complicated relationship with the truth. How many times has he given deadlines on ending the infamous “dumsor”? : The debilitating power crises, which has brought the country unto its knees. The funny excuse given by this experimental president and his supporters is that, the Ghanaian population has increased too much to meet our power demands. My guess here is half of the Ghanaian population went into hibernation under the 8 years of the Kuffour administration and resurrected when the Mills/Mahama administration took power in 2009. Lets not forget, the NDC/PNDC/AFRC party has been in power for about 26 out of the last 34 years. It therefore makes it hard to swallow if this administration still blames the former government for their incompetence 7 years after they left office. Clearly, president Mahama is insensitive to the plight of the Ghanaian. He rightfully described his condition as the dead-goat syndrome implying he is insulated from criticism. As some might know, a syndrome is associated with several conditions in this case the triad of corruption, lack of vision and pure incompetence. We are quickly told that, the administration is building high Schools, a laudable mission. However, seeing tons of high school students gather under streetlights to study like a mole of ants defeats this laudable idea. Checking on friends in Ghana is heart breaking. We have become so accustomed to mediocrity that, fixing Accra Circle and the Ridge Hospital in 7 years is our equivalence to the Great Wall of China. Mostly out of work because of dumsor, one could sense a sense of hope replaced with despair, sense of responsibility and pride replaced with a sense of dependability and anguish. Our situation is embarrassing. A recent show by CNN’s Richard Quest shed light on the dim nature of the Ghanaian economy. The question was asked, why did Ghana squander all our meager growth made prior to the Mahama administration?
Not too long ago, Ghana was described as the poster child of everything that could go right with Africa. Booming economy, foreign investments, huge expatriate resettlements and the envy of most other African countries. Ghana was our pride. And all this happened without any oil revenue. So it is insane to believe we are in this sorry state even with all our oil revenues. President dead goat is back at the IMF begging for loans at a sky-high interest rate. How could my Ghana get to this point? Just pure bad governance. The Ghanaian cedi, I dare not touch on that topic. At this point, a stick pencil, would do a better job than JM; a Better Ghana Working for You. President “transforming lives”. This president uses more slogans than my beloved Accra Hearts of Oak. Well lives have definitely been transformed in Ghana these past few years. His recent shenanigan is that, upon fixing the dumsor, Ghanaians should greet each other as “Me mo Nkaneaa oo, then one responds, yaa Mahama; translating “I give you light oo, then the respond will be thanks Mahama. This is absolutely ridiculous. President Mahama keeps whining about been criticized forgetting he constantly attacked the former administration. He even questioned the authority of his opponents to criticize his governance since they have never occupied the highest position of the land. So clearly, only two Ghanaian citizens, the former two presidents have earned this right. This takes me back to my earlier question, why do Ghanaians still believe these lies in face of reality? Our lack of discernment and nuance is leading us towards a very dark path. Our sense of critical reasoning is blinded by our ethnic allegiance hence Voltarians and Northerners will massively vote NDC regardless of the suffering and Kumasi will go NPP irrespective of the latters inadequacies.
To the Ghanaian youth, we do have a moral obligation. Let not be bought with quick fixes and some few cedis. This is our moment. The moment when the weight becomes unbearable, when nuance become too real, when the continuous march of progress is slammed back into the 1970’s reality plagued with corruption and visionless leadership. We need to replace the fantasy we live in with the harsh reality we face daily. The Ghanaian youth with our natural recalcitrance must demand justice. We must gather unto ourselves the sense of purpose and realize that, fighting the system is the only way forward, that corruption and incompetent leadership must be defeated because quality governance would never be handed to us on a silver platter. This is our moment of moral maturation and we can’t afford to let it pass and perpetuate the immoral squandering of our scant resources. Please, please, please, lets choose Ghana first. We get the government we elect. Wishing all Ghanaians a dumsor-free Christmas. God bless mother Ghana.
By: E.K. Oduro (Albany, NY)
Ekoduro1@hotmail.com