Opinions of Thursday, 8 June 2017

Columnist: Nii Bi Bambara

It’s time to prove the battle is the Lord’s

President Akufo-Addo President Akufo-Addo

After December 8th, 2016, a significant portion of the government officials in power (New Patriotic Party) today were stunned at the verdict and margin of blow they had dealt the now opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).

For the NPP, that battle was about the elections, but for people like me and the over close to a million neutral voters who provided the landslide victory and greatest political upset in Ghana’s modern day politics, our interests were clear. i.e. GHANA HAS TO WORK AGAIN.

Today a signification portion of Ghana’s debts is still sitting on the soil of this great nation as plush houses, luxury vehicles, fat bank balances and assorted fixed assets for a few privileged past and present civil servants, government appointees and crooked businessmen known as “BIG MEN”.

Corruption has become an exaggerated word, which is amusing, provides no fear for the active players and continues to eat our moral fabric on a daily basis. Don’t be surprised someone is cooking a deal by now as you read this piece.

Transparency International’s (TI) global Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2016 labels Ghana as a “mostly corrupt” Nation with a score figure of 43. Do you know if you tender your passport anywhere you are seen as corrupt together with the crooks that tender it after you? OF COURSE, THEY MENTIONED GHANA NOT THE CROOKS NAMES.

We cannot fight corruption with corruption; it is akin to forest fires, which start from small and eventually grow into uncontrollable limits.

There is a saying that If you vote for a corrupt leader because he champions your race or religion, you deserve everything you asked for such as crime, robbery, violence and associated vices. This is why I appeal to the new President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces to make corruption an unpopular word in Ghana because we voted for him as a man with integrity and great credentials.

The news trickling in from the Standards Authority and the Communications Authority is a small fraction of the mess and malevolent dissipation of state resources I am privy to over the past four years.

If our President steps his ground and presses state institutions to ACT in accordance with the law, none of this mess unknown will be shielded for his new appointees to come and build on from where the others left off.

If Ataa Oko can be jailed 20yrs for stealing a goat, and Maame Awereba can equally get 10yrs for possessing Indian hemp why will Dr. Crentsil Baffoe-Bonnie and co. sit comfortably in their oak panelled living room with their potbellies, smoke their cohebas unique coziness and issue rejoinders when they choose or feel like it.

Are they more human than Ataa Oko and Maame Awereba? When did our laws become selective? Why should the laws of the state favor the rich and powerful?

In His Exellency, Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo we maintain, our belief and utmost trust in your resolve to save this country. If you fail to act which I doubt you will, our children born and unborn will read about your negative government forgetting all the toils and efforts you had put in to become our most favored gentleman of the land.

I know about your Office of the special prosecutor plan so I don’t come across as not well read but I am appealing to your conscience to choose someone who is bold and would not mind the consequences whichever way a case leads him or her to.

Anti-Corruption is not just a slogan, and if the new government discusses anti-corruption and it crooked actors, it will not make them a Pro-Clean government, it is OUR action that counts. And to the foot soldiers; “if you know the party you support is corrupt but willing to close an eye, you are not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

That is why a government will be campaigning heaven on earth but yet will be spending money on transportation for its teeming but confused followers to keep them back in power.

As Bono said, the worse disease in this world today is corruption, and the only cure out there is TRANSPARENCY.

I am Done!

Nii Bi Bambara From Bole – Bamboi