By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 9, 2014

"Gross incompetence" is the most aptly charitable term that describes the caliber of cabinet appointees in the government of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC). And the woefully inadvisable decision of the former Minister for Youth and Sports, Mr. Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah, and his deputy, Mr. Joseph Yammin, to fly to Brazil the humongous sum of $3 million in hard currency was only one symptom of such gross incompetence.

Interestingly, Mr. Afriyie-Ankrah would have Ghanaians and the rest of the world believe that what was remiss with such epic foolery was far less the decision itself, than the announcement of the same on the radio by his former ministerial second-bananas. Who said that these shameless products of Mr. Rawlings' inexcusably misguided revolution were capable of learning any meaningful lessons from their blunders?

Just the other day, one of the NDC pack of hoodlums had the temerity to tell the world that the Ghana Football Association had always done business in such a crude manner. That rascal, Mr. Randy Abbey, also smugly claimed that but for his timely mendacity to South African immigration officials, match-appearance monies meant for the Black Stars players who featured in the 2010 World Cup tournament would have been heavily taxed by the Pretoria government.

That, of course, would not have been as painful as having the Brazilian government ravenously sink its incisors into the hard-earned dough for our boys. If the Mahama government seems to be having such a great problem managing the country's economy, this is clearly where the problem comes from. We have battalions of hooky-playing grubs who either failed their high school Commerce and Economics classes, or just happen to have been afforded easy passes and been literally shoved off-premises in order to make something meaningful out of their lives.

Alas, what the latter has squarely come to mean, or imply, is the blind and reckless scamming of our national coffers by these certified vagabonds of the shady corridors of what passes for democratic governance in Ghana these days.

They still don't get it; and that is the worst aspect of Tragedy Brasilia. I know what you are thinking, dear reader. No, I am not talking about the epic demolition of the Brazilian soccer facade by the Merkel Boys. I couldn't care less about the latter, given all that we disturbingly know about the twentieth-century political history of the hitherto rag-tag collections of primitive hamlets that Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck deftly and perspicuously cobbled into the cynosure of global economic envy that is the Germany of today.

Rather, I am talking about the fatuous insistence of the unconscionable likes of Messrs. Afriyie-Ankrah and Yammin to faulting player agitation for the clinically unimaginative decision by the GFA and these recently ousted Mahama cabinet appointees to make a laughing stock of Ghanaians, as well as flagrantly desecrate the hallowed memories of our Founding Matriarchs and Patriarchs.

It clearly appears that for as long as our Black Stars players brooked this established protocol of scamming and stiffing them of their just deserts, there was practically no end in sight for such wanton act of criminality routinely, and ironically, executed in the name of patriotism. Well, the jig may be up, but it is absolutely no way certain that the GYEEDACRATIC replacement for Mr. Afriyie-Ankrah, Monsieur Mahama Ayariga, is any remarkable improvement on the status quo.

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