Opinions of Monday, 11 December 2017

Columnist: Osei Agyemang

Don’t be deceived by minor projects, Ghana deserves better.

President Akufo-Addo President Akufo-Addo

I always get bemused when I try to collate the current standard of living of Ghanaians with the potential wealth and resources Ghana is endowed with. I don’t need to catalogue the resources of Ghana, because even the most illiterate Ghanaian is, beyond all doubt affable with the name and value of our resources. There has been an aphorism that achievements don’t speak for itself. I am exteriorizing this adage to discredit afoul the cock- a- hoop attitudes our current leaders delineate when they exchange our resources with foreign (white) businessmen for minor deficient and unstandardized projects; a typical example is Akufo-Addo’s “FREE S.H.S” policy.

Creeping up to my major focus, Ghana by all standards deserves better than our present status quo. Judging from age, population, climatic condition, location, and size, with the mineral possession of the land, if utilized to its fullest potentials and concentrated to build the nation, Ghana must be iconic and an envy of all nations. This has been a material reality before under the first and truly socialist government led by Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in the 1960s, until the timely interference of the 1966 counter-revolution which was internationally planned and locally orchestrated by traitors within the Ghana Armed Forces and Police services.

I don’t have any evidential record of Ghana’s current financial puissance, but I know well beyond all doubt that we have enough resources to enable every single Ghanaian taste a sensible standard of living. We have always been deceived that somehow, some people have to be powerful, while others remain servants to exercise balance in our society.

I couldn’t entirely disagree with this, but is too much for citizens to have a reasonable living standard, where people don’t have to share a source of drinking water with animals, where human beings can have a good shelter without sleeping on the street and in front of stores in our cities, where people can afford a quality squared meal, where pregnant women can afford quality maternal care without delivering their babies on the floor, where people can have access to stable electricity and quality healthcare? I can go on and reveal countless pathetic living conditions that Ghanaians have been imbibed. My goal is not to draw tears on the faces of the readers, but to alert us to wake up to the deceptive, corrupt and incompetence which has characterized our current politicians and mis-leaders.

In this current modern current epoch, when other counties led by patriotic leaders are busy investing and adjusting to the technological developments to equip their people with modern skills and innovative ideas and strengthen their economy in order to provide for her people, our leaders in our part of the world are too busy with the same imperialist forces that have raped Africa of our resources and people for over five hundred years in order to exchange the future of our country for material possessions that will neither last nor be taken with them to their graves when they die.

Our current leaders have concentrated al their efforts, skills and creative smart minds and ideas to loot, steal, amass, and accumulate wealth for their personal gains, while the rest of the people stay poor and die out of hunger and poverty. Let all leaders reveal their bank account balances and net worth to prove me wrong.

I know someone will argue that they have worked hard to gain their money, but on the contrary, which of these leaders have worked harder than the carpenter, mason, tomato seller, pure water seller, Waakye seller and all other manual workers on our streets and markets? If hard work makes people rich, who will be richer these hard working people?

The only thing that continues to make these leaders rich is corruption, embezzlement of state funds, looting, exploitation and all the innovative plans and ideas their criminal minds produces. We even call people in our society who are well vested in stealing smart people, no, they are criminals. In augmentation, these leaders also get rich from donations from their white masters as rewards for their unwavering servitude and adherence to their dictates which has reduced Ghanaians to worthless pathetic and poor people and at the same time has developed the white states and enriches the capitalists.

Ghanaian presidents will go cup-in-hand for loans from international financiers to build an unstandardized road networks, school complexes, and all sorts of stunted projects which they confidently advertise and boast of. Some counties with less than one-third of Ghana’s resources are able to provide quality and standardized road networks, school complexes, provide shelter, quality and affordable healthcare and quality free education from birth to the highest possible level they wish to go, yet we don’t hear any noise about it.

Some leaders in other parts of the world understand that education is a fundamental right, but in our part of the world, our leaders don’t see it that way. They see it as a privilege and if they provide it for the people, it is a favor they are doing for the people, this explains the current noise attached to the insufficient ‘Free S.H.S.’ policy of the incumbent administration.

Even with these minor projects established, most of the time is accompanied with bloated budget which enables someone to accumulate in their possession income that doesn’t belong to them. Some of our leaders don’t even see anything wrong with taking things that doesn’t belong to them, notwithstanding the fact that they are religiously inclined and worship the almighty with the aim to face a Judgment Day.

Every leader is so busy indulging in corrupt practices that no one is checking the other, in order to prevent or reduce corrupt practices in our society. Leaders lack so much conscience that if they are trusted with resources to help develop and improve the conditions of their fellow human beings, who even elected them to their positions, they don’t think twice about keeping money for their personal gains.

These leaders think their current condition is permanent, but I want to signal to them that their current position is temporary and a time is coming where the people of Ghana will wake up and make a revolution led by revolutionaries to bring a radical transformation in our status quo. It is either these leaders transforms themselves into revolutionaries to lead the struggle against the imperialists and neo-colonialists or perish and be destroyed by the collective and conscious effort of the masses of Ghanaians in the nearest future.