WESTERN GOVERNMENTS & MULTINATIONALS MUST BEHAVE ETHICALLY IN AFRICA!

The corruption scandal involving the British construction firm, Mabey & Johnson, which admitted bribing politicians in Ghana during the 1990’s, in order to win contracts here, illustrates perfectly, the double standards of a majority of the Establishments in the nations of the West, when it comes to dealing with Africa. How else can African leaders, such as some of the rulers of nations such as: Equatorial Guinea; Nigeria; Gabon; Angola; Rwanda; Congo Brazzaville; DR Congo; Kenya; Nigeria; Angola; etc. etc., many of whom are amongst the wealthiest individuals in the world, although their official salaries cannot possibly be the source of their incredible wealth, continue to keep their money and assets safely in the West – although the secret services and the governments of all the Western nations are aware of the origins of such funds? Are the rulers of Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and Congo Brazzaville owners of some of the most profitable businesses in the world? Certainly not – they are dishonest politicians who steal money belonging to their people, and who can continue gang-raping Africa with such impunity because of the hypocrisy of those Western nations, which provide safe havens for their stolen wealth.

If that were not the case, why then do the authorities in places like Switzerland, France, Lichtenstein, the UK’s Channel Islands and in North America, not act to freeze those funds that Africa’s corrupt leaders keep in financial institutions (as well as confiscate landed properties and other assets they hold) in the West – and take active steps to trace their origins: especially when they have money-laundering laws in place, at a time when cutting off the sources of funding for international terrorist groups, has made access to bank accounts in the West that much easier, for their tax authorities and secret services? According to bush-telegraph sources, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apparently invited Ghana’s new president to London not too long ago, for the sole purpose of pleading on behalf of Vodafone, a company that once bribed Kenyan politicians in the privatization of the state-owned Kenya Telecom – yet, Mr. Brown and the leader of the biggest of parties that sit on the opposition benches in the British Parliament, Tory leader, Mr. David Cameron (as well as other British politicians), never cease expressing their sense of outrage about the widespread unethical business practices in the financial services sectors of the economies of the West, which led to the financial crisis the whole world now faces. The question is: Why do they not rail against similar unethical corporate governance practices when they occur in Africa: as a direct result of the actions and inactions of Western multinationals operating in the continent – actions and inactions that fuel the widespread corruption that daily impoverishes millions of Africans?

Perhaps one of the most effective ways that Western nations can help ease the burden on ordinary Westerners, whose tax dollars is sent by their governments as aid money to nations in Africa ( but which often ends up in the offshore bank accounts of corrupt African leaders), is to make sure that they pass legislation that makes it illegal for banks, financial institutions, as well as professional advisors in the West, to provide safe havens and professional advice that enables crooked African politicians to launder the vast fortunes, which they steal from their national treasuries. Surely, the Western democracies ought to be creative enough to understand that it really is possible to stop sending their tax dollars to Africa as aid – if they can find a legitimate way of seizing all the stolen wealth from corrupt African leaders sitting in bank accounts in the West, and set up a special fund into which such sums (and some of the “dormant accounts” in Western banks whose legitimate owners can no longer be traced after say one hundred years) can be deposited and wisely invested, for example, to create a revolving poverty alleviation fund, out of which micro-loans can be made available to micro-entrepreneurs in poor rural communities, right across Africa?

Can the interest from such a fund also not be used to support the work of international NGO’s and reputable local NGO’s in Africa working to make a difference for ordinary Africans at the grassroots level, who are forced by circumstances beyond their control to live an existence akin to hell on earth, as a direct result of the corruption and incompetence of their leaders – instead of taxing ordinary Westerners to the hilt for that not-so-sensible purpose that pouring money down the financial equivalent of black-hole, which giving aid to certain governments on the continent represents? Do the international NGO’s helping millions of internally displaced African in places like Darfur and Eastern DR Congo, such as Medicines san Frontieres, Save the Children, and Oxfam, not deserve to be supported in their work on the continent – by making it possible for them to leverage such funds? Corruption in Africa will end, when corrupt African politicians, such as those members of Rwanda’s ruling elite (who are prospering mightily from their access to DR Congo’s mineral wealth, which is made possible as a result of the instability their proxies have created in Eastern DR Congo: and actively fuel for that purpose), are not only unable to find hiding places in the West to stash their stolen wealth, but are also denied access, through the imposition of sanctions, to the overseas markets in which they sell the DR Congo’s purloined mineral resources, for their personal enrichment, and with such impunity.

Why do the governments of the West not get the UN to ask the EU and other trading blocs around the world to make it illegal for companies domiciled in their countries from dealing in minerals from conflict zones in Africa, such as the DR Congo, which do not pass through official export channels and customs entry points, for example? Clearly, one of the most effective means of helping Africa to eradicate poverty will be for the West to end its double standards – and prosecute Western multinationals that behave unethically in Africa and operate in a manner that break laws in their home countries: with the same vigour that they deal with fraudsters like the Conrad Blacks and Bernie Maddoxes, and errant companies like the now-defunct WorldComs and Enrons of the Western world. An example is the lucrative trade in precious minerals carried on by some multinationals in conflict-ridden places in Africa, such as Eastern DR Congo. Another is the payment of bribes by such companies to corrupt African leaders in order to win contracts. Yet another example of the hypocrisy of members of Western Establishments in Africa, is their turning a blind eye to unethical practices by Western multinationals in Africa – such as the disgraceful evasion of its responsibilities to laid-off workers (whom it had exploited for years to make vast profits), at a plant it recently closed down in Ghana’s Ashanti Region, by Guinness Ghana Limited.

It then tried to protect its public image (and pull wool over the eyes of Ghanaians), by giving those workers (whom it had used and dumped so callously without paying any redundancy payments to), what its spokesperson, with tongue firmly in cheek, called an “appreciation package.” Incredibly, that well-known multinational, Guinness Ghana Limited, had all along apparently “outsourced” ultimate responsibility, for the welfare of those poor laid-off Ghanaian workers: whose hard work ensured the vast profits that Guinness Ghana Limited made from that defunct Ahensen plant in Kumasi, Ghana’s second city, to a “private contractor” (code for colluding with a privileged member of Ghana’s greedy and politically well-connected educated elite – an over-pampered group in society famous for its selfishness and lack of fellow-feeling for the less privileged in Ghana). They were thus able to niftily sidestep having to pay those laid-off workers their full redundancy entitlements mandatory under Ghanaian labour laws – through that clever and shabby ruse. Are we to assume that its experienced and competent expatriate management are not aware that that is no way for a socially responsible multinational with a world-famous brand like Guinness to proceed in a poor developing nation it has invested in to create jobs for local people?

Were they not effectively washing their hands off those workers, by “outsourcing” their recruitment to a private company – specifically contracted for that unethical, cost-cutting, and bottom-line-seeking capitalist-philosophical end? Clearly, Guinness Ghana Limited went to great lengths to ensure that no nosey-parker anti-globalization activist group or NGO in the EU, North America, and elsewhere in the developed world that it operates in, got wind of this outrageous and ruthless exploitation of poor Africans workers, in order to increase its bottom line – by giving the workers they had made redundant the impression that they were being benevolent to them, in giving them the so-called “appreciation package” when what they were in fact doing, was literally robbing them in a most shabby manner: whiles at the same time enriching an influential member of Ghana’s greedy and politically well-connected elite at the expense of those workers. How can that be? Where is the Trades Union Congress (TUC) of Ghana that is supposed to protect the interests of Ghanaian workers, in all this? Why the deafening silence from them, one wonders – our are they powerless to act to protect Ghanaian workers from being abused by foreign direct investors, because the stooges for neocolonialism in Ghana have passed laws, which ensure the virtual enslavement of Ghanaian workers by companies such as Guinness Ghana Limited?

The government of Ghana must step in immediately and order Guinness Ghana Limited to pay the laid-off Ahensen workers the full entitlements due them if they had employed them directly – and not hide behind the innocuous sounding “we outsourced their recruitment to a private contractor” nonsense on bamboo stilts. The question is: Will Guinness dare sink to such depths in the EU or the USA in order to maximize its profits – and if not, then why should it act so callously here: especially when the return on its investment in African nations like Ghana, definitely yields far higher returns than it does in the Western capitalist world? Ordinary Africans are sick and tired of the hypocrisy of Western leaders and multinational companies – and demand that Western multinationals operating in Africa are held to the same ethical standards expected from them in their home countries. Since their embassies in Africa do not hesitate to speak to the local authorities on behalf of those multinationals, let them also talk to companies like Guinness Ghana Limited to treat their workers in Africa the same way they treat their workers in their home countries. Above all, let our own leaders wake up to their responsibilities to ordinary Africans – and ensure that they do not become the victims of globalization: but can rather gain from the cornucopia of benefits it has undoubtedly brought in its wake to humankind, as it has swept across the whole of the planet Earth. A word to the wise…

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BOOSTING TOURISM – CLEAN UP GHANA’S CITIES, TOWNS, & WHITE-SANDED BEACHES FIRST!

I said a prayer to thank Providence for two different reasons, as I watched Cable News Network (CNN), in the early hours of July 15, 2009. The first reason, was that in his “AC- 360” programme, in which he interviewed US President Barrack Obama inside Cape Coast Castle, Andersen Cooper, did what some of the innocents abroad now running our country (and into whose hands Nkrumah’s Ghana has now fallen), will definitely make a complete hash of – if they go ahead with their madcap idea, of, as one little-big-wig in the ministry of tourism put it (if I remember the quotation correctly, i.e.): “…seriously marketing Ghana to wealthy African-Americans…” That cloud-cuckoo-land idea, by one of the more clued-on princes amongst the many pampered princes in Clueless Inc. (all of whom have been given cushy sinecures in the new administration), will end up sending hapless taxpayers’ money down the financial equivalent of a black-hole, as sure as day follows night: in an Alhaji Munkata-style junketing trip across America at our expense – with eager officials (of the type blessed with provincial Antoa-Nyame mindsets) traipsing round America “seriously marketing Ghana to wealthy African-Americans” at vast expense to Ghana’s hapless taxpayers.

(Incidentally, our new rulers have now earned themselves the designation “Clueless Inc.” a thousand times over – for not learning their bitter lesson from the past: and rushing right back into the smothering embrace of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), instead of making the Chinese our development partners – in the real sense of the word (used to describe partnerships of equals) – using the joint-venture business model: in which the best-resourced Chinese state-owned companies in the appropriate fields, partner their Ghanaian state-owned counterpart companies, such as the State Housing Company Limited and the Ghana Railways Company Limited, for example. Surely, by leveraging Ghana’s sovereign bonds, which we can issue to the Chinese government (as a form of a collateralized future receipts-type insurance), in exchange for their bankrolling the building of 500, 000 affordable houses in each region of Ghana, which ordinary Ghanaians can then rent at fair rates, and to create a nationwide railway network too (perhaps the Chinese can build, operate it for say twenty years through the joint-venture vehicle, and then transfer the completed network to the Ghana Railway Company Limited?).That way, we can develop our country on our terms: without being manipulated by others: so as to fit into the hidden agendas of sundry neocolonialists, can we not, dear reader?). Will that not see railway lines being extended to all Ghana’s regional capitals painlessly (from the point of view of taxpayers), for example? Why did the new Mills administration have to rush into such a political cul-de-sac by opting to work with those interfering neo-liberal free-market Shylocks instead of with the ever-helpful Chinese, one wonders? Hmmm, Ghana – eyeasem oo: asem ebaba debi ankasa. But I digress.) Let those in charge of tourism in our country, as well as all those who prattle on endlessly about what Ghana can gain from President Barrack Obama’s trip to Ghana (in terms of its global media coverage boosting our tourism industry, i.e.), understand one thing clearly: The foundation-work that has to be done in order to grow the tourism sector in a sustainable manner, must be done right here in Ghana not abroad – and it most definitely does not include wasting money advertising on CNN “like Nigeria and Angola have done” either, to quote one of the many geniuses and bright sparks who appear on the radio and TV current affairs programmes in our country, and who also double as social commentator-cum-sages, whom I heard in a TV Africa current affairs discussion programme (if I remember correctly) a few days ago.Not when we can get free coverage by them by doing some creative thinking.

Is it not the case, dear reader, that perhaps all that might be needed to be done to get Ghana on the radar screens of US eco-tour companies and in the West generally, would be to get President Mills to invite American celebrities who the US and global media follow assiduously, such as: the pop superstar Madona, and her small cross-cultural tribe of multi-racial children; yesteryear’s right-wing Queen-Bee, clueless Sarah Palin, and her family (well, if for nothing, just so that that empty-headed woman, whom Senator John McCain, yesteryear’s “that-man” conservative-superman, incredibly believes can lead America – when one would even have to worry if she ever became the president of our tiny country Ghana, let alone the world’s only remaining superpower – gets some experience of the Africa that she apparently thinks is one country); Oprah Winfrey; Will Smith; the basketball trioka of greats: Kobe Bryant, “Magic” Johnson, and Mr. Jordan; and the African-American poet, M. Angelou, to visit Ghana with their families as guests of the government and people of Ghana? They can all be honoured by Oguaman at a ceremony in a colourful durbar: so that the government can make up to those Chiefs and people of Ogua and Edina, who, sadly, were unable to meet President Barrack Obama – because his security detail apparently worried about his attending the durbar that Oguaman had arranged to honor him: and cancelled it at the last minute. They could do the entire slave-route from the north (taking in Mole National Park, and calling to pay their respects to the successor of the great and greatly-missed Otumfuo Opoku Ware11 (may his kindly soul rest in peace), at the Manyhia Palace, in Kumasi, on their way to the Cape Coast and Elmina castles on the coast. Above all, the new administration must put into place an effective and sustainable plan, which will enable them adequately resource all the district administrations in Ghana, so that they can clean our country, and rid our cities and towns of the filth we are slowly being engulfed by: and keep them clean permanently, going forward, into the future.

A clean Ghana is really key to growing our tourism industry – and if Ghana continues to remain as dirty a nation as it currently is, then we might as well forget about tourism ever becoming a truly significant foreign currency earner. That is why some of us are beginning to grow a little sick and tired of having to read and listen to all that fanciful and endless talk about “how we can package Ghana for investment after President Obama’s visit” that now dominates Ghana’s intellectually-barren media landscape. (Incidentally, can anyone beat President Kufuor’s astonishing statement to Jim Clancey, who conducted an interview with him in CNN’s “Inside Africa” programme – which directly followed Andersen Cooper’s “AC 360” that morning – that President Obama had come to “liberate us mentally”? Liberate who mentally, one wonders – the many corrupt Busia-Danquah super-lackeys of Western commercial interests amongst our political class, perhaps? Why doesn’t that infernal Godfather of the Busia-Danquah stooges for neocolonialism speak for himself: if he is going to say such negative things about the proud citizens of a nation in which there are many Nkrumaists and pan-Africanists: who have abundant self-belief: and don’t need to be mentally liberated by President Barrack Obama or anyone else? Heavens, how pathetic can one get, I ask, dear reader? But I digress.) For the benefit of that pampered prince of Clueless Inc. (ensconced in one of the ministerial offices renovated for vast zillion-cedi sums by the clever sister-in law of one of our previous ruling Clueless Inc.’s most prominent and vocal princes, Mr. Asamoah Boateng), who wants to embark on a trip to market Ghana to wealthy African-Americans, I shall narrate the experiences of a real live American citizen who actually came to visit Ghana, last February – and went back home not very impressed by our country: and who will not be returning to Ghana any time soon, and will most definitely not be recommending it to any of her circle of friends who all love to travel abroad regularly. She is currently on her second holiday this year – in Iceland, not Ghana.

Why so, you might wonder, dear reader? Well, that dear friend from Scranton, in Pennsylvania, was put off by: the unbelievable filth she saw everywhere she went; the shocking sight of grown-up men and women defecating on beautiful white-sanded beaches right across our coastline; being caught up in Accra’s endless traffic – and forced to breath in polluted air from poorly-maintained vehicles, which ought to be off our roads in the first place, if those who are paid to conduct roadworthy tests on vehicles, actually did their jobs well : and which belch lung-destroying smoke; the lack of infrastructure countrywide; and the endemic poverty that one sees everywhere one turns in Ghana. That is the reality of our country – and those who lead our country must make sure, if they want our country to attract responsible tourists who will recommend Ghana to others, when they finally return to their home countries, is to ensure that we always have: treated water from mains water pipelines available daily in properties nationwide; we have reliable electricity available round the clock nationwide; and above all, that defecating along our beaches is outlawed immediately – and that the law against it is vigorously enforced. If we have all that in place, then Ghana will definitely be ready to welcome millions of responsible tourists from around the globe (not only from America) – that is, if in addition to all the abovementioned prerequisites for growing our national economy’s tourism sector, our leaders also take a keen interest in the task of making our cities and towns clean. One hopes they will think of “packaging Ghana” along those lines – and that Ghanaians will stop going on and on so: about the so-called benefits to Ghana from President Obama’s one day trip, here. A word to the wise…

Google: “ghanapolitics”.

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WILL PRESIDENT BARRACK OBAMA'S SPEECH ON AFRICA RESONATE WITH GHANA'S OBDURATE ELITE?

US President Barrack Obama’s plain-speaking message to the leaders and people of Africa, which was contained in the heartfelt speech he gave in Ghana’s Parliament (on July 11, 2009), clearly resonated with most Africans who heard or read it – as evidenced by Prime Minister Odinga of Kenya’s positive reaction to the contents of the speech. Once-stable Kenya, as we all know, is the home country of President Obama’s late father – which was torn apart by controversial elections last year. Sadly, post-independence Kenya has ended up becoming a nation, whose society is dominated by a ruthless and notorious ruling elite – which, unfortunately, is one of the most corrupt, anywhere on the surface of the planet Earth. For those Nkrumaists and pan-Africanists, who over the years have been saying most of the things that President Obama said in his July 11, 2009 speech, our one hope, is that it will embolden the honest politicians within the various political parties, across the spectrum in Ghana (and elsewhere in Africa, too, one hopes) – and give them the courage and determination to finally prise their parties from the iron-grip of the greedy and powerful crooks, who dominate those parties.

The many sins of those shameless rogues against our country, include the ruthless exploitation of tribal sentiment for political gain to ensure their continued stay in office – and the consolidation of kickbacks (from major infrastructural projects and the privatization of state-owned entities), into a specialized high-yielding investment product: specifically designed to guarantee the ascent of their personal net worth (and that of their family clans and cronies), into the stratosphere permanently. Now that President Obama and his young family have come to pay our trailblazing nation their personal respects, and departed, the question we must ask the gentleman who now leads our country, President Mills, is: Will he now ensure that preparation for the prosecution of Alhaji Munkata for willfully causing financial loss to Ghana, is fast-tracked to take precedence over that of those in the previous regime who also abused their positions whiles in office, and willfully caused financial loss to our country – so that when he is tried by a court of competent jurisdiction for his misdeeds, and has eventually to be jailed, those of a similar bent who are now lurking in his regime (and who await their opportunity to amass sudden wealth, when it comes their way, too), will refrain from stealing public funds and worsening the already dire situation of our nation, and the desperate plight of its people, yet further? In the matter of prosecuting corrupt politicians, let the honest President Mills be guided by the words of President Obama: "No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves.”

One also hopes that those hypocritical politicians in Ghana’s current ruling party, who once held power for as long as some nineteen odd years, and still have the audacity to say today, that democracy is not suitable for Africa, and clearly don’t understand that the yearning for freedom beats no less strongly in the hearts of black Africans, than it does in that of people from other races, will also take note of these frank words of President Obama: “No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the Port Authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, and now is the time for it to end…Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions." It is important that politicians of that ilk understand clearly that they do not fool true Nkrumaists and pan-Africanists one bit – for we know their psychological make-up only too well. In reality, they are mere racist power-junkies who think that being half-castes, means that they were born to rule our nation of full-blooded black Ghanaians: and thus seek unfettered power for themselves, because they see Ghanaians as a malleable and sycophantic people, who are moral cowards whose serf-mentality and lack of self-belief makes them toady to lighter-hued people. Being black Africans who are proud of our colour and race, and who posses abundant self-belief, true Nkrumaists, deplore the miasma that men like ex-President J. J. Rawlings’ malevolent hold on the gullible in our country, represents, and wish to see it end immediately.

My last quotation from President Obama’s speech goes to those in the previous regime, whose unfathomable greed created a culture of dog-eat-dog selfishness, and brought about such indiscipline in our society – those once-powerful Akan tribal-supremacists who dominated the New Patriotic Party (NPP) so completely, in all the eight years that that party was in power for, and who made Kokofu-football politricks their stock-in-trade in our politics. Let those hypocrites, who incredibly, actually sought to impose their tribal Chief on Nkrumah’s Ghana as its de facto monarch (yes, our unitary Republic that is a nation of diverse-ethnicity: and which that great pan-Africanist and thinker Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah succeeded, against great odds, in moulding into a united people with a common destiny), pay heed to these courageous words of President Obama: “Africa is not the crude caricature of a continent at war…But for far too many Africans, conflict is a part of life, as constant as the sun. There are wars over land and wars over resources. And it is still far too easy for those without conscience to manipulate whole communities into fighting among faiths and tribes… These conflicts are a millstone around Africa's neck.” Clearly, the time has now come for the principled and de-tribalised Akans who believe in the enterprise Ghana in the NPP, to join hands with the honest members of their party, to wrestle control of that party from those Akan tribal-supremacists who are without conscience (and seek the Balkanization of our country for the benefit of the progeny of the pre-colonial feudal ruling elites). It was their greed and selfishness that lost them the trust of the Ghanaian people – and led to the NPP’s defeat in the December 2008 presidential election. Such politicians must understand that Kokofu-football politricks has no place in Nkrumah’s Ghana of today.

For the sake of our country and its people, one certainly hopes that all the honest members of our political class, will stop their cowardly fence-sitting: and let the abovementioned words quoted from the historic speech to the people of Africa, by US President Barrack Obama, galvanize them into speaking out boldly against corruption and injustice in Ghana, henceforth – and, like Mr. P. C. Appiah-Ofori, expose those of their colleagues who shortchange our country and its people. Hopefully, those for whom this particular cap fits (who are now said to be sulking in our second city because President Obama was not inveigled into coming there: as would have been the case, hitherto: had they been in power, thank goodness) will apologise to President Mills for seeking to embarrass him during President Obama’s visit, by conveniently forgetting that they rejected three Chrysler cars, when they told the world they had still not been given any cars for their retirement years, yet (they, who once told us, when they were seeking power in December 2000, that they had already made their personal fortunes – and were only coming to serve Ghanaians). Does the hypocrisy of former President Kufuor know no bounds? What have the people of Ghana got to do with his grandchildren – when, after spending zillions renovating the Osu Castle, he says that he could not move in there on their account: as there was no room there for them? Why did they have to live with him in the Osu Castle – when they have responsible parents of their own who are not short of a pesewa or two? When he and the sycophants whose endless praise-singing turned him into a megalomaniac, say that the so-called Golden Jubilee House (shouldn’t that confounded building be known as Flagstaff House, by the way, dear reader?) was necessary: because it will be there for “a hundred years”, do they ever stop to think that a more visionary leader, would have spent the colossal sum we wasted on that monstrosity rather improving health-care facilities nationwide, instead – because such a leader, would have had the vision to rather commission plans for a future new capital city: to be built at a point in time, when our country can actually afford it – and bang in the centre of Ghana too? Surely, that will enable the filthy conurbation that now serves as our “capital eyesore” to be “decongested” naturally and painlessly, will it not? With respect, our former presidents must belt up if they have no meaningful contribution to make to public discourse. Let them ponder over President Obama’s blunt speech – and advice their unprincipled parties to pay heed to it. A word to the wise…

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HOW DO WE MEET THE REAL NEEDS OF GHANA’S SMALL-HOLDER FARMERS?

One of the biggest problems facing smallholder farmers in Ghana is the terrible void in farming, created by the weakening of institutional support, occasioned by the unfortunate change in the structure and vision of the ministry of agriculture’s extension services, over the years – as a direct result of the strictures of the IMF and the World Bank. Another of the constraints that farmers in Ghana face is the dreadful effect on the agricultural sector, of the lack of original thinking exhibited daily by a political class that is void of imagination – and many of whose members seldom do any truly world-class creative thinking (of the kind that Nkrumah engaged in throughout his years in power) that results in long-lasting solutions to our nation’s major problems. Incidentally, that is why some of us are waiting patiently, for example, for the day when Ghana’s politicians will end their love-affair with building badly-designed and poor quality roads: when it finally dawns on them that they are wasting taxpayers’ money concentrating solely on building roads that never last because of the kickbacks they demand from road contractors – and at last wake up to the fact that it is only by developing a truly modern and nationwide railway network as part of an integrated mass-transportation system, that we will remove the major bottlenecks in our transportation system: and make markets that much more accessible to smallholder farmers in Ghana, and at a cost far more reasonable than that charged them by the accident-prone road transport sector (Ghana’s “killing-fields” ). But I digress.

The response of the president’s press secretary, Mr. Ayariga, when he tried to explain away newspaper stories that implied that he had used his influence to get the ministry of agriculture to allocate a tractor to him, not too long ago, is a telling case in point: about how most of officialdom still lives in the anything-goes pre-global warming era. According to him, he purchased the tractor in question, simply to provide tillage services to farmers in his part of the country, at reasonable rates, in order to assist them. Yet, at a time of global climate change, any politician who cares about the farming sector, and cares about food safety issues such as the worldwide demand for traceability and transparency in the food chain, ought to work to encourage no-till farming that will prevent the widespread destruction of soils in our country: which are a direct result of the unnecessary land tillage that widespread tractor-usage brings in its wake. This is precisely the time to promote environmentally-friendly organic farming, so that we can move away from the kind of old-style, pre-global warming era of intensive farming, with its dependence on synthetically compounded additives in animal feed products, pesticides, and fertilizers. The question is: Why do our leaders not rather think of smallholder farmers as stewards of our natural heritage – through whom Ghana’s climate-change amelioration initiatives can be channeled at the grassroots level: and who will become agents of sustainable rural development, as we encourage them to practice organic farming as the way forward for sustainable wealth creation in the agricultural sector of Ghana’s economy?

Surely, we ought to encourage government agencies, such as the extension services of the ministry of agriculture and the Rural Enterprises Project (REP) organisation, to use the methods and developmental models of sustainable development organisations, such as: the American NGO Fearless Planet; the American green-farming guru Ken Hargesheimer's (whom the Ivory Coast has already invited to teach smallholder farmers his farming methods, by the way) Mini-Farms no-till movement; and the South African sustainable livelihoods organisation, Sustainable Villages Africa (SVA), for those reasons? Why do we not use NGO’s to help smallholder farmers grow trees, adopt biochar for carbon sequestration, for example – and above all, enable them benefit from the nascent global market in carbon credits: so that they will come to understand that they have a financial stake in the preservation of our nation’s biodiversity? A perfect example of market-driven sustainable development that creates wealth for smallholder farmers in Ghana, is the American NGO Fearless Planet’s positive social entrepreneurial intervention in Kade, in Ghana’s Eastern Region – where it is partnering a group of Ghanaian women smallholder farmers to cultivate and market organically grown oil palm: in a project that has dramatically changed their lives and improved their living standards considerably. In addition to local sales, they are also exporting their oil palm to a fair trade American soap manufacturer.

There are many such possibilities for other farmer-based groups throughout the country. Many of the leading supermarkets in urban Ghana, such as the South African supermarket chain, Shoprite, for example, are all keen to source as much of their requirement for fruit and vegetables from Ghanaians farmers – but precious few of smallholder farmers in our country have the capacity to enable them secure such deals. They must be helped to access such markets. It is for that reason that organisations that work at the grassroots level, such as Fearless Planet; REP; National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI); and the Community Resource Management Support Centre, must all benefit from the funding for Africa’s agricultural sector promised by the G8 nations. Those critical organisations, in addition to the research institutions of the Council for Industrial and Scientic Research (CSIR) that handle agricultural research, are so important in the scheme of things in the new era we have now entered: as a result of the dramatic change in climatic conditions worldwide, due to global warming. If we really want Ghanaian smallholder farmers to benefit from the resources that the G8 nations say they will make available to that sector of the African economy, then let our leaders consult the them directly at the grassroots level for their input about what help they need from officialdom to jump-start the economies of their villages, in “village-square meetings” – rather than end up spending almost all the proposed G8 funds on those mostly-unproductive seminars and workshops, so beloved of the predatory experts and consultants: who have turned poverty-alleviation into such a lucrative growth industry in Africa: which enables them live off the fat of the land (in this instance, that of poor smallholder farmers in Ghana – if we allow them to lobby our leaders for that end, that is).

At the end of the day, we must have land reform that will take away land currently held in trust for their people by traditional rulers (many of whom simply sell such land and either pocket the proceeds, or share them with their most influential palace lackeys), for redistribution to landless tenant farmers – after paying fair compensation for the state acquiring such land for redistribution to smallholder farmers countrywide: as well as to any young people desirous of leaving the urban areas to farm. We must aim to ensure that every smallholder has the means to diversify their farming business by doing one or a few of the following in addition to growing food crops (among other things, i.e.), if they are so inclined: keep a few sheep or goats if that is possible for them; rear grasscutters or snails if that is feasible for them; do some fish-farming or snail-farming; do some beekeeping or grow mushrooms. Above all, let each farmer grow a few economic trees such as mangoes, avocado pears, or Moringa oleifera – or even do a little agro-forestry, growing some of our fast-disappearing tree species, as the depletion of our forests continue apace: if they have enough land to do so. All that must be made possible by providing small grants to all Ghana’s smallholder farmers – which is far better than the current idiocy of selecting a few poor households and creating a dependency-culture in rural Ghana, by giving them cash handouts: just so that cynical and corrupt politicians can say they are doing something about fighting poverty.

It is far better to teach a man or woman to fish, or provide them the wherewithal to buy seeds or breeding stock for livestock farming: and getting an additional income-stream that way, in my humble view. We must also set up a special fund with low interest rates at not more than 3 per cent and long grace periods, from which smallholder farmers can borrow to buy inputs – and the current government must be congratulated for subsidizing fertilizers: although they ought to move away from synthetic fertilizers to organic fertilizers. The cocoa husks and other waste from cocoa farms can all be turned into organic fertilizer on smallholder cocoa farmers’ farms – if the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCBOD) can invite the Swedish green activist Folke Günther to teach such farmers how to make use of his simple pyrolysis retort for making biochar. Even that could enable such cocoa farmers leverage the carbon offset markets, perhaps. Let the Mills administration directly consult as many individual smallholder farmers and farmer-based organisation at the grassroots level countrywide, as they possibly can – to ensure that they can fashion a new agricultural policy that will enable us achieve food security: through the predominant use of environmentally-friendly smallholder organic farming as a national goal: particularly at a time when the very survival of the whole of humankind is threatened by global climate change. A word to the wise….

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WHAT SHOULD GHANA OFFER US PRESIDENT BARRACK OBAMA & THE NATION HE LEADS?

Anyone who has read declassified US State Department and National Security documents on Africa, will understand why many an Nkrumaist and pan-Africanist, finds it so disheartening listening to those individuals in our midst, who are bereft of self-belief and lack imagination – as they prattle on about the many benefits they think will come to Ghana from US President Barrack Obama’s one-day visit to Ghana. Why do they not rather spend their energies thinking about what Ghana can also do for America, in her hour of need, instead – at a time when the US is resorting to borrowing trillions of dollars from nations such as Japan and China: in order to stop its economy from imploding? The inability of many of the members of our political class, particularly, to think of a new approach in our relationship with the US, which is revealed by their unrealistic expectations about what they think Ghana will gain, from President Obama’s trip here, reveals the shocking lack of sophistication and naïveté of many of the post-Nkrumah era leadership in Africa. It has enabled the Western powers to toy with Africa for so long – and makes those nations think that they can continue their something-for-nothing policy of minimum expenditure in return for unfettered access to all the continent’s natural resources, till the very end of time.

The time has now come for that selfish and unhelpful attitude amongst the developed nations of the world to end – especially now that America has elected its first African-American president. We must replace the old cynicism and ruthless exploitation of Africa, with a new relationship of equal partnerships: each nation working for common goals, which are beneficial for both parties. The perfidy of the US establishment that is revealed in the declassified Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) documents from the period in office of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, pertaining to US-Ghana relations (especially during the Nkrumah era, for example), clearly show why, ultimately, African politicians must look inwards and rely on the ingenuity and hard work of their own people, for Africa’s salvation. We all understand, however, that today, because we live in an increasingly interdependent world, as a result of globalization, we must accept that nations like ours, must, of necessity, deal with foreign nations for shared common-interest reasons. However, it is imperative that in getting what we need from foreign nations, our relationship with them does not end up impoverishing our people and weakening the nations of the continent. That is why the question the average Nkrumaist and pan-Africanist in Ghana would probably ask, in order to elicit responses and ideas that will enable Ghana offer the US President, something positive for his country, in return for whatever help we might ask from his country, is: What can Ghana do for the visiting first African-American US president, which will benefit his people and amply justify anything of value, which we might ask President Obama to give to our nation, whiles he is here?

Surprising though it might be to many Ghanaians, and to President Obama and the large entourage accompanying him, America can actually find the perfect solution to the crisis facing the US auto industry right here in Ghana. They can also find new turbine technology that obviates the need to build dams for hydroelectric power (at a time of global climate change, when most hydroelectric power plants are becoming increasingly unpredictable – because of the frequent seasonal low dam water-levels now being experienced worldwide), which, if developed by the Americans, could harness the flow of both Ghana and America’s many rivers for hydroelectric power generation. The man whose two inventions can literally save the US auto industry (by providing it with a device that makes the batteries of electric cars have unlimited range!), and help boost its renewable power-generating capacity, is Colonel Kofi Abaka Jackson – the retired air force officer, who once served as a minister in the military regime of General Acheampong in the 1970’s. The Mills administration must quickly get in touch with Colonel Jackson – for, he holds the key, to beginning a new relationship between our nation and America: one that will be a more equal and mutually beneficial partnership. Clearly, the old thinking that made nations like ours constantly look to the US to send its taxpayers’ money to us as aid (as if we were a nation of spongers and no longer the once-proud and hardworking people that Nkrumah and others fought so hard to free from British colonial occupation) is no longer tenable.

That is why we must get the US to abandon its “something-for-nothing” African foreign policy – and Ghana in turn ought to end its days as a global power in begging-bowl diplomacy. In exchange for Colonel Kofi Abaka Jackson enabling Americans (and the rest of the world) to continue their love-affair with SUV’s and other gas-guzzling automobiles, and helping America increase its renewable power-generating capacity, the US must be creative – and replace its outmoded African foreign policy, at least in as far as its relationship with Nkrumah’s Ghana, goes. If we are to offer Colonel Jackson’s remarkable ground-breaking and cutting-edge technological inventions to America, then the US must agree to make Ghana its African equivalent of Israel, and treat Ghana as an ally that it can outsource some of the military tasks of its US African Command’s role in meeting its African foreign policy objectives, to. For once, in Africa, the US must think creatively, and put aside its stingy something-for-nothing mindset – and make the bold strategic decision to provide substantial military assistance to Ghana’s military. What Ghana needs from the US (even though it has not yet dawned on its largely-unimaginative political class – which seldom thinks of their nation in strategic terms, sadly) is to be taken seriously enough to make it possible for the US to play a significant role in helping us restructure our military forces: The US must make a strategic decision to enable Ghana to dramatically increase the size of its military to some 200,000 men.

If they decide to make a long-term commitment to help train Ghana’s military and transform it into a world-class military force (at the moment we have some of the finest fighting men and women in the world – who unfortunately are hamstrung by a crippling lack of funds), and agree to bankroll the re-equipping of our military with the modern weapons systems that will give them the capability to effectively police our territorial waters by air and by sea: with the prevention of the type of criminality that is slowly destroying the Nigerian oil and natural gas industries in mind, it will benefit both our nations, will it not? The US must also be prepared to include provision for Ghana’s new military force in its overall military budget – to ensure that it has a powerful ally in us: to partner it and assure the battle-readiness of the African component of its military’s capability to have an effective global reach, with the help of suitable regional powers. It is only by helping us rapidly build one of the most effective armies in the world that has the capability to deploy anywhere in Africa, for effective peacemaking (in addition to peacekeeping), because it has the US-provided hardware to give it the power and capability to do so, that America can contribute meaningfully to a new Ghana-US relationship of equal partners. That will be a relatively small price to pay for ensuring that the US African Command has an Israeli-type ally in Africa – which gives it the same kind of foothold-rewards that its relationship with Israel’s military gives it: and helps it to achieve its Middle East foreign policy objectives.

One hopes that the Mills administration will contact Colonel Kofi Abaka Jackson as quickly as possible – and get briefed by him about his remarkable ground-breaking and cutting-edge inventions for electric cars and hydro-power turbines, which could make a huge difference to the US economy and also benefit the rest of humankind. If the US were to agree to make it possible for us to have a military force of some 200,000 that is well-trained and well-equipped, and which is also one of the most effective armed forces in the world, in return for, say the establishment of a US military base in Ghana, even that would be a small price worth paying by Nkrumah’s Ghana, in my view. If even an Nkrumaist and pan-Africanist like Kofi Thompson, whose type of activism is the antithesis of the treasonable activities of Africa’s many stooges for neocolonialism, has now arrived at this conclusion about Ghana’s relationship with the US, then President Barrack Obama must put aside his country’s something-for-nothing African foreign policy for once, in this instance – and think creatively and welcome this idea: for the mutual benefit of Ghana and the United States of America. The question is: are our current leaders prepared to think the unthinkable too – and aim for a new and more equal Ghana-US relationship: by offering these original-thinking-type ideas to US President Barrack Obama? One hopes they will – and above all that they will get in touch quickly with Colonel Kofi Abaka Jackson: who holds the key to any new improved Ghana-US relationship. A word to the wise…

Email: kofi.thompson@gmail.com

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HUMBUG IN GHANA'S PARLIAMENT?

I could not help smiling, when I watched a news item on Metro TV’s 6th July 6, 2009 early evening news programme, in which the former deputy minister of finance, Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei, was gesticulating animatedly in apparent frustration: and expressing his sense of outrage to the Speaker. He wondered aloud, just what was happening to Parliament, and said he was not in the least bit surprised that ordinary people no longer respected members of parliament – because an allegation made by a member of parliament from his own side of the house, Mr. P.C. Appiah-Ofori, had been repeated on the floor of the house without any evidence, by a member of the majority side in Parliament, Mr. Twumasi-Appiah: who refused to withdraw the offending statement that had so raised Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei’s ire. The upshot was that the minority side staged a walkout – and coolly informed Ghanaians (with straight faces) that as a result of Mr. Twumasi-Appiah’s refusal to either substantiate or withdraw the allegation that they had received bribes of US$5,000 each, to facilitate the Vodafone takeover of Ghana Telecom (GT), they would no longer be participating fully in debates in Parliament (in which decisions affecting the welfare of the ordinary people of Ghana are taken, and for which reason they were elected in the first place: and remunerated so handsomely for!). The question that came immediately to mind – as I listened with astonishment to the humbug of those over-pampered hypocrites who used to work even till dawn, to enable fraudulent bills benefiting the powerful crooks in their regime to be railroaded through Parliament – is best expressed by quoting that pithy phrase in pidgin English from Nigeria that poses the rhetorical question: “Na who cause am?” (whose fault is it?)

Had that genius Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei and his self-righteous colleagues on the minority benches in Parliament, developed a mild case of amnesia perhaps, one wonders – and suddenly forgotten that once upon a time they conspired with that greedy cabal in the presidency (when they were in power), to railroad through Parliament that fraudulent sale and purchase agreement for VALCO to a non-existent entity, grandly named International Aluminum Partners: that two multinational metals conglomerates, Norske Hydro and VALE (which were said to be buying VALCO), vehemently denied ever consenting to append their signatures to? Who in their right mind would not feel contemptuous of such amoral politicians – prepared to sanction criminality to that degree: merely because it benefited a powerful and influential few to whom they were beholden: and even though it was inimical to our nation’s interests? How do we know that that eleventh-hour con-job did not inform their tactics in the Vodafone rip-off deal too? Did those hypocritical apostles of the rule of law, not again do the unimaginable, by completely ignoring the constitutional edict that enjoins all Ghanaians to fight corruption: when they topped their perfidy (after allowing GT to be sold for a song), by passing yet another new law that indemnified all those who struck the Ghana Telecom/Vodafone deal from future prosecution? Why did they have to pass such an egregious example of a bad and self-serving law if they had nothing to hide? Did they not think that most discerning Ghanaians would come to the conclusion that they were aiding and abetting those engaging in corruption: and to the detriment of our nation? So now that the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost, the US$5,000 question is: “Na who cause am?”

Has the sanctimonious Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei now suddenly forgotten that Ghanaians saw some of his colleagues rush to pin down Mr. P.C. Appiah-Ofori in the chamber of Parliament, when he made an attempt to make a statement expressing his opposition to the sale of GT to Vodafone? The question is: Why were they prepared to physically assault their colleague in an effort to gag him and stop him from making public the reasons for his objection to that one-sided deal? Was he about to make the same allegation that they are now boycotting the important work of Parliament for – and which they did not want recorded in the Hansard, for posterity to note their perfidy for all time, perchance? Has Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei forgotten that once upon a time he was actually signing million-dollar cheques drawn in favour of that financial equivalent of a black-hole, known as “National Security” – even when his regime, incredibly (from the standpoint of ethical behaviour), was in its dying days? What those too-clever-by-half members of our political class (such as the “smooth” Dr. Anthony Akoto-Osei and his ilk) fail to understand, is that the people of Ghana cannot all be fooled all the time. That is why most ordinary people will tell him, were he and his colleagues to ask them, that between the very clever Mr. Kodjo Mpianim and Mr. P.C. Appiah-Ofori, they know exactly whose word to take – precisely because they know which of the two men has a long history of denying most of the things it is alleged he has been involved in. The bitter truth is that our political class is jam-packed with sophisticated white-collar criminals who are really worse than the notorious Atta Aryee. Do they not know that rooking Ghana silly through the use of opaque offshore special purpose vehicles is no different from what that notorious armed robber used to get up to, in his hey days: when he was carrying out his reign of terror?

My humble advice to Dr. Akoto Osei’s mostly-clueless successors, if they would listen, is that they must get hold of key EU politicians, such as those leading left-wing green members of the Dutch Parliament, who care about Africa, to ask the Dutch equivalent of our economic crimes unit of the Ghana Police, to find out the antecedents of Vodafone BV – so as to establish any recent changes in its shareholding and also examine all its bank accounts: to see if that will yield any clues to help get to the bottom of the rumours of impropriety surrounding the sale of GT to Vodafone. They must also find and talk to some of the left-wing UK MP’s with an interest in Africa, and ask them to contact the Metropolitan Police team which collaborated with the Kenyan Police to unravel a number of multi-million pound sterling deals involving some members of Kenya’s ruling elite. That might also be useful in helping them crack any similar secret deals in the privatization of GT. They must also look for some of the left-wing members of the EU Parliament (who also care about, and want to stop, corrupt practices in Africa, by powerful Western multinationals) to get the relevant EU commissioner to help them in the task of unraveling the EU angle – regarding the purchase of GT by Vodafone PLC using Vodafone BV as a legal front. That is the best way of finding out, if it was the case, for example, that having learnt from its Kenyan experience, Vodafone elected to cover its tracks, and circumvent possible future charges of corruption, through that special purpose vehicle. They must also contact leading EU transparency activist groups such as Global Witness for help in that regard too. As for Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei himself, I wonder if he is aware of the fact that there are those, who say that they have no doubt that he will probably end up before the Fast Track High Courts, in due course. His critics also say, that he epitomizes those smart-dealers who created the culture of dog-eat-dog selfishness, which we saw during their years in power: when greed amongst our ruling elite reached its apogee – and is described by them as someone who is: lethal; incredibly smooth; apparently respectable; super-ruthless; and, like all his philandering Akan tribal-supremacist pals, world-class at speaking with a forked-tongue. He must be careful that the chickens do not come to roost in his own backyard, too soon. Hmm, Ghana – eyeasem oo: asem ebaba debi ankasa!

GHANA MUST EMULATE BOTSWANA’S ETHICAL FOREIGN POLICY!

Apart from diamonds, providence did not bless Botswana with much – but it gave her a crop of very wise and honest leaders: who have used the little that Mother Nature gave them to provide their people with one of the highest living standards in Africa. Even when disaster has struck, such as it did when HIV/AIDS swept through their population, they have ensured the welfare of their people, by putting into place one of the most comprehensive HIV/AIDS care-management regimes anywhere in the world – ensuring that all Batswana living with HIV/AIDS (which unfortunately, happens to be a substantial proportion of the total population) have retroviral drugs to enable them stay well and remain productive throughout their working years. It is instructive that that nation is the one country in Africa, in which corruption does not thrive. Unlike elsewhere in the continent, national standards have not fallen, since it gained its independence (from the UK). Significantly, Botswana also has a foreign policy that is based on morality, not political expediency – and in that sense is far ahead of the curve, globally. One can contrast their decency in that regard with the perfidy of the G8 nations, for example – who talk endlessly about integrity and ethics but practice neither: in both their domestic and foreign policies.

An example is the latest wheeze by the G8 leaders. They are now talking about the need for integrity and ethics to prevent another global financial crisis developing in future – yet, they, who are largely responsible for a greater part of the greenhouse gases that have caused the disastrous change in climatic conditions globally, and who spent trillions of their taxpayers’ money to bailout private banks (brought to their knees by greed and risk-taking driven by short-term thinking), will never keep their promises to provide the required money for the biggest victims of global climate change (the economically hard-pressed African nations least responsible for that worldwide catastrophe), to fund amelioration programmes designed to combat the most negative effects of global climate change in the continent. Nations in today’s world must behave in a moral fashion – and let their foreign policy be underpinned by ethical considerations. It came as no surprise, to those who wish to see less cynicism in international politics, that Botswana, whose leaders have ensured that their society is underpinned by an ethos based on integrity and ethics, quickly issued a statement that it was disassociating itself, from the AU’s nonsensical and immoral (my words, not theirs!) stand, on the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) indictment of Sudanese President Omar Bashir.

Clearly, the leaders of Botswana refuse to close their eyes to the abomination occurring in Darfur, and elsewhere in Sudan – and consequently have no desire to see the indicted mastermind behind the pogrom in Darfur escape justice. They also refused to close their eyes as millions of Zimbabweans suffered untold hardship as result of the actions of the tyrants in Zimbabwe (before the government of national unity was formed there) – whiles the AU maintained a deafening silence. It is heartening to know that the capricious Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, was not be able to bully Botswana into suspending its ethical foreign policy on that issue – because they are a principled lot. The question is: Why did Ghana not stand side by side with Botswana on this particular issue? For Nkrumah’s Ghana to give succour to that racist and mass-murderer, Omar Bashir, is unconscionable – and President Mills of Ghana, who believes in, and personifies integrity and ethical behaviour (that the G8 have paid lip-service to for decades but do not practice, incidentally), must replace his foreign minister for not showing sufficient leadership and recommending that the government of Ghana too, does what Botswana has done, in rejecting the AU’s untenable and shameful position, on the issue of the ICC’s indictment of President Omar Bashir. Why did Ghana’s delegation to the AU summit in Libya have to cave in to the Libyan leader’s blatant arm-twisting: on an issue to do with the fundamental human rights of our fellow black Africans – and allow him to railroad that shameful summit resolution, on non-cooperation with the ICC in executing the arrest warrant for the Sudanese leader, through the conference floor?

Colonel Gaddafi, of course, as we all know, happens to be the leader of a nation in which black Africans are treated in the most appalling of fashions – which is exactly the way Sudan’s racists, the so-called ‘Arabs,’ also treat their own black African citizens. It is still not too late for Ghana to follow Botswana’s example – and issue a statement disassociating our country from the AU’s untenable stand on that issue. As a result of our commitment to promoting ethnic equality and multi-ethnic harmony in Africa, a number of Nkrumaists (including me) who are active in the pan-Africanist movement, became implacable opponents of the former regime – because of President Kufuor’s persistence in pursuing that outrageous Akan tribal-supremacist agenda of his, which was designed to foist his tribal Chief on the nation, as a de facto monarch. That pure nonsense on bamboo stilts, in the nation of diverse-ethnicity that Nkrumah succeeded in moulding into a united country, whose citizens shared a common destiny, was simply too much for us to stomach. It was a travesty that ended up dividing our country, as never before, since Ghana gained her independence in 1957.

If the current regime too (like its unprincipled predecessor regime before it) continues to be obdurate about not cooperating with the ICC in regard to its arrest warrant for that ‘Arab’ racist who is intent on ethnic-cleansing Darfur of its entire black African population, then the question a nobody, a fool, and an ignoramus like me would like Ghana’s foreign minister to answer is: are pan-Africanists and Nkrumaists in Ghana (who believe that sovereignty ultimately lies in the hands of the ordinary people of Africa, not their rulers, and that the human rights of ordinary Africans are inviolable), to conclude that those in power in Ghana today, think that the human rights of Africans can be violated by their leaders with impunity? Well, if that is the case, then we shall have to conclude that this is a regime that will not base its foreign policy on ethical considerations – which will mean therefore, that the Mills administration will have to count Kofi Thompson as one of its most implacable opponents, henceforth. I despise those who wield power and think that life can be conveniently compartmentalized – and that one can be an honest person and behave ethically in one aspect of one’s life and be unprincipled and thoroughly dishonest, in other areas of one’s life (one is ether honest or one is not – there can be nothing in-between from the two, in my humble view).

That is precisely the kind of cynicism and logic informing the immorality that fuels the unprincipled actions of the decadent Munkata-types who still lurk in the Mills regime (and are said to be responsible for the cover-up of that scandal by our secret services, by the way). Incidentally, we are waiting to see what the president will do about prosecuting Alhaji Munkata, the former minister for youth and sports, for the misuse of public funds to pay for expenses to do with an overseas trip undertaken by his girlfriend at taxpayers’ expense. Incredibly, that man is reported to have issued a warning recently about what he calls an “anti-North agenda” in our national life that he thinks is afoot in Ghana today. Having got away thus far with not being prosecuted by what is increasingly beginning to look like a spineless and cynical regime (in some respects!), that is hesitant to prosecute those “on-side” who take our country for a ride with impunity, he now also has the gall to try and stoke up ethnic tensions in Ghana – compounding his many sins: by talking glibly about an “anti-North” agenda. We shall see how the Mills administration will justify prosecuting the crooks in the previous regime – if it fails to prosecute that man Munkata. But I digress. On the issue of foreign policy, the president must not allow immorality to become the defining characteristic of his regime – if he wants to leave a good legacy behind. He and his foreign minister should never have allowed the capricious Colonel Gaddafi’s disgraceful arm-twisting to end up making them concur to the AU’s foolishness: and thereby tarnishing Ghana’s good name – just for the sake of a racist and a mass-murderer like that brutal dictator Omar Bashir.

The Mills regime must not forget that we are a nation in which common decency and values still mean something – and in such situations at future AU summits we must always ally ourselves to principled nations like Botswana, not Sudan and Libya: which are both run by ruthless dictators. If this regime continues along this path some of us will become the most implacable of its foes – and even though I am an uneducated fellow who can barely read and write, I do wield a mean pen: which I shall deploy in my opposition to what appears to be gradually turning out to be a rather cynical regime too (in certain respects!), one fears. The nagging zillion-cedi question is: In the end, will it also turn out to be much like its predecessor, perhaps? Nkrumah’s Ghana, must, by definition, gain a reputation for being a nation that always stands up for the oppressed in Africa. Surely, we did not spend our nation’s scarce resources to help bring freedom to the continent (by being instrumental in ridding Africa of its colonial occupiers), just to end up empowering oppressive rulers in Africa, and allowing them to maim and kill the selfsame citizens, whom they are obliged by international treaties and conventions to protect: without protesting loudly and expressing our sense of outrage? The Mills administration must understand clearly that Ghana must never support any African regime that brutalizes its own citizens under any circumstances – and support for President Bashir, a man leading a regime committing the most egregious of crimes against humanity, is simply untenable: more so, when he will eventually end up before the ICC in The Hague in any case, as sure as day follows night.

It is only a matter of time – and it may take two years or twenty (to paraphrase the ICC’s prosecutor Luis Campo-Morenho); but appear before it, he will. Will Ghana’s leaders be able to look the people of Darfur in the eye when that finally happens? We must be on the right side of history in this matter: which is to be firmly on the side of the people of Darfur. Above all, we must never allow Colonel Gaddafi to bully our country: just because our leaders think that our nation needs his oil and on favourable terms. The plain truth is that he himself is a dictator and a hypocrite – who talks endlessly about African unity, whiles presiding over a nation-state that has consistently treated desperate young black Africans (escaping the hell-holes their corrupt leaders have turned their nations into), who have ended up in Libyan territory illegally, capriciously. Ghana has a worthy and fitting ally in Botswana, in the fight to protect the human rights of all ordinary Africans. To make such a Machiavellian philosophy the guiding principle of our foreign policy is to declare our nation a most cynical one – and that cannot be right for a supposedly civilized and modern African nation-state regarded the world over as a beacon of peace and stability in Africa. In what is supposed to be the age of the African Renaissance, it is imperative that Nkrumah’s Ghana, like Botswana, has an ethical foreign policy – not one based on expediency and hypocrisy. A word to the wise….

RESERVE THE OIL INDUSTRY’S SUPPLY SERVICES SECTOR FOR GHANAIAN-OWNED COMPANIES!

I have often wondered what the history of Africa would have been, if our pre-colonial ruling elites had understood the implications of the essential nature of the first Europeans who set foot on African soil. Perhaps if the traditional rulers of our part of Africa, for example, had understood the nature of the underlying ruthlessness, which drove those who came to our shores seeking gold (in what eventually became known as the Gold Coast), those leaders would have proceeded differently – and would have exercised a great deal of caution in all their dealings with those first Europeans: and would never have allied themselves to them – simply for the short-term gain of consolidating their own power as coastal states in their relationships with rival tribal powers in the hinterland. It was the naiveté of our traditional rulers, whose greed made them only too happy to accept leftovers from the Whiteman’s dinner table (speaking figuratively), which made it possible for Europeans to gradually end up occupying our country, and eventually succeeding in imposing colonial rule on us – and finally gave them unfettered access to the abundant natural resources that providence blessed us with.

They, of course, never forgot why they came to our shores: to take away as much of our wealth to their own countries as was possible, without any hindrance from local people – whiles our leaders jostled each other for the privilege of dining with those who in effect had come to bleed our nation dry and condemned it to a slow and painful death: by emasculating it, and, like vampires, feeding on the very lifeblood of our country: its cornucopia of minerals and timber. That is why I had a sense of d’jevu that made me shudder recently, when I saw a front-page photograph in the Daily Graphic, of a beaming president happily shaking hands with an oil company executive, who had led a delegation of his colleagues to call on the president at the seat of government, the Osu Castle. I could not help thinking that nothing much had changed since those first Europeans came on a similar mission and were also happily welcomed by our leaders then, with beaming smiles. The attraction for leftovers still remains strong amongst our ruling elites: and is the main reason why despite many years of governing ourselves, the proverbial “pull-him-down-syndrome” still underpins our system.

Sadly, that unfortunate affliction, which affected a majority of our pre-colonial ruling elites, and was responsible for the downfall of Africa, does still rampages across the continent, causing havoc to the living standards of our people – as our leaders literally give our wealth away, out of ignorance. It is one’s constant prayer to God that our leaders will finally grasp the full extent of the potential power of a resurgent Africa – a reawakened giant in which the spirit of enterprise will spread right across a continent that is brimming with well-educated men and women with self-belief: who are driven by the can-do spirit. One also hopes that those who now lead Nkrumah’s Ghana will focus on using the power of the Ghanaian nation-state to seize the commanding heights of our economy for Ghanaian entrepreneurs – by providing market-based incentives to both state-owned entities and those in the private sector, for example. That will mean that rather than merely admonishing Ghanaian entrepreneurs to position themselves to take advantage of the many opportunities available in the oil industry (to paraphrase the current vice president), more importantly, the government will ensure that parliament passes a law that stipulates that only companies with a majority Ghanaian shareholding will be allowed to participate in the oil industry’s supply services sector: and that that new law is passed as quickly as it is practicable to do so.

We must not let the same old lack of self-belief that manifests itself in Ghanaians treating each other worse than they do foreigners (whom they invariably bend over backwards to help), rear its ghastly head when production starts in our oil and natural gas industries. I was horrified to learn that that same old “pull-him-down-syndrome” had been at play in the drawing up of the terms of the agreement Ghana signed with the company of that brilliant, hardworking, and patriotic Ghanaian oil tycoon, Quincy Sintim-Aboagye – whose private oil company is drilling for oil in the Saltpond oilfield. Yet, that innovative oilman has trained (and is still training) hundreds of Ghanaian oil-sector professionals in various disciplines. In addition to that, being a patriot, he also keeps his money here – and is creating jobs with decent pay for young Ghanaians. The question is: Has it ever struck the government of the day, to seek advice from that knowledgeable and apolitical gentleman, who loves his country and isn’t ashamed to say so wherever he goes – as to how best our nation can ensure that its interests are protected from sundry foreign carpetbaggers now flooding our oil sector (and who incidentally, are as ruthless as those first Europeans who came here looking for gold, and getting it for as cheaply as they possibly could: by taking advantage of the ignorance of our rulers then)?

Although he never says a bad word about anyone, it is instructive that the previous stooges for neocolonialism, into whose greedy hands Nkrumah’s Ghana fell for eight disastrous years, did all they could to cripple Quincy Sintim-Aboagye’s oil business – whiles they bent over backwards to enable greedy and ruthless foreigners to rip our country off (by drawing up those absurd agreements with them, which were so clearly inimical to our country’s interests), for short-term personal gain for themselves: and at the expense of the long-term interests of ordinary Ghanaians and their nation. My humble advice to the brilliant and patriotic Quincy, is to contact Liam Casey (known as Mr. China)of PCH International, who can put together a consortium that will enable him move into deeper-sea fields in the shortest possible time-frame (certainly quicker than he had originally envisaged), and with suitable funding support from the world-class Chinese partners that Casey can easily bring on board for him in a mutually-beneficial joint-venture. Quincy, more than anyone else in the industry, deserves to gain from the coming oil boom – because he will definitely spread the wealth he makes amongst Ghanaian businesses and Ghanaian workers. In talking to Liam Casey, he must also think about the possibility of leveraging the synergy involved in adding world-class Chinese companies that build giant windmills for renewable-power generation, as joint-venture partners: and add that to his core business. As a fellow patriot, I wish him well.

Finally, one humbly appeals to our present leaders to make sure that a law is passed as soon as possible to reserve the oil industry supply services sector for majority Ghanaian-owned businesses only – to ensure that Ghanaians actually benefit from that industry. They must also ask US President Barrack Obama to give Ghana’s navy six oil tankers from the mothballed fleet of the US Navy, when he visits Ghana – so that the lifting of oil for export from Ghana will be the Ghana Navy’s exclusive preserve. That is a sensible insurance policy against fraud in the export of oil from Ghana – and in that regard, they would be wise to send the high command of our military on a fact-finding mission to Egypt: to see how Egypt’s military has its tentacles in many areas of the Egyptian economy, for the mutual benefit of the Egyptian people and the Egyptian military. We must use our military for certain vital national economic undertakings, so as to prevent revenue leakage in a system that is specifically designed to be manipulated by self-seekers for their personal benefit: and at the expense of the Ghanaian nation-state and its people. The water sector and the operations of the STC bus company, are perfect examples of state-owned business entities that ought to be in the very capable and corruption-free hands, of the Ghana Armed Forces. A visit by the military’s top brass to Egypt will enable them produce the relevant recommendations to government as to how best they can help protect our nation’s vital economic interest by using the military to undertake certain tasks in the economic sphere: such as the oil and natural gas industries. A word to the wise…

FAREWELL, MICHAEL JACKSON – YOU WERE INDEED THE GREATEST!

When Paul McCartney paid tribute to the late Michael Jackson, he described him as a “boy-man” – in recalling his sincere and gentle nature. In a sense, it was a very apt description, which summed Michael Jackson up perfectly. He was also described in every news report announcing his death, throughout the world, as the “King of Pop” – which is exactly what he was during his short life on this earth. US President Barrack Obama was right in mentioning the tragic side of his life in paying tribute to the unique Michael – but we each of us have our tragic side too: because to suffer personal tragedy, in the spiritual journey that humankind calls life, is also an essential part of the human condition. Those who sought to hurt him during his life can no longer do so now – and one thanks goodness that Michael is at last free of their envy and churlish negativity, which hurt him so, forever.

The origins of Michael’s angst came from his constant search for companionship: that was genuine and pure. He wanted desperately to find meaningful friendships, which, for those who felt attracted to him, and he to, did not spring from the gold-digger’s attraction for mere wealth and fame. He found the sincerity he sought in the innocence of the children he befriended. He relived his own lost childhood with such children: in relationships without the censure he had often suffered as a child himself. There were those who harboured a secret dislike for him, and wished his downfall – mostly closet-racists for whom successful persons of colour are objects to annihilate: lest their pre-eminence in society shake the very foundations of their rock-solid, white-supremacist belief, in the inferiority of people of colour. They tried desperately hard to destroy him – by making out, that somehow, his pure and desperate need for the love and friendship of the only group of human beings that he felt completely secure with, children, was the dirty and secret lusting of a sexual pervert of some kind. However, in the end, that unfair attempt to sully his reputation is not what the world remembered him for, when he breathed his last – and in that sense Michael’s spirit triumphed over all those mean-spirited and pitiable souls.

The truth of the matter, is that Michael was a vulnerable and lonely “boy-man” for whom life tragically dealt an unfair hand – because, somewhere in the processes that go into the maturing of a young boy, and turning him into a well-adjusted man and well-rounded individual, blessed with an adulthood, which enables him experience a lifelong sense of being at ease with himself, something went tragically wrong: and Michael ended up becoming a super-wealthy and vulnerable boy-genius emotionally trapped in a perpetually-frail man’s body. In a sense, Michael was a classic Peter Pan character. One hopes that those who wished his fall from grace, and twisted his pure and gentle love for children: those innocent friendships, with which they sought to destroy him and seized the opportunity to try him twice in the law courts (for what were slanderous and false accusations), will now see the true measure of Michael’s greatness: in the outpouring of genuine grief across the world, when his death was confirmed. No doubt, those negative-types hoped that his trial would end, in the jailing of yet another innocent black man – and add Michael to that shocking and disproportionately large number of African-Americans, who are incarcerated unfairly because of racial prejudice, in penitentiaries right across America. It is entirely fitting, that in commenting on his death, virtually every musician of note in the world today, did acknowledge Michael’s amazing genius – and stated the extent of his influence on much of contemporary pop music and culture. It was a confirmation of his status as one of the all-time truly greats of popular music.

Michael was an incredibly talented and extraordinary human being, who also suffered the torture, of that soul-destroying self-doubt, which almost always afflicts the truly great, in the complex internal world of creative and gifted individuals. By definition, it would appear that they have to suffer such angst - which manifests itself physically, in their sense of loneliness, even when surrounded by large crowds; in the hard-to-understand paradox, of apparently outwardly self-confident individuals, who yet still are perpetually racked by a deep and unremitting sense of insecurity; and in the never-ending insomnia they almost all invariably suffer from. Incidentally, all those quirks of character also happen to be the very conditions, which are the DNA of the building-blocks of the creative genius, which we all acknowledge in the really gifted amongst us – and is reflected in the astonishing degree of complexity and mastery that one finds in their creative work. In dying so young, Michael is following many creative geniuses in the world of show business, such as James Dean and Marylyn Monroe, who were also dependent on prescribed medication of some sort to calm their nerves and placate their internal demons. Those drugs were often meant to bring them the relief that being able to sleep soundly, for example, does provide all human beings – and enable us to recharge our batteries daily. That dependence on prescription drugs, whiles giving them the relief that sound sleep brings, also helped them escape the wounds, which their gentle souls received from life’s daily knocks – and which fate so cruelly condemned them to experience with such rare sensitivity all their lives. Yet, their resilience also enabled them to struggle valiantly to get through each day – as they faced up to life’s oft harsh realities during their angst-filled waking hours.

One can only console Michael’s very loving surviving family members, who stood by him throughout his travails, during his entire life – perhaps because being so close to him, they, more than most, knew what a truly beautiful spirit he had: and what a gentle and loving soul he was. His children can be justifiably proud of their great father when they become adults themselves – because the love he engendered in others, will ensure that they too are loved by many good and kind people the world over, all their lives. One naturally wishes them well and hopes that they have inherited his talent too. There is no doubt that Michael has already been immortalized by the amazing and incredibly wonderful body of work that he created and left behind – and, in the digital age, his brilliant chart-topping songs, will be treasured for as long as pop music is played: and throughout the generations, in every continent of the world, till the very end of time. Fare, thee well, O, King Michael – and may your gentle soul rest in peace forever. All those who loved your music are so glad, and think it entirely fitting, that the world did finally acknowledge your status, as the “King of Pop”, on the very day that your life on this earth came to an end – in the pouring of grief by millions when news of your passing away was reported around the world. You were indeed the greatest modern-day pop superstar that ever lived – and a truly wonderful human being, whose marvelous music billions of people listened to over the years, and loved, in virtually every corner of the globe. The name of the undisputed King of Pop was, and will, always be a veritable global brand! Farewell, Michael Joseph Jackson.

GHANA MUST NOT ACCEPT THE AU’S NONSENSICAL EDICTS BLINDLY!

Listening to the BBC African service’s afternoon programme earlier today (2nd July, 2009), I felt like throwing up, when I heard Ghana’s foreign minister’s disgraceful attempt to justify the African Union’s nonsensical insistence, that the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the arrest of President Omar Bashir, be deferred for a year – to enable peace talks in Darfur to go on. Surely, the government of Ghana is not so naïve as to believe that that racist and murderous monster, President Omar Bashir, and the deceitful and cruel regime he leads, are serious about ceasing their campaign of intimidation and ethnic-cleansing, of the non-Arab population of Darfur (and elsewhere in Sudan), and eventually coming to some kind of an accommodation with a people they simply despise, and regard as inferior beings: on account of their darker hues?

Does Ghana’s foreign minister and his colleagues in the current ruling regime in Ghana, not know that if they had had the misfortune of being born in Darfur, all of them would probably have been murdered by now – by the rampaging agents of the murderous Sudanese government, the myrmidon-type-laden militia known as the Janjaweed: on account of their darkish skin colours? Do they think that President Omar Bashir and the deceitful racists, who help him rule Sudan, would ever give their daughters to any of them to marry – despite their many accomplishments as individuals and pre-eminent status in society? Ghana’s foreign policy must be underpinned by moral considerations – which would mean their condemning the Sudanese government for the pogrom it is carrying out in Darfur, for example: and demanding that that crime against humanity ceases henceforth. Our country must always stand up for the oppressed people of Sudan and everywhere else on the continent that African leaders abuse the human rights of their citizens. Nkrumah’s Ghana must not give succour to those who despise the people of Darfur for no other reason than the fact that God made them black Africans.

I have no time for those Africans who say that the ICC is targeting Africans for racist reasons – and that by issuing arrest warrants for murderous tyrants engaged in pogroms in the continent, it is somehow seeking to re-colonize Africa through the backdoor: because it targets Africa’s despotic leaders who are maiming and killing citizens they are legally obliged by international conventions to protect. Have those who make such spurious arguments stopped to ask the women of Darfur, for example, who are being raped on a daily basis, and whose husbands and brothers are being murdered in large numbers by the agents of that cruel and racist regime (led by the indicted war criminal President Omar Bashir), if they think that the ICC‘s arrest warrant for President Omar Bashir amounts to an interference in the internal affairs of the Sudan? Do those who say the ICC is infringing on the sovereignty of Sudan because it has indicted a serving president of that country, think the people of Darfur are in agreement with that absurd notion of sovereignty (which in the 21st century lies in the hands of the citizens of nation-states – not their rulers), and therefore concur with them that the regime orchestrating their extermination ought to be left alone to complete their secret objective of wiping them off the surface of the earth in the time-frame sought for Omar Bashir by the AU? Would those who seek a reprieve for President Omar Bashir go along with such a demand if they were at the receiving end of the unspeakable acts of cruelty and abominable inhumanity going on in Darfur on a daily basis?

The time has come for the government of Ghana to disassociate itself from the AU’s absurd and untenable position on the issue of the ICC’s indictment of President Omar Bashir. They must understand that the leaders of Sudan have an agenda whose sole objective is to use every means, fair or foul, to ensure the continued domination of the Sudanese nation-state, by its so-called ‘Arab’ population – and above all, ensure that the ‘Arabs’ control the oil producing region of Sudan. Who does not know that they are actively planning for the coming war with the southerners: that will be restarted as soon as the southerners vote to become an independent nation? Are they in the meantime not doing all they can to divide the tribes of Southern Sudan: by the divide-and-rule tactic of playing on the old ethnic rivalries that exists between the various tribes of the south, and supplying them with lethal arms to kill each other with: so as to weaken Southern Sudan as a whole, sufficiently, to ensure that they pose no threat to the Arabs of the north achieving their overriding objective of the eternal domination of the Sudanese nation-state? As we speak, are Omar Bashir & Co. not also busy destabilizing Uganda and parts of the DR Congo and Kenya – to ensure that those neighbouring nations have their hands full fighting rebellions in their own territories: so that they do not have the luxury and the resources to help the Southern Sudanese resist the northerners when war finally breaks out?

President Omar Bashir and the murderous regime he leads have a tunnel-vision determination that makes them seek only one thing: time to string the world along long enough to enable them strengthen their position before the inevitable war with the Southern Sudanese breaks out again: when the southerners finally vote to become an independent nation. Manipulating black African leaders (whom they despise secretly despite the bonhomie they show them when they interact with them) through the agency of the spineless AU, is part of their grand strategy of literally getting away with mass murder in the 21st century ICT age – and in what is supposed to be the new positive age of the African Renaissance. Ghana must not dance to the tune of a regime whose members neither respect black Africans nor regard them as their equals. Personally, I despise an African people, who regard themselves as beings superior to their fellow Africans (because they are slightly lighter-hued than most black Africans), and delude themselves into thinking that they are ‘Arabs’ – when they are actually despised by the “real Arabs”: because they in turn are darker hued than Arabs of the Arab world. Nkrumah’s Ghana must always be on the side of the oppressed in Africa and elsewhere in the world that the human rights of ordinary people are abused by their governments. Ghana’s foreign minister must resign if he cannot convince the regime he is such a prominent member of, of the importance of following a foreign policy that is underpinned by morality and common decency. Ghana must not follow nonsensical and amoral edicts from the AU blindly – because we are a thinking and compassionate people. A word to the wise…

OPEN LETTER TO GHANA’S MINISTER FOR ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Dear Minister, I shall go straight to the point – you are the first Ghanaian politician I have come across, who actually seems to care about our natural environment. As a green activist, who cares passionately about our country’s natural environment, I have often been saddened by the evidence one sees all around one, of the total neglect of our natural heritage by this particular generation of Ghanaians. At the rate at which we are destroying nature in the countryside, and polluting the environment of the built-up space in urban Ghana, I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever, that all the wealth we create as a society, when our oil and natural gas revenues finally come on stream, will eventually end up being spent repairing the great harm we are causing to our environment. One often finds it really hard to believe that we are the same people, whose forbears lived in harmony with nature, in the preceding centuries before the first Europeans set foot on our shores.

One has to place the blame for what is a totally unacceptable situation, for a supposedly civilized people, squarely on the shoulders of those who over the years, have led our country – but who have not provided the kind of leadership that could have helped transform our country into a well-run and orderly society, with a disciplined and mostly-literate population. It is the reason why the creation of a modern African society, in the entirety of which the citizenry live in well-planned and clean cities, towns, and villages, has continued to elude us since the overthrow of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in 1966 – and ordinary people still await the coming to pass, of his regime’s dawn-of-independence promise, of creating a modern Africa nation-state designed to be conducive for healthy living, happiness, and personal fulfillment, for all its citizens. Minister, a perfect example of the downside of this lack of visionary leadership in a greater part of the post-Nkrumah era, is the devastating floods we experience during our rainy seasons – and the untold misery they cause to scores of urban dwellers up and down our country every year. The perennial flooding illustrates perfectly, the incompetence of our mostly self-seeking political class, whose paucity of thought and lack of imagination is indeed truly frightening. It is certainly a most worrying state of affairs – if you happen to be the sort of individual who believes in sustainable development that will ensure the well-being of present and future generations of your family, and that of your compatriots.

Minister, you would be horrified by yet another example of the negative consequences of the failure of leadership by politicians, if you were to visit the area around the bridge over the Odaw River, at Agbogbloshie – where you will come across an environmental time-bomb that is slowly ticking away: as officialdom, much of which is only concerned with its individual pursuits, blithely carries on its daily objective of marching briskly in one spot, in order to delay the forward march of our country and its people: simply because our stagnation benefits some of them financially (through the many avenues for bribe-taking that Ghana’s going nowhere fast creates for them). The abomination, which will greet you, in the aforementioned area around the Agbogbloshie Bridge, is reputed to be the biggest environmental hazard of its kind, in the whole of the planet Earth, Minister – and it confirms our place at the world’s high table, as a global power in environmental pollution in the built-up public space, as well as in the degradation of the natural environment. After that embarrassing eye-opener, I will also urge you to take a drive along the road directly behind the Odokor tro-tro station, which passes through Odokor and eventually links one to the Achimota-Mallam motorway. You will be shocked to discover hundreds of wooden kiosks and structures sited cheek-by-jowl in what is the urban planning equivalent of a tinderbox. It is a nightmarish sight that makes one wonder precisely what role the Ghana National Fire Service plays, in the processes that must be gone through, before the town planning departments of district assemblies eventually grant planning permission, for the erection of wooden structures in towns and cities across our country.

The whole of the area straddling that road will literally go up in smoke and be destroyed in a conflagration, and tens of thousands of lives lost, if an out-of-control type of fire were to ever start in that unplanned warren and unsanitary hell-hole. The question that most concerned Ghanaians would like answered is: do we have to wait for a tragedy to occur there before every single one of those kiosks that is an illegal structure is demolished? Why does officialdom allow such shanty towns to develop in the first place – and why do they not recognize their potential for causing catastrophes? A similar situation is gradually developing on the fringes of Mallam market, as we speak. It is this tardiness of officialdom in enforcing existing rules and regulations that is the root cause of much of the chaos that passes for what we take for modernity today – and prevents ordinary people in Ghana from enjoying a good quality of life, throughout their allotted lifespan on this earth. Why is it that law-abiding citizens going about their lawful daily business, for example, are physically and emotionally assaulted by the eardrum-shattering super-loud music, blaring from mega-sound systems mounted on the backs of pick-up trucks, in much of urban Ghana today – when there are laws on our statue books prohibiting the making of excessive noise? Why too, should apparently ‘reformed’ rogues with fancy titles, operating thriving businesses masquerading as churches (mainly for tax reasons), the core business of which is the ruthless milking-dry of the gullible and the vulnerable in society, be allowed to disturb the occupants of neighbouring houses throughout the night, with that all-night “hey-baba-baba-baba; holy-ghost-fire; blood-of-Jesus” gibberish, which they ruin many a hapless family’s night sleep with? Are they all not destroying the eardrums of law-abiding citizens with impunity – and condemning them to possible deafness in their old age too?

The question is: What prevents local authorities, the police, and the EPA, from working together to stop all that pure nonsense on bamboo stilts, from going on in our country? Minister, when you have sufficiently recovered from the shock of your encounters with those horrific manifestations of our irresponsible stewardship of the environment recounted above, I will also urge you and your colleague ministers in charge of our nation’s forests and water resources, to pay a flying-visit to the forlorn village of Akim Abuakwa Juaso, which is just off the Accra-Kumasi highway at Osino junction (where one turns left as one approaches the centre of Osino from Accra). There, you and your colleagues will be astounded to discover that the Atiwa Range evergreen upland rain forest, which contains the headwaters of the three major river systems, on which most of urban Ghana depends for its drinking-water supply, is being threatened by illegal loggers and illegal surface gold miners. Minister, what is going on there, at a time of global climate change, is a national emergency situation that amounts to a crime against humanity, no less. It is an indictment of the officials of the Forestry Service of the Forestry Commission, from its top echelons to the lowest-ranked officials: whose job it is to protect that important rain forest and biodiversity hotspot, but unfortunately neglect to do so. I am writing to you directly, because you have proved beyond doubt that you are a woman of action – and the one politician in the current regime who is most likely to act immediately, to halt what will be a tragedy of apocalyptic proportions for the Ghanaian nation-state: if action is not taken to put an immediate halt to the activities of the powerful criminal syndicates engaged in the illegal logging and illegal surface gold mining, which goes on there on a scale that is truly unprecedented.

The publicity-seeking traditional authorities of Akim Abuakwa seem unable (or as their most uncharitable critics often say, unwilling) to do anything to stop what amounts to the brutal gang-rape of one of the only two upland evergreen rain forests in our country. The Atiwa Range evergreen upland rain forest happens to be a unique and internationally recognized biodiversity hotspot in West Africa. Minister, for the sake of our nation, do please act before it is too late, as the situation there is really dire. As we speak, a small-scale surface gold mining company, Solar Mining, has bought a vast swathe of farmland from the poverty-stricken cocoa farmers of that area – and the devastation they have caused, in such a short space of time, in what used to be forestland is just heartbreaking: especially as they did not even have a mining permit from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to start with. They were working hand-in-glove with Kibi Goldfields – which although does indeed own a mining concession in the Osino/Saamang area, has effectively been insolvent for over a decade now. Yet, that moribund entity has risen phoenix-like, and is now suddenly seeking a mining permit from the EPA: at precisely the time the illegal surface gold mining operations of its “associate”, Solar Mining, have been halted by the EPA.

Naturally, as the biggest private landowners in the area, who value the largely-pristine five-square mile private forest reserve our family owns there (on a freehold basis), we have written to the EPA expressing our concern – and have pointed out the fact that in our view, an area that is so sensitive ecologically, and which contains the headwaters of the three major river systems, on which millions of Ghanaians depend for their drinking water supply, ought not to be given out to surface gold miners to destroy, under any circumstances: particularly at a time of global climate change, and certainly not to merely enable greedy, selfish, super-ruthless, and well-connected surface gold-mining tycoons, to earn vast profits, at the expense of the well-being of present and future generations of Ghanaians, and their country. Minister, as part of our strategy to preserve our private forest reserve for future generations of our family and the local community (with whom our destinies are forever intertwined because we all farm in same foothills of the Atiwa Mountain Range), my family has had to rush forward medium to long-term plans to leverage opportunities available from Ghana’s quota of the clean development mechanism (CDM), to, amongst other green initiatives we have in mind, turn the area into an eco-tourism destination and a youth nature-study resource centre, in the hope that the villagers will see the benefits of preserving their natural heritage. – and to that end have approached reputable organisations such as: the Rain Forest Alliance Ghana; the West African Forest Programme Office, of the World Wildlife Fund Ghana; the Community Resource Management Support Centre; Conservation International Ghana, and the Ghana Association for the Conservation of Nature, for technical assistance.

The idea is build an eco-friendly computer centre and make the village a digital e-nature study hub for the youth of the area, and also create a mini eco-village for visitor accommodation, using traditional Ashanti-style architecture (the people of Akim Abuakwa Juaso originate from Ashanti Akim Juaso – from whence their ancestors fled after a battle), the building of which will be done by young volunteers from both Ghana and overseas. Linking the eco-village idea, with the combination of a community-run nursery, to grow the many rare ferns and orchids that thrive in our private forest reserve, for export, and the construction of a canopy footbridge (similar to that at Kakum National Park), which will enable visitors to see that part of the Atiwa Range evergreen upland rain forest from the canopy of the forest; will, we hope, generate enough wealth for the community, to guarantee the future of that section of the Atiwa Range upland evergreen rain forest. One finds it hard to understand why at a time of global climate change, the daily assault on that largely-pristine rain forest, by illegal loggers and illegal gold miners can go on with such impunity – without the relevant authorities making an effort to act to halt what is clearly a crime against humanity: in the endangering of on an internationally-recognized biodiversity hotspot. Minister, for the sake of mother Ghana, we entreat you to act immediately to help save this most important of West African rain forests for our country – and ensure a sustainable future for the next generation of Ghanaians: who doubtless will remember that as one of the legacies of your tenure, as one of Ghana’s most effective ministers in charge of the environment ever, thus far, since we gained our independence. Many thanks – and regards. Kofi Thompson.

Post Script: Minister, it just occurs to me that since you were instrumental in ridding an area at Teshie-Nungua of its mountain of garbage (much to the delight of the area’s residents), this little piece of information might be of interest to you: A Norwegian waste-handler, Follo Ren – which does for Norway’s Follo district local authority, what companies like Zoomlion and J. Stanley Owusu & Co. are supposed to do for Ghanaian local authorities, such as the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) – is one of a number of partners collaborating with Professor Petter H. Heyerdahl, of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, in a microwave-assisted pyrolysis of biomass experimental project. Perhaps you could contact the Norwegian Embassy in Ghana, to see if the relevant faculties in our three public universities; the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission; and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) could work with Professor Petter Heyerdhal’s faculty too, to enable Ghana eventually acquire the technology.

You could also ask the American Embassy to help you contact Florida‘s St. Lucie County’s solid waste department – who are working with Atlanta-based Geoplasma to build America’s first plasma (a type of superheated gas) waste-to-energy refuse plant in St. Lucie County, Florida. The beauty of that plant is that when the garbage is deposited into a holding-container and heated to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, its organic content vaporizes into a hot pressurized gas that then turns a turbine to generate electricity. The steam, which is a by-product of the process, can generate yet more electricity if the appropriate steam turbine plant is built for that purpose. Metals and other inorganic components are condensed and deposited at the bottom of the holding-container – and can apparently be used in heavy construction and in road construction (as roadbed). Both ideas (Norwegian and American) could offer near-perfect solutions to our garbage disposal problems, and bring to an end the difficulty local authorities countrywide face, in finding suitable landfill sites for garbage disposal. Clearly, even the landfill sites themselves, pose a potential danger to Ghana’s water table in the long run, come to think of it. Peace and blessings to you, Minister.

BRAVO, PRESIDENT MILLS!

The instructions issued recently by President Mills to Ghana’s Inspector General of Police (IGP), that the police should provide maximum security, and give the needed assistance required by those who intend to demonstrate against the government, speaks volumes about his democratic credentials. That is as it should be in a civilized and democratic African society such as ours. It is the first time that a Ghanaian leader has shown clearly, and in a practical and down to earth manner, that he understands that democracy is not just about institutions, but that it is also a way of life based on tolerance. It is obvious that President Mills is a very shrewd politician indeed – and this singular act, marks him out as one of the most intelligent democratically-elected leaders Ghana has ever had, thus far, since the overthrow of the great Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah (of blessed memory) in February 1966. Perhaps it is no coincidence that he was once in the Convention Peoples Party’s young pioneer movement.

A great deal of the reaction to President Mills’ very noble gesture has been predictable and instructive. One of the most interesting, has been that of the hypocrites on the right of the political spectrum in Ghana – who pay endless lip-service to the tenets of democracy, but in reality happen to be the staunchest of anti-democrats: cleverly using the concept of democracy as a convenient cloak, to hide their real political agenda (the restoration by stealth, of the sovereign power, of the pre-colonial feudal ruling elites). Some of them have sought to dismiss it as an empty gesture. That is why latter-day feudalists like the tiresome and elitist Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko (a loquacious fellow who loves the sound of his bleh voice, so) can go on TV programmes, such as Metro TV’s “Good Morning Ghana” newspaper review programme (the June 30, 2009 edition), and seek to deride President Mills’ sincere gesture, by describing it as “populist” – meant to be pejorative, and a word that is much-favoured by our local equivalent of the odious white-supremacists of the Western world: who deploy it as a political weapon, to ridicule any initiative in Ghanaian politics, which seeks to empower the ordinary people of our country. Looking back, it always did strike me as rather odd, that the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime did not understand the importance of encouraging the police not to take sides – and to stop using roundabout means to try and prevent such demonstrations from taking place. It would have been good for Ghanaian democracy, for example, if at the times when the Committee for Joint Action (CJA) was minded to go on public demonstrations that the police were against, the NPP regime had done what President Mills has just done. It would have shown the world that democracy was indeed alive and well in Ghana – and that our country was a true democracy in which the citizenry could speak their minds freely and go on public demonstrations whenever they chose to do so.

In that regard, it was rather unfortunate that a proposed demonstration by the CJA was banned, in the period immediately preceding Ghana’s 50th Independence Day anniversary – because the masters of the universe then in charge of Ghana thought it would embarrass their regime. However, today, thanks to President Mills’ undoubted decency and sense of fairness, President Obama and his entourage will see for themselves, when they witness that particular demonstration against the government that is planned by some of the right-wing hypocrites in our midst, during their stay in Ghana, just how false are the accusations of widespread human rights abuses in Ghana, which have been leveled at the current government, by some of those anti-democrats (that selfsame group of power-hungry political-nerds who sought to steal the December 2008 presidential election by rigging it – in those disgraceful, shabby, criminal, coordinated attempts to deny the good people of Ghana, the regime-change they sought at the time: because, according to Maxwell Kofi Jumah, ordinary Ghanaians did not have a right to remove them from power under any circumstances. At any rate, not before he and his colleagues had finished all their personal projects, and he, had died and been given a state burial: an event that arrogant sod envisaged a 30-year time frame for, to come to pass). One certainly hopes that the president’s gesture, will encourage and embolden those in the top echelons of the Ghana Police Service, who desire to reform that institution, and turn it into Africa’s equivalent of the UK‘s world-famous Metropolitan Police – so that it will become an organisation that is independent of the political establishment in Ghana, and an impartial enforcer of the law: because as a people, we now agree that all Ghanaians are equal before the law and that the law should be no respecter of the status of any Ghanaian. That is an example of disciplined security agency professionals, whose sense of professionalism makes them want to see ours become a tolerant society, in which democracy is a way of life – and not just a system of government defined by the dynamics of the relationships that exist between the major institutions of state.

President Mills has set a shinning example of political tolerance that is worth emulating by all the members of our political class – and the message it contains must percolate through the entirety of our security agencies. Unfortunately, and for far too long in our nation’s chequered history, their top echelons have often had a tendency to see the role of the organisations they lead, largely in terms of the protection of the political interest of the individuals who constitute the government of the day – as opposed to their constitutionally-mandated role of protecting the interests of the Ghanaian nation-state at all times. It is important that they always remember that Ghana’s national interest, so defined, at any point in time in our country‘s history, ought always to be what is in the best interest of the ordinary people of Ghana, and which will promote their well-being and assure their security, in any given situation – for it is in the hands of the ordinary Ghanaian that sovereignty ultimately lies under our constitution. I am pretty sure that many an independent-minded and nationalistic Ghanaian will say bravo to President Mills – who must now move quickly, to do what most ordinary Ghanaians want him to do, above all else, in order to help our nation win the daunting war against corruption: He must get Ghana’s political class to unite and ask parliament pass a new law, which will require all public officials, from the president down to the very last district chief executive, and their spouses, to publicly publish their assets: both before and after their tenure in office. He will then go down in history, as the president, who made sure legislation that would make a real difference in our fight against corruption, and create a more transparent system, was passed during his tenure. No Ghanaian will begrudge making personal sacrifices in the national interest if such a law is in place in our country – as they know that the siphoning of taxpayers’ money by crooked politicians will then abate somewhat. The passage of such a law will ensure that he is remembered as a reforming leader till the very end of time – and, as an added bonus, make him occupy the high moral ground: and stay above the fractious and often divisive politics of today’s Ghana. A word to the wise…

THE AU’S STRANGE AND DEAFENING SILENCE ON NIGER

Nothing illustrates the fact that the African Union (AU) is an exclusive club that exists for the protection and sustenance of corrupt African dictators, more than its strange silence, about the shabby and disgraceful attempt by President Mamadou Tandjaan of Niger of Niger, to foist himself on his people, yet again – despite constitutional limitations on the length of his tenure. It is simply beyond belief, that in the 21st century ICT age, an incipient African dictatorship can be initiated by a corrupt megalomaniac, with such impunity. Can a sane leader of his nation think that without him, the expansion of Niger’s uranium industry cannot possibly take place – because he is the cleverest individual in the whole of Niger: and the only one who can ensure a positive outcome for that project? Is that alone not proof positive that he is going mad? How can it be that such a monster can single-handedly dismantle the democratic structures put in place to protect the liberties of the people of Niger and ensure the long-term stability of their country – whiles the AU and the Economic Community of West African states (ECOWAS) look on and remain strangely silent: and carry on as if nothing is amiss in Niger? How can that be when this is said to be the era of the African Renaissance? Were both the AU and ECOWAS not set up to serve the interests of ordinary Africans – and protect them from tyranny and bad governance?

The president of Niger must be told in no uncertain terms, that the enterprise he is intent on embarking, is totally unacceptable in the new Africa, of today. It is typical of corrupt African leaders that they often find it difficult to leave office when their tenure ends – lest their many transgressions eventually become known to their citizens. The impasse in Niger, presents President Sarkozy of France, with a perfect opportunity, to make up for the many sins of France against ordinary Africans, over the years: in her obdurate support for corrupt francophone African dictatorships – by getting his fellow European leaders to get the EU to act quickly and place a temporary ban on the importation of uranium from Niger. The EU must also freeze all the assets held in Europe by the president of Niger and his immediate family – and ban all of them from traveling to any of the EU member-states. In addition to that, relations of the president of Niger, currently living in any EU member-state must be swiftly deported. In getting the EU to take those steps, President Sarkozy might perhaps avoid being booed by the ordinary people of Niger, were he to ever attend a state funeral in Niger (in similar vein to the booing he got from the ordinary people of Gabon – when he recently attended the state funeral of the late President Omar Bongo).

The time has come for the African Union to stop seeing itself as an exclusive club for corrupt and Machiavellian African leaders – and begin to understand that it exists to ensure the human rights of the ordinary people of Africa: in whose hearts the yearning for freedom beats no less strongly, than it does in the hearts of ordinary Europeans; ordinary South Americans; ordinary North Americans; the ordinary people of the Caribbean; ordinary Australians; ordinary Polynesians; ordinary Asians; and the ordinary people of the Middle East: because ordinary Africans are also members of the one human race. The AU must act immediately to stop the president of Niger from enslaving the citizens of Niger – on whose side it must be, if it wants to be on the right side of history, in the unfolding events in that most unfortunate of nations. The leaders of ECOWAS must also bow their heads in shame, for not acting swiftly to let Niger’s president know in plain language, that it will not allow him to foist himself on his people under any circumstances. One hopes that both US President Barrack Obama, and the UN Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ky Moon, will also make their voices heard – and that they will both make it absolutely clear to Niger’s leader, that his actions are reprehensible and totally unacceptable, to the broader international community. Silence, it is said, often means consent. Nkrumaists and pan-Africanists throughout the continent, salute all those in Niger who are now fighting to resist oppressor’s rule, in their country. Our thoughts are with them: and we are convinced that victory will be theirs in the end – despite the shameful and deafening silence from the AU and ECOWAS: as they watch on and leave Niger’s brave citizens to struggle valiantly on their own to remain a free people.

WILL THE ALHAJI MUNKATA SAGA TURN INTO THE “MUNKATA GIRLFRIEND-DIAPERGATE” COVER-UP SCANDAL?

As we await the release of the report of the enquiry conducted into the scandal involving Alhaji Munkata, by the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), all sorts of rumours about what it contains have already started to percolate through the wall of secrecy built around it. A particularly interesting one claims that some of those in the Mills administration, who it is alleged were economical with the truth about exactly who bore the cost of the trip to Abidjan, which was undertaken by Alhaji Munkata and Co. in an air force plane earlier this year, are pulling strings to ensure that there is a cover-up of sorts in the affair. Hopefully, the president will not let those clever individuals blindside him under any circumstances – as his authority, despite all the powers the constitution gives him, ultimately rests upon his perceived moral uprightness: in a nation whose political class is widely perceived by the general public to be full of greedy liars and amoral individuals.

If there is any attempt at a cover up at any level, the president will wake up to discover that a minor scandal involving the indiscretions of a callow youth who did not know where the dividing line between government expenditure and his household’s shopping bills was, has been transformed into a full-blown cover-up scandal of Watergate proportions, called the “Alhaji Munkata girlfriend-diapergate cover-up scandal” – that questions his regime’s commitment to good governance principles and his own sincerity as a reforming politician. Clearly, if the report says anywhere in it (as it is rumoured to), that there was immoral conduct on Alhaji Munkata’s part in that scandal, it will obviously make it well nigh impossible for the president to ask him to return to his position as minister for youth and sports. That stinging criticism of his character, if true, does offer the Mills administration the opportunity to finally rid itself of a man, who sadly, so clearly does not have the moral fibre to serve as a minister in it – if the government is truly committed to running a transparent system, that is. Using government funds to pay for his girlfriend to travel to Germany and to pay for his household expenses are not mere indiscretions – they amount to an abuse of office and stealing public funds: both crimes that ought to be prosecuted.

It is such a pity that Alhaji Munkata did not do the decent thing when the scandal first broke – and resign from his position of his own accord. Trying to explain things away with those mealy-mouthed excuses he gave initially, made him come across as someone who was not man enough to take full responsibility for his actions, and certainly did little to paint a positive picture of his character. If he had chosen to apologise to the president and the nation for letting everyone in Ghana down, he might have laid the basis for eventually salvaging his reputation somewhat. That would have started the process of rehabilitating his dented public image – and enabled him to move on with the rest of his life with some dignity. It is still not too late to do so – and one hopes that he will render an apology to the president and the nation in due course: whatever the outcome of the BNI investigation. If there is anything in the BNI’s report that leads one to conclude that some government spokespersons did indeed prevaricate, in as far as the issue of whom exactly it was that bore the cost of the flight to Abidjan in that air force plane, then they too must do the decent thing and resign their positions – as they too would be guilty of conduct unbecoming of members of a regime that says it wants to be a transparent government.

They must be prepared to sacrifice their positions in the interest of the nation and their party – if the Mills administration and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) want to be taken seriously about their commitment to reforming a corrupt system: by underpinning the new regime with an ethos of transparency. This is the Mills administration’s litmus test – and how the president reacts to the BNI’s report on the scandal involving Alhaji Munkata will define his regime for the rest of its tenure. The government will immediately lose its moral authority if it tries to cover up any aspect of this scandal. Furthermore, if there are criminal implications in any aspect of that scandal and it does not result in prosecution of all those who are culpable, just how will the government be able to justify the double standards that not prosecuting those individuals would represent – more so when the public demands that it deals with all those who abused their positions whiles in office during the tenure of the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime by prosecuting them? Their regime would lose the battle for occupying the high moral ground in Ghanaian politics even before it had started – and that would be a real pity for our nation and all those who placed such high hope in President Mills. The president must therefore ensure that there is no cover-up under any circumstances in this matter – lest it turns into a full-blown cover-up scandal christened the “Alhaji Munkata girlfriend-diapergate cover-up scandal.” A word to the wise…


Google: “ghanapolitics”.

Post Script – The report of the BNI investigation was released shortly after this piece was written. One commends the president for acting to uncover the veracity or otherwise of the allegations against Alhaji Munkata, the former minister for youth and sports. However, I can safely predict that not many people (including me) will believe that that BNI report is not a cover-up of sorts – and that it will come back to haunt all those who ensured that this was the eventual outcome the probe arrived at: in order to save their own skins. Incidentally, one should also commend Alhaji Munkata for resigning and finally apologizing for his actions – but like many things to do with politicians, such as the flat denial during the NPP’s tenure by the former minister for presidential affairs, Mr. Kwadjo Mpianin, that he ever telephoned Mr. Kofi Asante (the then executive secretary of the Energy Commission) to ask him to buy a four-wheel drive luxury vehicle with a fridge in it for the Mamponghene (who was a board member of the Energy Commission at the time); those clever individuals who think that they have now finally crucified the accountant whose allegations sparked off the BNI probe, will find that it is he, rather than them, who will have the last laugh in the end.

One hopes for their sake that they will not soon be contending with a full-blown Alhaji Munkata girlfriend-diapergagte cover-up scandal. They will then discover, when their perfidy is finally revealed to the world, that Ghana is no longer a nation in which wrong-doing by politicians, can be hidden from the general public for long. I simply do not believe that the accountant made up those allegations – certainly not the one to do with the US$10,000 money for the Abidjan airport landing fees. Saying that there is no basis for that particular allegation is too convenient an outcome for those who would have had to resign from the government had the probe confirmed that it was indeed true that Alhaji Munkata did in fact collect that sum of money from the ministry, ostensibly to pay for the air force plane’s landing fees at Abidjan airport. I am tempted to agree with those who say that it would appear that a number of faceless individuals in the Osu Castle, have conspired to make the accountant a sacrificial lamp – slaughtered callously to enable them save their own positions in the government: and a most dishonorable and cowardly thing to do (if I may add). The truth about that US$10,000 will certainly come out one day, as sure as day follows night – their shenanigans notwithstanding: and they can mark that on their office walls in the Osu Castle, our seat of government. Hmmm, Ghana – eyeasem oo: asem ebaba debi ankasa!

THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT MUST INDICT IRAN’S REPRESSIVE LEADERS!

In the 21st century ICT age, the international community must never tolerate any ruling regime anywhere on the planet Earth, which brutalizes its own people, under any circumstances – and the lame and unacceptable excuse that standing up to such regimes, by publicly condemning their acts of repression in no uncertain terms, amounts to an interference in the internal affairs of their nations, must not be made by leaders of the world’s leading democracies. Over the past few weeks, the whole world has witnessed the brutal and repressive images caught on thousands of mobile phone video cameras in the streets of Tehran, showing harrowing scenes involving vicious riot policemen and murderous motorcycle gangs (agents of the Iranian regime now incredibly engaged in the repression of the Iranian people), brutalizing peaceful demonstrators. There can be no doubt whatsoever that those abominable acts of cruelty clearly amount to crimes against humanity.

A proud and noble people with a civilization that dates back thousands of years, must not be left by the rest of the civilized world, to the mercy of brutish myrmidon-gangs on motorcycles, and callous out-of-control riot policemen – doing the bidding of a hypocritical Iranian leadership: apparently respectable and religious Mullahs, whom one naively once thought held power because of their moral authority, but whom it now turns out in reality are cruel ogres, who run a nasty and oppressive dictatorship based on brute force. Far from being God-fearing men of religion, it is now obvious to all of humankind that they run a dictatorship, which oversees a repressive system that is prepared to kill even defenceless women in order to hang on to power – such as Neda, the brave young Iranian woman seen dying in a Tehran street on millions of TV screens worldwide – the tragic victim of a sniper enforcing a tyrannical regime’s edict. The inhumanity displayed by the Iranian leadership towards those of their citizens who insist on their constitutional right to demonstrate peacefully in public, shows clearly why the international community must not allow an Iran under their leadership, to develop a nuclear weapons programme under any circumstances. The international community must do all it can to enable the people of Iran rid themselves of a tyrannical regime that now seeks to enslave them.

Now that the scales have finally fallen off the eyes of those (including me) who used to regard him as a feisty developing world folk hero, who defied the imperialism of right-wing Western leaders such as George Bush and Dick Cheney, it is now patently clear to all that President Ahmadenijad, is in fact just another nasty little dictator, willing to kill to remain in power. Both the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamanei, and President Ahmadenijad, are ultimately responsible for the repression now going on in Iran, and must be indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) – along with leaders of their ilk such as: George Bush; Dick Cheney; Tony Blair; the Burmese junta’s leaders; President Yaya Jameh of the Gambia; the Eritrean leader; that lunatic modern-day Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Laden; the Islamist leaders now busy destroying the Somali people in the name of Islamic purity; as well as the leadership of the Afghan and Pakistani Talibans.

The world has had enough of extremists and megalomaniacs who seek to impose their will on others, in their mad quest for world domination. All that humankind wants is to simply be allowed to live in peace, in all four corners of the vulnerable and fragile planet Earth that we share together – and as the good people of Iran fight to regain their freedom again, the members of the one human race must salute them for their bravery: for, their courageous fight for freedom, is also the fight of ordinary people the world over. We all share a common humanity and must do all we can to ensure that all the world’s peoples are free to live in peaceful and tolerant societies – and the indictment by the ICC, of the leaders of oppressive regimes, such as that of Iran today, is a powerful weapon in that fight. The ICC must indict Iran’s leaders as soon as it is practicable to do so. That is the most effective way of preventing the world’s other dictators from maiming and killing their people merely in order to hang on to power. Enough is enough – humankind has had enough of the world’s nasty little dictators.

HON. HARUNA IDDRISU: KOFI THOMPSON IS NO BLACKMAILER!

In a city in which water seldom flows through taps in properties across the filthy conurbation that unfortunately serves as our nation’s capital, one has to be extremely cautious where one eats, outside one’s own home, during the working day. To avoid trouble with possible food-poisoning, I simply skip eating out and restrict myself to some bananas or hot-off-the-fire roasted plantain, if I am peckish when not at home – so in the evening of 16th June, 2009, I settled down to my supper at home after a series of unpleasant experiences to do with endless day-long frustration with officialdom: trying to find, amongst other tasks on my to-do list for that day, a vital document that incredibly, apparently has disappeared into thin air, from the deeds registry of the Lands Commission, which, oddly, is still housed in the Land Title Registry head office building, near the headquarters of the Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) in the ministries area, instead of their Cantonments head office building.

It so happens that whiles doing my “rounds” for that day, I also passed by the ministry of communications to see if I could reach the minister to get a direct response from him, for a previous note I had left for him with his secretary, asking him to respond to a rumour I had heard about him, to the effect that one of the mobile phone companies had given him a Toyota saloon car as a personal gift. He wasn’t in, so I left yet another note with his secretary and departed – hoping to bring some sort of closure to that pure nonsense on stilts. Just after I had taken a few spoonfuls of the vegetarian meal I was having at home in McCarthy Hill, after having finally settled down in the evening to my supper after a frustrating day out in town, I received a telephone call from the minister of communications, Haruna Iddrisu, at about 18.30 GMT – the gist of which was that I was trying to blackmail him. I simply couldn’t believe my ears. I was so incensed that I immediately interrupted him mid-sentence, asked him to stop right there, and told him exactly where to get off – and that he ought to google the word “ghanapolitics” to read the article entitled: “Protect Ghanaian Consumers from Telecoms Companies in Ghana” that I had written and posted online (in which I had mentioned the confounded rumour – and had also gone on to ask him to share his response to the note I had previously left for him with his secretary, with the rest of the world), and demanded that he apologise to me after he had read the article in my web-blog.

I was flabbergasted that he was actually accusing me of blackmailing him. Just what possessed him to say such a monstrous thing, one wonders? The double-barreled-question an ignoramus and a fool like me would like that genius of a young minister to answer for me is: Since when did blackmailers start publicly asking about the veracity or otherwise of allegations against their intended victim, which they had heard of, prior to even meeting him or her – and why did he not just accept that my perfectly innocent query was in good faith, simply deny it, and move on? Anyone reading the article would not be in any doubt whatsoever that I did not believe the rumour in the slightest myself – so one can imagine my exasperation with him that he had had the temerity to accuse me of trying to blackmail him. Would a blackmailer leave an open note everyone could read, with the secretary of a minister in the government, whom he was querying about the veracity or otherwise, of a rumour he had heard about that selfsame minister? Why did it not strike him that not believing such a thing about him, perhaps I had only wanted to be in a position to quote his denial of the allegation in my article – and had therefore tried to contact him to confirm my disbelief of that rumour? Did I not say openly in that article that I did not believe that he would accept any such gift?

The annoying thing, dear reader, is that I had mentioned that darned grapevine story just in passing in my article merely to emphasize the point that the telecoms companies were more or less a law unto themselves: which was the subject of the article – and had gone to his office in order to elicit a response from him, so I could confirm his denial of the rumour in my article: whiles making my point about the not unheard of possibility, in our environment, of some of the telecoms companies buying public officials, to enable them get away with their perfidy (i.e. the rip off, on a massive scale, of mobile phone users in Ghana – with the far too expensive and atrocious quality service they provide Ghanaians). Indeed, so powerful are those financial behemoths, that they have even been able to get some well-educated buffoon in Parliament, to speak on their behalf – to try and get the “talk tax” that has apparently ended up being paid by those shysters, offloaded unto the weary shoulders of the already overburdened Ghanaian taxpayers, who have to shoulder the excesses of Ghana’s political class – including their obscene ex-gratia demands on the public purse – in addition to their everyday woes of having to put up with the lack of potable water in their homes and an erratic supply of electricity, as they see their quality of life deteriorate steadily before their very eyes whiles politicians blithely tell them they have never had it so good since Ghana gained her freedom in 1957.

Why, have the telecoms companies not sufficiently demonstrated their ruthlessness to the minister for communications, in the callous way they have been endangering the health of Ghanaians – as they site their masts even in the homes of people who are probably completely ignorant of the possible harmful effects of the radiation from those masts? But I digress. Just what is it about Ghanaian politicians that makes so many of them change so quickly when they come to power – and put on such airs? Why didn’t a highly intelligent politician, who is noted for being so incredibly media-savvy, simply not tell me that the rumour was without any foundation – and leave it at that and thank me for letting him know about it: and not to hesitate to seek clarification from him again, anytime I needed to do so, about any issue concerning his work and that of his ministry? I can perfectly understand a crooked businessperson who hypocritically presents a respectable face to the world, whiles secretly running a criminal syndicate engaged in say illegal logging or illegal surface gold-mining, who thinks a journalist or media house is on to him or her, making such an accusation: in the hope of destroying their credibility and possibly frightening them off permanently – but this happens to be a brilliant young man who is a rising political star widely respected and admired in the media generally for his affability and humility (and deservingly so – or at least, deservingly so in the past, when his party was in opposition, at any rate).

Is one to conclude therefore that he too has unfortunately been infected by that dangerous virus of invincibility that deludes politicians who win power into thinking that somehow they are the masters of the universe – and therefore cannot be queried or contradicted in good faith under any circumstances: especially by insignificant writers they have never heard of before? Well, personally, I have very little time for an over-pampered and largely-incompetent political class, which has superintended the steady deterioration in the quality of life of ordinary Ghanaians, since the overthrow of Nkrumah in 1966: whiles ruthlessly feathering their own nests, by providing themselves with perk after perk whiles in office: even as they slice up our nation for the benefit of the sundry foreign carpetbaggers they collaborate with to rip our nation off in the name of foreign direct investment and market capitalism. Consequently, the idea that a youthful minister in a regime with precious few truly world-class individuals in it has the impertinence to accuse me of blackmailing him is simply too much to stomach. I will not tolerate that kind of lip from any politician in Ghana no matter which side of the spectrum they come from or how important he or she thinks they are – as I am neither afraid nor in awe of any of them: most of whom one regards with a certain degree of contempt for their monumental incompetence in not being able to provide ordinary Ghanaians with a good quality of life over the years, because they are completely bereft of original thinking.

Let that cheeky sod read as much of my writing as he possibly can find the time in his busy schedule for – and then perhaps he will understand why Kofi Thompson is incapable of any blackmail. I shall wait patiently for an apology from him – for being so imprudent and arrogant as to dare accuse a patriot and a sincere individual (who wouldn’t even dream of hurting a fly) who treasures his free-spirit and takes an independent stance in all discourse in the public sphere (in an effete nation full of sycophants, mercenaries, and moral cowards) of blackmailing him. Whoever in the media it was that advised a decent fellow like him to place that outrageous phone call during which he had the gall to accuse me of blackmailing him certainly did him a great disservice – for it was a grave error of judgment on his part for taking the tack he went on. My advice to him – and to all the ministers in this regime – is to treat every Ghanaian citizen (including journalists) he interacts with, no matter how insignificant he might think that individual is, with some respect. If I had been Kweku Baako (God bless him) who left him that note ages ago, would he not have promptly responded to it? He must learn to be careful what he says to those who question him – for he and his colleagues are there to serve our country as members of a regime that says it wants to run a transparent system: not lord it over ordinary folk. I may be a complete nonentity, but the fact that he is a minister in the government, is of no consequence to me – as I am not and have never been beholden to those who wield power in our country. In any case it is only those who are afraid to die who are frightened of the powerful in society – and fear of death, fortunately for me, is not one of my many weaknesses. Above all, he must never to be so cheeky to his elders – and ought to remember that wise old Ghanaian saying: “No condition is permanent.” Kofi Thompson is no blackmailer, Hon. Haruna Iddrisu – and he always wants you to remember that bald fact of life as long as you are active in Ghanaian politics it. Massa, I beg, do not tread where angels fear to tread. A word to the wise…

CANCELLING VODAFONE/GHAHA TELECOM DEALWILL NOT HARM GHANA!

The stooges for neocolonialism are alive and well in Ghana – and still as powerful as ever. The lackeys of Western capitalism are hard at work, making sure that the political party that made a number of promises to Ghanaians, including one it made directly to those who opposed the Vodafone takeover of Ghana Telecom (GT), and got their votes on the strength of that specific promise, gets as many excuses as it can possibly assemble, to enable it get away with not fulfilling that particular election promise. What are discerning, independent-minded, and nationalistic Ghanaians to make of the rather curious argument being made in certain quarters, that reversing the takeover of GT by Vodafone will hurt Ghana – because it will make it a less attractive place for foreign investors? Have those who make that illogical and self-serving argument stopped to ask themselves, for example, whether or not the fact that the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime eventually succeeded in getting rid of Malaysia Telecom, ever stopped Malaysians or other foreign nationals from continuing to show an interest in investing in our economy?

Did even the many partial-nationalizations and full-scale nationalizations of private foreign companies, undertaken by the Acheampong military regime in the 1970’s, as result of its policy of seizing the commanding heights of the Ghanaian economy for Ghanaian citizens; ever stop foreign investors from eyeing Ghana as an investment destination? What is it about Ghana’s educated urban elite that makes them lack self-belief to the extent that they more or less despise their own kind but bend over backwards to help foreigners, particularly non-African and lighter-hued foreigners? Do those who say that foreign investors will lose confidence in Ghana if the Vodafone/GT deal is cancelled not understand that ultimately we must do what the Japanese and the South Koreans did to lift their countries out of poverty after the Second World War – and concentrate on empowering Ghanaian entrepreneurs to help us lift our country out of poverty? The Vodafones of this world do not come here to help us build our nation – they only come to our country in order to exploit us and pile up as much profit as they possibly can for their overseas shareholders.

Since Vodafone was happy to give a secret stake in the privatization of the state-owned telecom company in Kenya, to some powerful individuals amongst Kenya’s corrupt ruling elite, can it not be argued that that makes it a company that is not only willing to condone illegalities, but also take part in unlawful actions if need be, in order to gain access to markets in Africa? Would that perhaps be the reason why those in the previous regime, who are said to have benefited from the Vodafone takeover of GT, ensured that a law indemnifying all those who struck that deal from prosecution (if any illegal actions arising from that one-sided transaction ever came to light eventually), was hurriedly passed by parliament? Just how does something that so clearly flies in the face of the constitutional edict that enjoins all Ghanaians to fight corruption, help in the fight against corruption in our country, and the rest of Africa, I ask, dear reader? Is corruption not a cancer we must all fight if this continent is ever to grow and prosper and see an end to endemic poverty – so why do some want Ghanaians to fold their arms and do nothing to right an egregious wrong, done their country in an opaque privatization deal, which amounted to a massive rip-off of a poor developing nation, by a predatory multinational company aided and abetted by powerful local self-seekers amongst Ghana’s ruling elite?

At a time when corporate governance issues have assumed such importance in the Western capitalist nations, where much of the present economic crises facing those countries have been blamed on the unethical actions of greedy corporate executives, what makes those who think that taking Vodafone to task, because of the discovery of any unethical practices they might have engaged in during the takeover of GT, is going to make foreign investors whose businesses are underpinned by corporate good governance principles, wary of investing in Ghana? On the contrary, ethically-run overseas companies that are committed to the principles of corporate good governance in all aspects of their businesses will only be too glad to operate in an African environment, in which corruption is not tolerated. Perhaps those who make those inane arguments about foreign investors losing confidence in Ghana because we elect to rid ourselves of a company that acted unethically and unlawfully in a privatization deal, really ought to talk to those companies that were also interested in taking over GT, but lost out to Vodafone, because they never had a level playing field in the “bidding process” in a real sense: since vital information that would have affected the final figures they offered for GT, was more or less withheld from them.

Not being told the full extent of the total assets of GT that the government was going to make available to the winning “bidder” in the privatization of GT, was a material fact that amounted to their being deliberately misled by those who stood to benefit from a Vodafone takeover of GT. Consequently, it will surprise Ghana’s stooges for neocolonialism to discover that far from alarming those companies that competed with Vodafone to buy GT, but lost out to that company because crucial information was withheld from them, the cancellation of the Vodafone takeover of GT will rather be hailed by them, and elicit fulsome praise for the government from all those companies – who instead of vowing never to invest in Ghana because Vodafone had been given its just deserts, will commend the Mills administration for being bold and principled enough to correct an injustice done our country by those who allowed Vodafone to buy GT for a song. That is why cancelling the Vodafone takeover of GT, if any illegalities or unethical actions are unearthed by the probe into the deal, will never make genuine and principled foreign investors lose confidence in Ghana as an investment destination.

The existence of widespread corruption in the continent is what puts off genuine and serious foreign investors and makes them decide against investing in Africa – because they know that they can never get justice in the law courts of such nations. We will only be seen to be applying the rule of law in dealing with any infractions of our laws by Vodafone in the takeover of GT – if the outcome of the probe into the takeover deal results in our bringing them to book. That can hardly be a situation over which genuine and serious foreign investors whose businesses are underpinned by corporate good governance principles will lose any sleep over – if they are minded to invest in Ghana. Let the Mills administration keep its promise to those who voted for them because they were opposed to the takeover of GT by Vodafone and decided to vote for the party that said it would take a second look at the takeover deal to see if there were any irregularities in the GT privatization upon their assumption of office. If we are serious about fighting corruption, no foreign investor, including Vodafone, must ever be rewarded for breaking our laws by engaging in corrupt practices.

At the barest minimum, Vodafone must, amongst other things, agree to assume those debts of GT that Ghana was unfairly burdened with by Vodafone, because it made that a condition for the purchase of its 70 per cent stake – and it must also pay our country the true value of GT: which even little primary school children in Ghana are aware, is a figure not less than some US$5 billions. Perhaps a practical solution to this most outrageous of injustices will be to simply change the existing shareholding structure of the company. For most discerning, independent-minded, and nationalistic Ghanaians, even a 70/30 share allocation in favour of Ghana would be acceptable – on condition that Vodafone agrees to sell their share back to Ghana and accepts a collateralized future receipts arrangement (contingent upon the company’s profits) in lieu of cash upfront as payment if it ever wants to offload its shares in the company in future. On that basis, there is no reason why the day to day management of the company should not continue to remain in the experienced and efficient hands of Vodafone (which can still keep the Vodafone brand-name as the restructured company can be known as Vodafone Ghana Telecom as a goodwill gesture on Ghana’s part). Speaking as a follower of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah (of blessed memory), that is an outcome one feels will be acceptable to most patriotic Ghanaians who opposed the takeover of GT by Vodafone on national interest grounds – short of the government booting Vodafone out of Ghana for any unethical and unlawful actions it engaged in during the takeover. That is a practicable and sensible outcome that can be described as an equitable solution, which ought to settle accounts fairly to the mutual benefit of Vodafone and the Ghanaian nation-state. The Mills administration must not listen to those negative and self-seeking types who do not understand that as an investment destination, Ghana is without compare in Africa – whether or not it boots out unethical foreign investors who shortchange it in privatization deals. A word to the wise…

GOVERNEMNT SPOKESPERSONS MUST COUNTER THE NPP ‘S SOPHISM!

One simply has to hand it to the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) propaganda machine – which is currently running rings round those who are supposed to disseminate the Mills administration’s “narratives” to the general public: so that ordinary Ghanaians do not become disaffected and impatient with the government. To describe the government’s public relations effort in that direction thus far, as inept, is to be charitable – for how can that small army of spokespersons allow clever people like Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei, to come on Metro TV’s “Good Evening Ghana” current affairs programme, and reel off statistics comparing Ghana’s economy at the end of the period in office of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime in January 2001, and that of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) at the end of that regime’s tenure in January 2009, and get away with it? One only hopes that the new position given to Dr. Tony Aidoo will bring some steel into the government and help make the government’s effort at countering the NPP’s sophism a great deal more effective.

It is important that the Mills administration understands clearly that occupying the high moral ground is key to their success in countering the NPP’s sophism – and getting Parliament to pass a new law requiring government appointees and their spouses, from the president down to district chief executives to publicly publish their assets, is crucial in establishing their credentials as a regime, which is serious about fighting corruption in officialdom. Corruption is the single biggest problem facing our country and one that all Ghanaians want to see an end to – and the Mills administration will continue to fail to stem the tide of discontent that arises periodically as a result of the NPP’s sophism, if they do not put clear blue water between their party and the NPP. That new law on transparent asset declaration will represent, in the minds of the general public, that clear blue water. In the meantime, let that small army of government spokespersons take a cue from the most uncharitable of the critics of the previous government (the ones who care deeply about the stability of our country, i.e.), who insist that those in the NPP who pretend that they are comparing like with like, in comparing the economic performance of their regime, at the end of its tenure, with that of the NDC in 2001, are engaging in sophism – because to make such an unfair comparison amounts to intellectual dishonesty on their part.

Perhaps it ought to be made clear, that what the clever Dr. Anthony Akoto Oseis conveniently forget to point out to Ghanaians, in pretending that one can put the two regimes on an equal footing, in the disingenuous comparison game they are playing so deftly, is the small matter of the NDC regime being saddled, throughout its tenure (from 1992 to 2001), with the Sisyphean task of servicing our crippling external debt – something that was draining the very lifeblood out of our nation. In that sense, it was miraculous that the NDC was able to achieve all that it did during its tenure (which was considerable), in view of what it had to grapple with, but which the NPP regime, fortunately for it, did not have to contend with. Perhaps an appropriate sporting analogy to illustrate that point, would be that of a boxer (the NDC) with both hands tied behind his back, who is pushed into the same ring to fight an opponent with both hands free (the NPP) – and at liberty to pummel him into submission despite having a shorter reach and lower weight: because it is not a fight of equals. It would be interesting to know just how the NPP would have fared in office without our large external debt being cancelled during its tenure – which would have enabled us make a like with like comparison of the end-of-term economic performance score-card of the NDC and the NPP regimes. If it hadn’t been for the breathing space that debt cancellation gave the NPP to grow the economy, they would certainly not have had access to their beloved capital markets for a start, even for the securitized debt some of them milked for all it was worth – and mortgaged our country’s future so recklessly piling up.

It is that desire of the NPP’s powerful greedy-brigade to profit personally from debt that has now saddled our nation with such endless debt – and has largely brought about the present economic crisis we face. Looking back, perhaps one got an inkling of what might have been, in that sense, when a hapless President Kufuor, newly-sworn into office as president and completely at sea as to the path to take, in resolving the conundrum of an economy beaten to pulp and stymied by debt-servicing (and akin to the living-dead), which had been handed over to his new regime, promptly told Ghanaians, as reality suddenly hit home hard that his party’s many campaign promises were not going to be easily fulfilled, that (to paraphrase him) our country would have to cut its coat according to the size of its cloth – and that he was the man the almighty God had sent to make Ghanaians swallow the bitter economic pill that would eventually make their sick economy get better. That was way before the powerful crooks in the NPP regime discovered the golden path to personal riches in kickbacks from sundry contractors and regime-crony Titans in our financial services sector: who prospered mightily from the fat fees and commissions they earned from our daft forays into the piranha-infested capital markets of the West, in addition to those criminal ( because it amounts to mortgaging the future of our nation) collateralized future receipts arrangements that those bright sparks recommended – and enabled all of them to succeed in sending their personal net worth into the stratosphere, as they quickly acquired: hotels; mega-supermarkets; mansions galore; the choicest parcels of land; pretty young bimbos with expensive tastes in cars and Hollywood-style mansions; etc. etc.

The NDC must learn from and take on board the important lesson that the public’s positive reaction, once they got to know that Ghana International Airlines (GIA) was costing taxpayers US$1.5 million every month, represents. Once they discovered the scale of the debt that GIA had succeeded in piling up in the short period it had been in existence, many ordinary people made it plain that they were quite happy to see GIA being allowed to die a natural death and disappear like all inefficient and badly-run commercial entities do the world over – particularly if it was costing Ghana that much every month to keep it flying and keep on losing money on top of that. The Mills administration must tell Ghanaians the practical results of the reckless and imprudent policies that were the realities behind the smoke-and-mirrors economy dressed up as a booming economy, which the NPP claims it handed over to the new NDC regime. Clearly, knowing for example, precisely what Ghana is currently having to fork out, in terms of the regular interest payments on the various loans, including the securitized loans Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei and Co. made our country take on, as well as the unconscionable rape of many state-owned entities, including the State Transport Company (STC) and the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), will let most objective and fair-minded Ghanaians see the NPP‘s stewardship in a completely different light.

The truth of the matter, is that Dr. Anthony Osei Akoto and Co. just got lucky for a period, because the Western powers, spotting a new Ghanaian regime full of dedicated African stooges for neocolonialism and super-malleable lackeys of Western commercial interests, moved quickly to prop up a clueless and vulnerable regime, which was completely at sea in the early stages of its tenure: and promptly decided to cancel Ghana’s large external debt (which is what some of us had been advocating for during the 1990’s – to enable African nations to be in a position to finally start growing their moribund economies), and increase the flow of aid to our country in addition. Although Dr. Akoto Osei and Co themselves did not have the nous or the imagination to make that argument during the 1990’s, they benefited greatly from debt relief – and there are those who say that they ought to have done a great deal better than they did if they had not allowed self-interest, as opposed to advancing the national interest and promoting the common good, guide their every action whiles in power.

The Mills administration must point out the practical effects on our nation today, of the self-seeking policies and actions of those who messed up Ghana’s economy under the NPP because they were so corrupt – and now seek to stop that from coming to light by saying that negative talk about the economy will erode confidence in our economy. The government must not buy that argument – as any investor worth his salt seeking to invest in our economy knows the reality of a nation with bright prospects but with an economy currently suffering from acute “debt-distress” (to use a World Bank/IMF euphemism). The fact that the NPP mortgaged our country‘s future is not news to overseas analysts. Why, do those who make that curious argument think that those opaque offshore special purpose vehicles set up for the securitized loans frenzy, which the NPP indulged in, are unknown to analysts in the capital markets of the West, particularly those who specialize in emerging markets? Fundamentally, Ghana is a great place to invest in for those who take a long-term view and see a future in Africa – because it is a politically stable democracy and has a welcoming, hardworking, and intelligent population. However, if things are bound to get worse before they get better, then the government ought to lay the blame for our present difficulties squarely where it belongs: at the doorstep of the NPP – so that ordinary people will understand precisely what Ghanaians will have to contend with as a people, going forward, and be prepared to face the hard times with equanimity: in the hope that a better Ghana will eventually emerge by the end of the tenure of the Mills administration.

That is why it is so vital that the government effectively counters the sophism of the NPP’s propaganda machine. The question is: is the NPP that is making those hypocritical noises about human rights amongst other matters today, not the same political party, some of whose most prominent members actively sought to deny Ghanaians their choice in December 2008? Did they not move heaven and earth to try and rig the run-off of the December 2008 presidential election: from the very beginning of that electoral process (using hired thugs, who were given police and military uniforms and armed, to go round snatching ballot boxes) to its conclusion – at which point they resorted to the law courts on a public holiday, in the hope that a judge they initially believed to be one of their sympathizers, would aid them in achieving the ends they sought in stealing the election at the eleventh hour” Incidentally, “right judge” was the phrase actually used by Atta Akyea and his fellow-travellers in the NPP (caught on a tape recording of their conversations) to describe such judges – whom they apparently thought could be relied on to deliver the right judgments, in cases in which they had an interest. It is astonishing that today, there are some individuals in that selfsame NPP, who have the gall to pretend that they are the champions of democracy and the rule of law – and are even accusing a regime that is actually acting strictly according to law (as it moves to hold past government officials accountable for their years in office), of persecuting them and acting unlawfully. On top of all that transpired during the December 2008 elections, dear reader, is it not intolerable that the NPP’s propaganda machine, is still being allowed by that small army of government spokespersons, to get away with such outrageous nonsense on bamboo stilts?

Whatever else it does, intellectually, the Mills administration ought to grasp the fact that it needs to counter the NPP‘s sophism – and do so effectively: and they can start to do so by listing and progressively disseminating to the public the many crimes against our nation that those NPP members who participated in the gang-rape of mother Ghana committed whiles in office. They ought to release detailed dossiers on the many white-collar crimes and shenanigans that went on in many state-owned entities after auditing them. Doing so for the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), for example, will make it plain to ordinary Ghanaians how clever sabotage at that vital installation, has made a complete nonsense of any government plans for ensuring reasonable fuel pricing. The government must not forget that the NPP is still largely controlled by the few powerful individuals who hijacked it during their years in power and used it as their powerbase to amass wealth that they cannot possibly account for today – and who want to destabilize the Mills administration (with the help of their placemen who still occupy sensitive positions throughout the public service) so that they can continue to get away with their crimes against Ghana. Even as it works to improve the circumstances of our country and its people, countering the NPP’s sophism must go on side by side with fixing the economy, as that is in the long-term interest of our nation. It is important that the small army of government spokespersons understand clearly and without any ambiguities that that is the only way for the new NDC regime to eventually succeed in bringing about the better Ghana it promised Ghanaians. A word to the wise…

GHANAIAN POLITICIANS: DO NOT PLAY POLITICS WITH THE MILITARY INSTITUTION!

Many a Ghanaian patriot and Nkrumaist heaved a huge sigh of relief, when our erstwhile Hypocrite-in-Chief, who also served as the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces during his tenure, completed his second four-year term of office at midnight on 6th January, 2009 – because we were glad to see the end of an era during which the ruling regime succeeded in dividing our nation along tribal lines like no other regime has ever done since we gained our independence. Sadly, by the end of its tenure, the Kufuor administration had also succeeded in turning our country’s silent majority into moral cowards, who pretended that all was well with our nation when that was clearly not the case. The Kufuor-era was a period when the miasma of unfathomable greed enveloped Ghana completely – a truly tragic time during which we became a society with a culture of dog-eat-dog selfishness, in which looking out for number one, was the personal philosophy of a people, whose traditions encouraged them to live communal lives: which entailed sharing the little one had with neighbours, and caring for each other in family clans.

From what we are now hearing about the shenanigans involved in the military recruitment process in the years towards the end of the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) period in office, it would appear that no institution was sacred for those nepotistic and tribalistic politicians – who abused their positions in a manner seldom seen in Ghanaian politics. Clearly, some of the members of the NPP are totally shameless – for, how can politicians who whiles in government, were so cynical and unprincipled, that during the December 2008 elections they had no qualms recruiting thugs, whom they provided with military and police uniforms to wear, and even issued arms to (to impersonate real soldiers and policemen), and dispatched to go round the country snatching ballot boxes in key electoral areas, complain about the new leadership of the military cancelling last year’s recruitment exercise? Do they not understand that the military institution, which is the guardian of the territorial integrity of our homeland Ghana, is the one institution that must not be allowed to become infected by the national disease of corruption, and our unswerving devotion to the”Cult-of-the-mediocre”?

The question that patriotic, discerning, and independent-minded Ghanaians want answered is: How are Ghanaians to know that some of those whose names were mysteriously inserted into the list of army recruits were indeed not some of the NPP “action-troopers” that Lord Commey once boasted about? Who in this country does not remember the extraordinary sight of the top-ranking soldier in Ghana saluting the tribal Chief of Kufuor and Co. at a durbar in Kumasi? What sight could be more nauseating to Ghanaian nationalists and patriots who cherish the enterprise Ghana – and who deeply resent Kufour and his tribal Chiefs’ treasonable attempt to Balkanize our unique nation of diverse-ethnicity, which Nkrumah succeeded in moulding into a united and modern African nation-state, whose citizens shared a common destiny, and which served as a shining example in harmonious multi-ethnic co-existence, to the rest of Africa? Did we all not condemn the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime under President Rawlings for bringing his revolutionary cadres into the military because we did not think it was right to politicize our military – so why should we allow them to destroy the military by manipulating its recruitment processes to serve their secret Akan tribal-supremacist agenda?

The plain truth is that President Kufuor’s shameful and divisive tribal-supremacist ways nearly destroyed the esprit de corps of the Ghana Armed Forces towards the end of his tenure. Who in this nation who is truthful and impartial, will not attest to the fact that the small but powerful cabal of Akan tribal-supremacists in the presidency, who held the NPP to ransom throughout President Kufuor’s eight-year tenure, obviously had a secret tribal-supremacist agenda that included making the Ghana Armed Forces a tool to enable them achieve their dream of permanently dominating our country? Just what possessed them to describe their tribal Chiefs as “Kings” in the diplomatic passports issued to them – when in fact there are no monarchies in the unique nation of diverse-ethnicity known as the Republic of Ghana? How many tribal Chiefs in Ghana go round this country in motorcades led by police dispatch riders – as if they were heads of state? Has there ever been any regime like theirs in our history, which deliberately used the whole machinery of state to promote the overweening ambitions of their tiresome publicity-seeking tribal Chiefs – to the extent that their Chiefs could get away with all kinds of infractions of the law? Who in this country does not know that Kufuor’s tribal Chiefs illegally sold vast swathes of land belonging to the Ghanaian nation-state with impunity – and that that abomination started right from the very beginning of their tenure?

We must speak plainly and boldly against those who seek to tear our country apart with their foolish dreams of restoring a feudal system that thrived on superstition, ritual killing, deception, and the enslavement of others. We only have to look at nations torn apart by tribal divisions across Africa to understand why we must never forgive the small but powerful group of Akan tribal-supremacists that dominated the NPP under Kufuor, and which by all appearances unfortunately still remains influential in that party today. Do they think that any genuine Nkrumaist and nationalist will ever sit unconcerned and allow a few greedy and selfish tribal-supremacists to make us go through what nations like Sudan; Chad; Zimbabwe; Kenya; DR Congo; Rwanda and Burundi have gone through – just because our country has become a nation in which good and honest people, in a society full of hypocrites and moral cowards, are too afraid to speak out against tribal-supremacists? We must not tolerate their attempt to destabilize our country so that their past sins against our country can remain hidden from ordinary Ghanaians. Their outrageous attempt to besmirch the reputation of the present leadership of our military and the disrespect they showed the minister of defence in Parliament must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. Are the present military leadership and the minister of defence not simply correcting one of the many egregious actions taken in the past – when those who hijacked the NPP during their years in power infected virtually every institution of state in our country with their absurd and ridiculous Akan tribal-supremacist nonsense on bamboo stilts?

The fact of the matter, is that it would be highly irresponsible on the part of the minister of defence and the current military leadership, to allow standards in the armed forces to be lowered – which is what they would be doing, if having detected the existence of the anomalies, they condoned the illegal actions of those who smuggled in those names, during the recruitment exercise in question. Why, are they not aware of the fact that our military is recognized the world over as a military force with some of the finest fighting men and women in the world? Is it not an institution that has an enviable UN peacekeeping reputation and is widely acknowledged for its excellence? Under the circumstances, the decision by the military to use the money saved by canceling the 2008 intake’s training, to improve the infrastructure of the training school, is pretty sound – as it assures the future of that vital institution. Do those hypocritical politicians not know when to stop their chicanery? When they adopt that nauseating holier-than-thou hypocritical attitude in Parliament, do they think we have forgotten their roles in the perpetration of sundry illegalities, such as that massive fraud that the railroading through Parliament of the sale and purchase agreement for VALCO to International Aluminum Partners represents? Did any of them bat an eyelid when the crooks amongst them were leading our nation down the garden path in that instance? What primary school child in Ghana does not know that that grandly-named special purpose vehicle was set up specifically to hide the stake of the NPP’s greedy-brigade in the privatization deal that never was?

We cannot, and must never allow the high standards of our military, to be sacrificed for such rogues – and let those who worship so fervently at the “Cult-of-the-mediocre” present the Ghana Armed Forces to their confounded deity-of-incompetence as an offering for their many sins of the past. No politician must be allowed to attempt to play politics with the military – for it is far too important a national institution to be used as a political football. It is time the honest and principled members of the NPP took control of their party. They must not allow their party to become a tool and handmaiden of the small cabal in the presidency under their regime, which hijacked their party for their own selfish ends, during their years in power – and who now want to use it to shield themselves: in the hope that it will prevent their being made to pay for their iniquitous actions of the past. Why, are they not the very people whose greed made their party lose the trust of discerning Ghanaians? Do the decent members of the NPP not understand that playing to the gallery on behalf of those who lost them the elections will not ultimately help the cause of their party? They must understand that in the Ghana of today, it is not the opinion of the millions of “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types, whose unflinching support they can rely on, that matters. The real kingmakers in Ghanaian politics today, are the discerning, patriotic, and independent-minded individuals, whose crucial votes now decide who is elected as Ghana’s president. Rather than play to the gallery, let them pause and think – and work hard to prise their party from the iron-grip of those whose greed and tribal-supremacist negativity lost them the December 2008 elections. A word to the wise…

GHANAIAN POLITICIANS: DO NOT PLAY POLITICS WITH THE MILITARY INSTITUTION!

Many a Ghanaian patriot and Nkrumaist heaved a huge sigh of relief, when our erstwhile Hypocrite-in-Chief, who also served as the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces during his tenure, completed his second four-year term of office at midnight on 6th January, 2009 – because we were glad to see the end of the era of a regime that succeeded in dividing our nation on tribal lines like no other regime has ever done. Sadly, by the end of its tenure, the Kufuor administration had also succeeded in turning our country’s silent majority into moral cowards, who pretended that all was well with our nation when that was clearly not the case. The Kufuor-era was a period when the miasma of unfathomable greed enveloped Ghana completely – a truly tragic time during which we became a society of dog-eat-dog selfishness, in which looking out for number one, was the personal philosophy of a people, whose traditions encouraged them to live communal lives that entailed caring for each other, and sharing the little one had with neighbours.

From what we are now hearing about the shenanigans involved in the military recruitment process in the years towards the end of the NPP’s period in office, it would appear that no institution was sacred for those nepotistic and tribalistic politicians – who abused their positions in a manner seldom seen in Ghanaian politics. Clearly, some of the members of the NPP are totally shameless – for, how can politicians who whiles in government, were so cynical and unprincipled, that during the December 2008 elections they had no qualms recruiting thugs, whom they provided with military and police uniforms to wear, and even issued arms to (to impersonate real soldiers and policemen), and dispatched to go round the country snatching ballot boxes in key electoral areas, complain about the new leadership of the military cancelling last year’s intake of recruits? Do they not understand that the military institution, which is the guardian of the territorial integrity of our homeland Ghana, is the one institution that must not be allowed to become infected by the national disease of corruption, and our devotion to the”Cult-of-the-mediocre”?

How are we to know that some of those whose names were mysteriously inserted into the list of army recruits were indeed not some of the NPP “action-troopers” that Lord Commey once boasted about? Who in this country does not remember the extraordinary sight of the top-ranking soldier in Ghana saluting the tribal Chief of Kufuor and Co. at a durbar in Kumasi? What sight could be more nauseating to Ghanaian nationalists and patriots who cherish the enterprise Ghana – and who deeply resent Kufour and his tribal Chiefs’ treasonable attempt to Balkanize our unique nation of diverse-ethnicity, which Nkrumah succeeded in moulding into a united and modern African nation-state, whose citizens shared a common destiny, and which served as a shining example in harmonious multi-ethnic co-existence, to the rest of Africa? Did we all not condemn the National Democratic Congress regime under President Rawlings for bringing his revolutionary cadres into the military because we did not think it was right to politicize our military – so why should we allow them to destroy the military by manipulating its recruitment processes to serve their secret Akan tribal-supremacist agenda?

The plain truth is that President Kufuor’s shameful and divisive tribal-supremacist ways nearly destroyed the esprit de corps of the Ghana Armed Forces towards the end of his tenure. Who in this nation who is truthful and impartial, will not attest to the fact that the small but powerful cabal of Akan tribal-supremacists in the presidency, who held the NPP to ransom throughout President Kufuor’s eight-year tenure, obviously had a secret tribal-supremacist agenda that included making the Ghana Armed Forces a tool to enable them achieve their dream of permanently dominating our country? Just what possessed them to describe their tribal Chiefs as “Kings” in the diplomatic passports issued to them – when there are no monarchies in the unique nation of diverse-ethnicity known as the Republic of Ghana? How many tribal Chiefs in Ghana go round the country in motorcades led by police dispatch riders – as if they were heads of state? Has there ever been any regime like theirs in our history, which deliberately used the whole machinery of state to promote the overweening ambitions of their tribal Chiefs – to the extent that their Chiefs could get away with all kinds of infractions of the law? Who in this country does not know that Kufuor’s tribal Chiefs sold vast swathes of land belonging to the Ghanaian nation-state with complete impunity – and that that abomination started right from the very beginning of their tenure?

We must speak plainly and boldly against those who seek to tear our country apart with their foolish dreams of restoring a feudal system that thrived on superstition (including ritual killing), deception, and the enslavement of others. We only have to look at nations torn apart by tribal divisions across Africa to understand why we must never forgive the small but powerful group of Akan tribal-supremacists that dominated the NPP under Kufuor, and which by all appearances unfortunately still remains influential in that party today. Do they think that any genuine Nkrumaist and nationalist will ever sit unconcerned and allow a few greedy and selfish tribal-supremacists to make us go through what nations like Sudan; Chad; Zimbabwe; Kenya; DR Congo; Rwanda and Burundi have gone through – just because our country has become a nation in which good and honest people, in a society full of hypocrites and moral cowards, are too afraid to speak out against tribal-supremacists? We must not tolerate their attempt to destabilize our country so that their past sins against our country can remain hidden from ordianry Ghanaians. Their outrageous attempt to besmirch the reputation of the present leadership of our military must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. Are the present military leadership and the minister of defence not simply correcting one of the many egregious actions taken in the past – when those who hijacked the NPP during their years in power infected virtually every institution of state in our country with their absurd and ridiculous Akan tribal-supremacist nonsense on bamboo sticks?

The fact of the matter, is that it would be highly irresponsible on the part of the minister for defence and the current military leadership, to allow standards in the armed forces to be lowered – which is what they would be doing, if having detected the existence of anomalies, they condoned the illegal actions of those who smuggled in those names, during the recruitment exercise in question. Why, are they not aware of the fact that our military is recognized the world over as a military force with some of the finest fighting men and women in the world? Is it not an institution that has an enviable UN peacekeeping reputation and is widely acknowledged for excellence? Do those hypocritical politicians not know when to stop their chicanery? When they adopt that nauseating holier-than-thou hypocritical attitude in Parliament, do they think we have forgotten their roles in the perpetration of sundry illegalities, such as that massive fraud that the railroading through Parliament of the sale and purchase agreement for VALCO to International Aluminum Partners represents? Did any of them bat an eyelid when the crooks amongst them were leading our nation down the garden path in that instance? What primary school child in Ghana does not know that that grandly-named special purpose vehicle was set up specifically to hide the stake of the NPP’s greedy-brigade in the privatization deal that never was?

We cannot, and must never allow the high standards of our military to be sacrificed for such rogues – and let those who worship at the “Cult-of-the-mediocre” present the Ghana Armed Forces to their confounded deity-of-incompetence as an offering for their many sins of the past. No politician must be allowed to attempt to play politics with the military – for it is far too important a national institution to be used as a political football. It is time the honest and principled members of the NPP took control of their party. They must not allow their party to become a tool and handmaiden of the small cabal in the presidency under their regime, which hijacked their party for their own selfish ends, during their years in power – and who now want to use it to shield themselves: in the hope that it will prevent them from being made to pay for their iniquitous actions of the past. Why, are they not the very people whose greed made their party lose the trust of discerning Ghanaians? Do the decent members of the NPP not understand that playing to the gallery on behalf of those who lost them the elections will not help the cause of their party? They must understand that in the Ghana of today, it is not the opinion of the “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types, whose unflinching support they can rely on, that matters. The real kingmakers in Ghanaian politics today, are the discerning, patriotic, and independent-minded individuals, whose crucial votes now decide who is elected as Ghana’s president. Rather than play to the gallery, let them pause and think – and work hard to prise their party from the iron-grip of those whose greed and tribal-supremacist negativity lost them the December 2008 elections. A word to the wise…

CAN THE NYEP BECOME A BOON FOR SUSTAINBLE RURAL DEVELOPMENT?

An advert for a fish-farming seminar in the Thursday June 11, 2009 edition of The Daily Graphic caught my eye – as I am constantly on the look-out for alternative income-generating opportunities that might benefit the young people of Akim Abuakwa Juaso, and help wean them off the illegal logging and illegal surface gold mining that is endangering one of Ghana’s only two evergreen uplands rain forests. I am particularly keen to ensure that that part of the Atiwa Range rain forest is preserved – and will even sacrifice my life, if necessary, to ensure that that is done. The same edition of The Daily Graphic also carried a news report that Mr. Abuga Pele had been appointed the acting national coordinator of the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) – and as someone who takes a great deal of interest in the younger generation, that too caught my eye. Being better-educated than my generation is, and mercifully totally “de-tribalised” they are the great hope for the future of our country, and will also serve as an example to the rest of Africa in harmonious multi-ethnic co-existence – as ethnic tensions gradually destroy the stability of key African nations such as Kenya, DR Congo, Sudan, and Nigeria..

The fish-farming seminar, which is apparently a private-sector Israeli-Ghanaian collaboration organized by a local consultancy firm, Silicon Consult, could very well serve as a model for the NYEP to work with private-sector entities to provide valuable skills for the teeming masses of young people one sees struggling daily to survive – selling various items to passengers in vehicles caught up in traffic jams in city streets and urban roads up and down our country. Many of them have drifted to cities across the country from the rural areas. For the obvious constraint of being financially-challenged, attending such private-sector seminars is out of the question for most young unemployed people. It might therefore be worthwhile for the NYEP to consider partnering the private-sector organisations that organize such life-changing seminars – in private-public-partnerships (PPP) to provide training in micro-entrepreneurship on a long-term basis for young people throughout Ghana. Such seminars ought to be held regularly throughout the country – and should be a key component of the development plan for the regions of the northern savannah belt.

Attending such seminars could literally transform the lives of tens of thousands of those young street vendors – who show their hard-working nature and sense of initiative, by being out on the streets hours on end daily, no matter what the weather is. As a society, we must harness their “can-do” spirit and make productive use of it, to help us increase the GDP of our country, at a time when the economies of virtually all our overseas trading partners have contracted. Mrs. Gladys Asmah, who was a fisheries minister in the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime, worked incredibly hard selling the idea of fish-farming to Ghanaian farmers and the general populace. The present regime can build on what she was able to achieve – by getting the NYEP to use the PPP model to provide street vendors and other unemployed young people with training in productive endeavours such as fish-farming. I would urge the new national coordinator of the NYEP, Mr. Abuga Pele, to make the organisation more proactive – and send its employees out unto the pavements to inform those young street vendors of the availability of such seminar opportunities.

The NYEP could also work with district assemblies and private-sector consultancy firms, such as Silicon Consult, which placed the advertisement for the fish-farming seminar that caught my eye – and which made me do some lateral thinking about how the NYEP could literally help millions of young people to become micro-entrepreneurs using the PPP model. Whiles in office, Mr. Abuga Pele should also do all he can to visit Bangladesh, to see the amazing work Dr. Yunis the Noble Laureate has done there, to transform the lives of millions of poor Bangladeshis – and invite him to visit Ghana to see how the NYEP could partner his multi-faceted Bramen organisation in Ghana to help empower millions of poor Ghanaian families. Perhaps through the NYEP Ghana could even eventually develop fish-farming by young people into a non-traditional export industry – and help our country to become a major exporter of African catfish to Asia: in parts of which it is said to be an expensive delicacy.

Nearer home, in their effort to protect the large private forest reserve they own on a freehold basis, and which is part of the Atiwa Range uplands evergreen rain forest, the owners of P.E. Thompson Farms & Commodity Exports Limited, who are all committed environmentalists, recently succeeded in halting the Akim Abuakwa Juaso operations of a surface gold mining company, Solar Mining – which was mining illegally in the foothills of that part of the Atiwa Range rain forest without a valid permit from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Solar Mining has apparently bought a vast swathe of farmland from cocoa farmers in that area - and is said by some of those associated with it to have permission to mine in a fifty-kilometer stretch from Anyinham to Asiakwa. How a surface mining gold mining company that is unknown to the EPA’s mining permit department can have a permit to operate in a fifty-kilometer stretch of the Atiwa Range rain forest from Anyinham to Asiakwa, is beyond my comprehension – but that is another story altogether: which I will save for another day.

The fish-farming idea might be a perfect opportunity for small-scale mining companies like Solar Mining to start diversifying away from surface gold mining, and profit from a more sustainable and environmentally-friendly commercial undertaking – and they could work with entities like Silicon Consult in such ventures. There is some synergy between their mining operations, which involves considerable digging of the earth, and the digging of large ponds for fish-farming that they could leverage. Speaking for myself, apart from looking forward to attending the seminar, I shall try and visit Mr. Abuga Pele’s organisation’s offices – to talk to him about the possibility of the NYEP working with the staff of the Rural Enterprises Project (REP), and the Fanteakwa District Assembly, to get Silicon Consult to train the members of the Akim Abuakwa Juaso Youth Association to become fish-farming micro-entrepreneurs. Fish-farming could be one more alternative income-generating activity that could help reduce the illegal logging and the illegal surface gold mining that unfortunately goes on in that part of the Atiwa Range rain forest.

I will certainly be glad to live long enough to see the day, when the relaxing sound of water gently lapping the walls of fish-ponds owned by young rural dwellers in areas once blighted by surface gold mining pits, will replace the cacophony of the incessant and peace-shattering sound emitted by the multiplicity of chainsaws, that are daily busy destroying that important rain forest. Sadly, the Forestry Service of the Forestry Commission, and the traditional authorities of Akim Abuakwa, both seem unable to halt the activities of the criminal syndicates carrying out illegal logging and illegal surface gold mining in parts of the Atiwa Range rain forest with such impunity. Their sternest critics even call them hypocrites and say that posterity will judge them harshly – for giving the world the false impression that they are champions of conservation and environmental activists without compare: when it appears that in reality they only pay lip service to fighting environmental degradation merely for the publicity it brings them. Whatever be the case, those of us at the sharp end, pray that as the implications of global warming begins to dawn on many more Ghanaians, staff of the Forestry Service and the traditional authorities in Akim Abuakwa, and elsewhere in that part of Ghana’s Eastern Region, will finally wake up to their responsibilities towards Kwaebibirim – and support the efforts of those private individuals in Akim Abuakwa Juaso who are actually working for sustainable rural development in that part of rural Ghana – and at considerable personal risk to ourselves too, if I may add. A word to the wise…

WHAT WILL MAKE THE MILLS PRESIDENCY SUCCESSFUL?

The gripping story of the sad fall from grace, of a tall and handsome young man blessed with considerable charisma, who was given an opportunity to blaze a trail for other young people, by being appointed to the government as a minister, but who unfortunately did not have the strength of character to make a success of his opportunity, has engrossed Ghanaians lately. The Alhaji Munkata saga, clearly demonstrates the need for President Mills to act quickly to get Ghana’s political class to unite and put a bill together, and under a certificate of urgency, get Parliament to pass a new law that will require all government appointees and their spouses, to publicly publish their assets: both before assuming office and after the end of their tenure.

Since human beings are neither saints nor angels, we must not think that Ghana will not end up like Nigeria, if we do not take the necessary steps to ensure that the more dishonest members of our political class do not get the opportunity to steal public funds. It is vital that our nation does not miss the opportunity to use our oil and natural gas revenues to transform our society – and turn our country into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia. Those powerful and wealthy individuals, who know the many opportunities available in our country, and who apparently even offered money to some of our previous leaders as inducements, will do exactly the same to the present crop of leaders in charge of our country – as they will want to continue exploiting our country and its people for as long as they possibly can. As we recall, President Kufuor once famously said that members of his regime were offered money by investors – although they never accepted it: but rather told such investors to go away with their money (when he should have ordered their immediate arrest, for attempting to bribe the president of the Republic of Ghana, no less).

President Kufuor and a small but powerful Akan tribal-supremacist cabal in the presidency, succeeded in dominating the New Patriotic Party (NPP), by maintaining an iron grip on it throughout his tenure. As we all know, they prospered mightily during the eight years President Kufuor was given the privilege of leading Ghana – and succeeded in ushering in a golden age of business for the members of their family clans, their favourite traditional rulers, and their cronies (both male and female). All that was made possible because from the very beginning, when they started off by receiving kickbacks in the Osu Castle, which they apparently did not account for (one recalls the agonies of the then party chairperson Mr. Haruna Esseku – who despaired that they were not making the kickback-money available for the use of their party), no one could challenge them to see if graft was enriching them – because ultimately there was no way of comparing their personal net worth at the time they first entered office and the boom years when the kickbacks had started flowing “waa waa” and they had become seriously rich: and were acquiring a multiplicity of parcels of land; hotels; giant (by our standards) supermarkets; secret stakes in special purpose offshore entities; buying posh homes and expensive luxury cars for delectable young bimbos; etc. etc.

It is imperative therefore that we rely on more than mere platitudinous statements from President Mills, when government appointees are being sworn into office, if we are to be successful in our quest to fight corruption and protect public funds from being dissipated by corrupt public officials. A majority of Ghanaians voted for President Mills during the run-off of the December 2008 presidential elections, largely because they believed that he was an honest man, who was the candidate most likely not to end up presiding over a MK11 version of the Kufuor era – which is widely acknowledged to be the period when corruption reached its apogee in Ghana. We cannot afford to see a repetition of those dark days of infamy, when powerful and amoral individuals in leadership positions, driven by unfathomable greed, used their positions to grab as much as they could possibly get away with – in an 8-year orgy of avariciousness unparalleled in our nation’s chequered history, during which they turned our democracy into a kleptocracy: and Ghana became a world power in crony-capitalism.

The only way President Mills can effectively control his ministers and other government appointees, and ensure that they do not follow the example of the greediest crooks from the Kufuor era, and end up destroying his reputation for honesty permanently, is for him to ensure that a law is passed quickly to force all elected officials, from the president himself down to the last district chief executive in the land, and their spouses, to publicly publish their assets. President Mills cannot possibly leave a good legacy without such a law in place – and he must ensure that it is passed in the quickest time practicable: if he wants to have a successful tenure and be remembered till the very end of time as the leader who brought such legislation into being to protect public finances in Ghana. Perhaps another lesson he can learn from the downfall of Alhaji Munkata is to ensure that whistle-blowers are not victimized in our country. That can be done by passing legislation that specifically protects them from any form of victimization – by criminalizing such victimization in every shape or form it takes. In other jurisdictions, the transgressions of whistle-blowers (if any) are invariably overlooked, if they expose corruption in officialdom.

It will benefit our country tremendously if we adopt the same approach here – and offer them decent monetary rewards too: to encourage even more whistle-blowers to emerge. President Mills is clearly a very wise and God-fearing leader – so one hopes that he will heed such advice. The fact of the matter, is that ordinary Ghanaians are far more likely to agree to make sacrifices, and put up with the hard times they are bound to experience before things get better, under a president they regard as an honest and reforming leader, trying hard to make a corrupt system more transparent – and they will ignore all the “politricks” of his corrupt opponents and harshest of critics: because they know that most of those greedy rogues took turns to participate in the brutal and callous gang-rape of mother Ghana. The passage of a law requiring government appointees and their spouses to publicly publish their assets before and after their tenure, will send a clear signal to Ghanaians that a new era of transparency has finally dawned – and make them become more patient and bear with the Mills administration, as it sorts out the economic mess from the past, and works to bring about the better Ghana they promised them. That will guarantee him an 8-year tenure too – so let the president heed the call to get such a law enacted and put onto our statute books quickly. It must certainly be on top of his personal list of priorities. A word to the wise…

WHAT IS THE NPP UP TO MEETING JOURNALISTS IN HOTELS?

Ghanaian politicians are such a complex breed – and sometimes one wonders if any of them actually ever think of the well-being of our country, and the unremitting awfulness of the quality of life, which most ordinary people are forced to endure, because of the straightened circumstances of our country. Take the matter of those tiresome and mostly disingenuous arguments, which went back and forth at a point in time, about the depreciation of our currency, for example – between members of the ruling party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and the largest opposition party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

I vividly recall the erudite Nana Ohene Ntow, the general secretary of the NPP, going on and on, with glee, about the depreciation of the cedi on Metro TV’s “Good Morning Ghana” newspaper review programme – and wondered to myself at the time whether he thought that under his regime Ghana’s foreign exchange system was a pure floating one. Did that genius not know that his government spent nearly a billion dollars propping up the new Ghana cedi, so that the world would see a punch-drunk currency proudly “walking” their phony talk about Ghana’s booming economy – which only benefited a tiny politically well-connected proportion of our total population? Looking at the number of dilapidated police barracks; hospitals, schools, and other similarly-challenged public institutions across the country, whose heads one sees frequently on television news programmes, soliciting for good Samaritans to come to their aid, could a caring government that thought less about saving face at all costs, no matter the long-term cost to our nation, not have spent that sum of money on some of those forlorn institutions they so neglected: whiles forever telling us what a stellar economic-performer Ghana under their regime was? Where did all that HIPC money go, one wonders?

Recently, it was reported that some of the members of the NPP had met a section of the media at an Accra hotel. It is no secret that most of those journalists also benefited greatly from the slush-fund operated by our secret services – during that super-generous spymaster extraordinaire Mr. Francis Poku’s era. That was a period during which scores of people in our national life were compromised – as they happily sold their consciences for zillions: and in return helped the NPP regime execute its master-plan to remain in power permanently. I wondered which other key groups, apart from the NPP media praise-singers, that the NPP had also been meeting in secret – and what could be the real agenda of the current crop of politicians from a political tradition, whose elitism makes most of its adherents (such as the Maxwell Kofi Jumahs and Atta Akyeas) think that they were born to rule our country: a characteristic that made their political forebears, then in opposition to the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), refuse to accept the legitimacy of a political party that had trounced them on three separate occasions in free and fair elections (in 1951, 1954, and the last and most decisive, in 1956). They rather resorted to acts of terrorism to physically eliminate Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in the hope of bringing his rule to an end that way. Incidentally, Mr. R. R. Amponsah, who died a few days ago, plotted a coup with some of his Busia-Danquah self-seeking fellow-travellers, against Nkrumah’s regime as early as 1958 – just a year after we gained our independence and when Ghana was a thriving multi-party democracy. May his soul rest in peace.

It is this feeling that ruling Ghana is their birthright, which made Maxwell Kofi Jumah so indignant, that ordinary Ghanaians actually wanted regime-change, in December 2008. It was also what made him bold enough to even have the effrontery, to inform one of those myrmidon-types they recruited to help them rig the elections, that the NPP would not allow Ghanaians to remove them from power. Incredibly, some of those thugs and criminals were even issued military and police uniforms, and a number given arms – with orders to go round key electoral areas in the country to snatch ballot boxes: with the assurance that they would have the protection of senior police commanders if things went awry. As we all know, Maxwell Kofi Jumah was caught on a tape-recording saying that Rawlings was the only one they had to fear in the NDC – and at one stage was arrested with a sniper’s rifle with a telescopic-sight attached to it in his car, on the very day both he and Rawlings happened to be in the Tien constituency. Just what was Maxwell Kofi Jumah up to, one wonders? Clearly, the NPP as an entity is not going to resort to terrorism and organize the myrmidon-types (including those tiresome pea-sized-brained serial-callers) they so ruthlessly manipulated in their quest for eternal power, to plant bombs around the country – but now that the heat is on and investigations are bringing to light the perfidy of the once-powerful crooks amongst them, who participated in the brutal gang-rape of mother Ghana, some of them are definitely up to some mischief and must be watched carefully. Incidentally, it is rather odd that to date the police have not invited those anti-democrats for questioning – particularly as regards the identity of the senior police officers they were relying on to rescue the myrmidon-types sent to snatch ballot boxes if their plans unraveled.

Perhaps the president must now be ruing his charitableness in not wanting to let the public know the depths to which our Alice-in-wonderland (and veritable smoke-and-mirrors) economy had sunk under the NPP, at the time his party took over the running of our country. The unfortunate saga of Ghana International Airlines (GIA), that clueless and hapless airline equivalent of a Dodo, for which Ghana Airways was deliberately killed off, so that some members of the NPP greedy-brigade could successfully rip-off our nation on a regular basis and increase their personal net worth at taxpayers’ expense, best serves as a metaphor for Ghana during the eight years that the NPP was in power for. The question we should find answers for, is: How did it come about, that Ghana International Airlines, set up, ostensibly, on the basis that private capital would fund it (and thus free the Ghanaian nation-state of the expensive burden that Ghana Airways was said to have been), was, by the end of the tenure of those who sanctioned the new airline being set up, costing the taxpayers of Ghana some US$1.5 millions every month, and to make matters worse, did not even possess a single aircraft of its own? Yet, the airline that was liquidated to make way for GIA was a national flag-carrier that had valuable routes around the globe; owned valuable properties in some of the most expensive places in cities across the EU; and actually owned a fleet of aircraft crewed entirely by its Ghanaian employees.

It was the financial equivalent of a sleight of hand, in which our leaders allowed foreigners using an opaque special purpose offshore vehicle, and who neither owned a scheduled airline nor aircraft of their own, to end up benefiting from one of the most egregious examples of the socialization of private risk ever seen in our country – whereby GIA ended up owing vast sums to the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), a state-owned pension fund. Incidentally, SSNIT’s munificence was legendary under the NPP – because the powerful politicians who turned our democracy into a kleptocracy, allowed sundry high-flying tycoons to use it as a bank of last resort, for their private schemes: a prime example being the so-called consortium that built that monument to the Kufuor regime’s crony-capitalism: the “AU village project.” Did the masters of the universe and apostles of private enterprise (super-greedy and ruthless souls who clearly had no time for the woolly-headed sentimentality of national pride entailed in our insisting on our nation owning a national flag-carrier at the time), not make out originally, that the US investors in GIA were white knights in shining financial amour, who would use their philosophy of greed, triumphant market-capitalism, to finally free our country from the curse of owning a national carrier that was a financial burden? So just how did apparently well-heeled private American investors (at any rate well-heeled enough to have been allowed by our clever erstwhile leaders to partner our country in GIA) end up being bailed out by a state pension fund in Ghana?

To add insult to injury those selfsame American investors, having fallen out with the crooks who enticed them into Ghana to act as legal fronts for them, are now suing our country in a legal process overseas – and doubtless hope to eventually walk away with zillions of Ghanaian taxpayers’ money. Finally, dear reader, and lest I forget, perhaps that loud NPP mouthpiece, the notorious Daily Guide (which is so savvy about matters financial that it is blissfully unaware that a client who gets his bankers to open an irrevocable letter of credit in favour of a supplier, is as good as gold for that supplier – who can “discount” it for cash immediately if the bank is a reputable one), can do us all a favour, by asking Dr Anthony Akoto Osei to tell the good people of Ghana (when the Daily Guide and their fellow NPP media praise-singers and sundry sycophants, next meet NPP big-wigs in another conclave at a posh hotel, i.e.), whether the letter of credit he authorized was an irrevocable one or not. And whiles they are at it, perhaps the Daily Guide can also ask him why it had to be paid to a third party (as stated in its own columns), instead of directly going to Dr. Negreponte’s organisation – especially as Negreponte’s organisation works in partnership with governments elsewhere in Africa and the rest of the developing world. The Daily Guide will then discover why in the end, if any one has to face the music for those computers, it might probably be Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei and Co., and definitely not the present minister of finance, Dr. Kwabena Duffour, who will. The devil they say is in the detail – and it will be interesting to know if other developing nations were ever quoted a per unit price of US$195 for the computers: and whether or not they were all informed of the price-change at the same time, when the price was said to have been revised upwards to US$205 per computer (if it ever actually was revised upwards to that particular figure, i.e.). Hmmm, Ghana – eyeasemm oo: asem ebaba debi ankasa!

KEN SOROWIWA’S AMAZING TRIUMPH FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!

I shed tears of joy, when I heard that the mighty Royal Dutch Shell, which for decades had gotten away with environmental pollution of apocalyptic proportions in Ogoniland and the rest of the Niger Delta, had finally more or less acknowledged in a US federal court in New York, that the brilliant Nigerian writer, the late Ken Sorowiwa, did indeed have a point about its shameful perfidy in Nigeria. A friend, who always says: “May General Sani Abacha’s soul roast in the hottest part of hell!” whenever I mention the late Nigerian dictator and African kleptocrat-extraordianire’s name, in a roll-call of the most brutal of our continent’s long line of military despots, called me to tell me the good news that Royal Dutch Shell had agreed an out of court settlement and would be compensating the families of Ken Soriwiwa, and the families of the others he was hanged with, as well as the people of Ogoniland with some US$15 millions. We must thank God for such little “humanitarian” (the word used by a Royal Dutch Shell spokesperson to point out they did not accept any culpability) mercies one guesses – as Royal Dutch Shell could have strung the process out till eternity.

The ruling by the US federal law court that means in principle that American companies can indeed be sued in the US law courts, by foreign entities and individuals, for matters arising from the consequences of their overseas operations, is a huge boost for all pan-Africanists who want to fight the massive corruption one finds in many places in Africa, and which is fueled by the complicity of the foreign carpetbaggers, who come to our continent to buy the crooks amongst our leaders. Pan-Africanists have prayed for years, that an equitable way is found to enable us successfully fight the many foreign rogues, who come to Africa to exploit our continent and its people, in their own home countries. Such companies, like the defunct Canadian surface gold mining company Bonte Mines did in the village of Bonte, leave a horrifying trail of misery in their wake, as they repatriate their ill-gotten wealth back home – where they would never dream of putting up for even one second with environmental destruction on the scale they are able to get away with here: because our leaders are too ignorant to understand that in the long-term, we are better off leaving the gold in the ground, because we will eventually spend all the wealth we create in future (from our oil and natural gas revenues), to ameliorate the damage we are busy causing to the natural environment, today.

Who in Ghana that cares about our country and ordinary Ghanaians, is not scandalized by the gross human rights abuses committed by surface gold mining companies that are brutally gang-raping mother Ghana (abuses which are incredibly condoned by the stooges for neo-colonialism amongst our rulers, who billet troops in mining towns to oppress poor rural folk complaining about predatory surface gold mining companies, polluting the natural environment in vast swathes of the Ghanaian countryside), simply because our corrupt leaders have over the years been beholden to mining companies with deep pockets? Future generations of brilliant, young, gifted, and environmentally-aware Africans, will always remember Ken Sorowiwa’s amazing triumph from beyond the grave over a powerful multinational, which still actively participates in the brutal gang-rape of the Niger Delta area in Nigeria, and shamefully continues to contribute to global warming, because it, like its co-conspirators against Nigeria’s Ogoniland people, still flare natural gas and pollute their homeland with impunity.

Naturally, not investing in the necessary infrastructure to harness the natural gas they flare, in order to protect the natural environment, makes perfect sense economically for the oil companies, simply because it adds to their fat bottom-lines. We all look forward to the day, when environmental degradation by foreign companies in the continent, will be a thing of the very distant past – and pan-Africanists across the continent will be able to reminisce (in celebrating a continent finally free of environmental polluters), that once upon a time, during the dark days in Africa, the homeland of our ancestors was awash with ruthless and predatory foreign companies, which were able to destroy much of Africa’s then largely-pristine natural environment, and cruelly exploit the citizens of nations across the continent with total impunity, because they were able to buy corrupt African leaders, who ruled during that dreadful era in our common history. Pan-Africanists the continent over salute the memory of Ken Sorowiwa and his gallant comrades – who died fighting a brutal dictatorship allied with ruthless multinationals (that collaborated to oppress the people of Ogoniland and other Niger Delta communities), and whose fighting spirit was able to triumph in the end, even from beyond the sacred ground they are interred!

THE KOFI THOMPSONS OF GHANAIAN JOURNALISM ARE NOT FOR SALE AT ANY PRICE!

I had an irate phone call yesterday, from a gentleman who had just read an article I had written on Friday 5th June, 2009, about the minister for youth and sports, entitled: “The Alhaji Munkata Saga: A Litmus Test President Mills Must Pass!” He was disappointed in what he thought was an unhelpful article – from the standpoint of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime. “I thought you were for us, Kofi,” was his petulant complaint to me. Perish the thought. I am not for any political party – I am an Nkrumaist and a nationalist who wants to see the creation of an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia in our country. Being an Nkrumaist is a mindset – one that engenders self-belief in an African and one that gives one a vision that makes one seek the creation of a modern, efficiently-run, prosperous, and fair society in Ghana (and the rest of Africa too, if I may be so bold).

It is important for those in the NDC, as well as politicians from all the other political parties in Ghana, who think that journalists should side with their party as a matter of policy, to disabuse their minds of that idea quickly. The job of patriotic and nationalistic journalists, who see their profession as a noble one, and regard it as a vocation, rather than a means to the acquisition of wealth (through the sale of one’s conscience to the highest bidder), is to protect Ghana’s national interest – which at any given point in time, is the maintenance of a free and open society, in which those who lead the Ghanaian nation-state pursue policies that are always in the best interest of society: and ensure the well-being of the ordinary people of our country, in whom sovereignty ultimately lies.

The discerning Ghanaians, the so-called “floating voters” whose crucial votes contributed to the election of the NDC to power in December 2008, did so because they were fed up with the incompetence and greed of the few powerful individuals, who had such an iron-grip on the New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime, that they were able to pursue self-serving policies that benefited them and their favourites personally – but which were inimical to the long-term interests of our country. Symbolic of the greed and self-seeking nature of some of the most powerful politicians in that era, was the railroading through parliament, of a sale and purchase agreement for VALCO to a non-existent entity, known grandly as International Aluminum Partners.

The crooks in the previous regime who dreamt up that fraud, thought they could inveigle two ethically-run international metals conglomerates, Norske Hydro and VALE, whose businesses are clearly underpinned by corporate good governance principles, to go along with their clever little scheme to add another valuable national asset, to their well-diversified personal investment portfolios, in yet another self-serving privatization deal. However, both multinationals vehemently denied ever agreeing to purchase VALCO. Clearly, the indecent haste to get parliament to sanction that fraudulent sale and purchase agreement, was simply to present Norske Hydro and VALE with a “done-deal” (to use local parlance) – a fait accompli that would put any fears they had aside: and encourage them to agree to buy VALCO more or less on their own terms: and help the politicians behind the deal to send their personal net worth a tad higher up the stratosphere.

It was the same modus operandi that made the powerful crooks in the previous regime, throw in the national fibre optic backbone-infrastructure, as a “sweetener” for Vodafone, in that shabby Ghana Telecom privatization – an egregious example of a self-serving privatization deal for the politicians who drove it, and who had the audacity to go as far as getting parliament to pass a law indemnifying all the deal-makers on both sides, from any future prosecution for issues arising from that particular privatization. Yet, that was clearly against the constitutional edict that enjoins all Ghanaians to fight corruption – and consequently an illegality that has no basis in law and cannot be de jure under any circumstances.

To patriotic Ghanaian journalists, politicians who were so shortsighted that in the 21st century ICT age could even think of selling a vital ICT platform such as Ghana Telecom, for short-term financial gain, simply did not deserve to be returned to power. No one who is a visionary today, can fail to grasp the fact that this is an age, when it is feasible for far-sighted national governments to envision a time, in the not too distant future, when nations will consider it cost-effective to put free computers (akin to GPRS mobile phone handsets!) into the hands of all their adult citizens, as mobile “citizen data-banks” and “e-governance modems” that will make it possible not only for the nation-state to locate each citizen at any given moment (a boon for the personal security of citizens; for crime-fighting; and for the tax-collection agencies!), but also enable various agencies of state to have all manner of positive interactions with the citizenry, for their mutual benefit.

Selling Ghana Telecom simply to provide funds to help tide their regime over temporarily for a short period was foolish in the extreme – and as far as I was concerned, politicians who so clearly lacked vision to that extent, did not deserve to lead out country. It was on that basis that the Kofi Thompsons of Ghanaian journalism were so critical of the previous regime and rooted for Professor Mills, during the campaign for the December 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections. Consequently, let no one in the NDC think that I am on their side – for, I am an independent-minded fellow who is on the side of truth, my country, and its entire people: and for whatever brings about a prosperous, free, and egalitarian society, in our homeland Ghana. My conscience is not for sale at any price to anyone – and I will criticize the Mills administration if it is in the national interest to do so whenever the need to do so arises: just as I did the Kufuor administration before it.

I detest former president Kufour with a passion, for example, not for personal reasons, but for the era of “dog-eat-dog” selfishness; unfathomable greed; nepotism; and blatant tribalism, which he ushered in during his tenure. It is with the same passion that I equally detest the miasma that former President Rawlings’ hold on so many Ghanaians represents. The simple and painful truth, for many Nkrumaists, is that it is only the “colonial-mentality” of many of Rawlings’ followers, which makes them literally worship a man, whom they would never dream of hero-worshiping (some for twenty odd years), if he had been a black man, rather than a half-caste, who incredibly thinks democracy is not suitable for Africans.

How can anyone with even a drop of African blood in him or her, and who respects Africans, not understand that the yearning for freedom, beats no less strongly in the hearts of Africans, than it does in the hearts of people of other races, I ask? Democracy may be an unsatisfactory system of government, but it is the best system of government known to humankind, for those who understand that it is only in free and open societies, in which there is competition of ideas, that the best ideas come to the fore to move such societies forward. That is why the most innovative societies in the world happen to be the Western democracies – which happen to be the freest societies on the planet Earth. Human beings are not angels – and a system of government that has checks and balances designed to prevent dictatorship and in which regular elections are held, to choose who leads the nation, should never be said to be unsuitable for Africans in the 21st century ICT age.

(Incidentally, it is the selfsame “slave-mentality” that enables Rawlings to mesmerize the myrmidon-type of Ghanaian today, which enabled Europeans to occupy our country and colonize it in the past – and sadly continues to make many Ghanaians tolerate the divisive and superstition-ridden institution of Chieftaincy: that bastion of backwardness, which masquerades as the custodian of our culture, but holds our country back so much because it is based on inherited privilege, which is the greatest enemy of any meritocracy. It is the self-seeking and opaque nature of that institution that made Chiefs and their lackeys collaborate so willingly with the Europeans who colonized our country. But I digress.)

The NDC must work towards bringing about the better Ghana they promised Ghanaians – and do so as quickly as they possibly can: and stop complaining to journalists who speak their minds openly. The Kofi Thompsons of Ghanaian journalism will continue to maintain their independence and continue to act as society’s watchdogs – not mercenary regime guard-dogs: so let politicians across the spectrum beware. As it happens, I am a nobody who comes from a simple, humble, and honest family, which, like many ordinary middle class Ghanaian families, though cash-poor, is asset-rich (and I say this humbly, not boastfully – simply to drive home the point that money does not mean anything to me). I am a writer who wants to be on the right side of history, and hopes that his name will live on till the very end of time, through my writing – not a philistine driven by greed who wants to be rich at all costs: and thinks that the end justifies the means (because he can’t see beyond his flat nose and thick lips) and is therefore willing to pocket zillions secretly from corrupt politicians and stay “on-side” with them. So let those politicians who think that every Ghanaian has a price and can be bought, beware. Kofi Thompson’s conscience is not for sale at any price to anyone. Period. A word to the wise…

THE ALHAJI MUNKATA SAGA: A LITMUS TEST PRESIDENT MILLS MUST PASS!

In the opinion of many of the discerning and patriotic Ghanaians, who believe in the principles of June 4, 1979, Ghanaian democracy will not survive, if President Mills’ regime were to eventually turn out to be yet another bunch of hypocrites, out to take our nation for a huge ride, in the manner some of their predecessors did – and use their positions to send their personal net worth into the stratosphere at our nation’s expense. It is for that reason that so many patriotic Ghanaians are determined to do all they can to help President Mills succeed – so that he can leave a legacy behind that will ensure that Ghanaian democracy not only survives but also thrives.

For such Ghanaians, how President Mills handles the many serious allegations made against the minister for youth and sports, Alhaji Munkata, will be an indicator of his sincerity, about fighting corruption. Naturally, in the light of the latest revelations, the fate of all those government appointees who spoke on the government’s behalf, about matters arising out of the episode, in which an air force plane took some government officials and their friends to watch a football match in the Ivory Coast, is tied to that of the minister for youth and sports. Of particular interest, will be the veracity or otherwise, of the allegation about the apparent payment of some ten thousand dollars by the ministry for youth and sports, in respect of costs associated with the use of an Ivorian airport by that air force plane. As we recall, those spokespersons did claim that the costs of the trip were borne by a private company.

If that particular allegation turns out to be true, then what are we to make of the fact that we were in effect told a pack of lies about there being no costs incurred by the state, when a number of government appointees went on what it now turns out amounted to a junketing-trip to the Ivory Coast to watch a football match? Clearly, all those officials who kept a straight face and told us what now amounts to monstrous lies about a private company sponsoring the trip must be sacked immediately – as they would have been caught in what appears to be a web of deceit they deliberately spun to hide the truth from the public about precisely who financed that trip. Surely, they must also be made to face the music too: if they fed the public with untruths – as that would make them unworthy of holding public office in a regime that says it abhors corruption and intends to prosecute all the members of the previous regime who were corrupt?

There are many Ghanaians who often say that the private lives of public figures are none of the public’s business. However, one can safely say that one can get a fair indication of the integrity of public figures by the way they conduct their private lives. In our interactions with others in our every-day lives, we are either both principled and honest individuals or we are none of those: and are rather unprincipled and dishonest characters – because one cannot compartmentalize one’s life and be honest in certain things and be dishonest in others. It is invariably the case, for example, that individuals who are not honest in their private lives, and deceive their spouses by breaking their marriage vows, almost always turn out to be corrupt individuals – who are untrustworthy and thus unfit to hold public office.

If it turns out to be true that the minister for youth and sports did actually spend public funds on his girlfriend, then that alone indeed would warrant his being sacked immediately and prosecuted for willfully causing financial loss to Ghana – and he ought to be made to face the Fast Track High Court on that charge as soon as it is practicable for the Attorney General to prefer charges against him. It is important that any wolves in sheep’s clothing who may be lurking in the Mills administration understand clearly that they were not brought into the government to steal public funds – and that they will end up in prison one day for sure if they do so. The people of Ghana are simply fed up with having corrupt individuals running their nation’s affairs – and looting our national treasury.

The idea that any minister can be as arrogant as to choose to spend taxpayers’ money on his girlfriend and then turn round to threaten and victimize the official who exposed him is just so outrageous – and any such minister certainly ought to be prosecuted. A nation in which millions of families cannot afford three square meals a day, and in which hundreds of thousands of children of school-going age end up not getting an education, because their families cannot afford to pay for their education, is not one in which elected officials can live the life of Riley – and live playboy-lifestyles cavorting with sundry bimbos at public expense. Ghanaians are waiting to see how President Mills deals with all those who are found wanting in this saga. One hopes that he will pass this litmus test. If the allegations are true, then he must definitely make the minister of youth and sports an example to all the members of his regime – by instantly dismissing him and asking the Attorney General to prosecute him. A word to the wise…

USE THE CREATIVE APPROACH IN THE “DECONGESTION” OF URBAN GHANA!

Nothing shows the awfulness of our educational system more than when we are faced with national problems that require creative solutions that can’t be found in textbooks. Sadly, it does appear that original thinking is certainly not one of the great strengths of Ghanaians. The so-called “decongestion” of urban Ghana is a case in point. Over the years, certificates of urgency have been used by ruling parties to pass laws inimical to the national interest, but which benefit powerful and politically well-connected crooks, at the eleventh hour – just when Parliament is about to go on recess. The sale and purchase agreement for VALCO is a case in point. Why can’t our politicians use that mechanism to pass new legislation that makes it impossible for anyone to defy the orders of local authorities like the AMA, when they act to ensure that pavements are not used as markets?

It is typical of the parochial nature of our politics that it has not yet occurred to our political class to take a bipartisan approach – and act quickly to put together a relevant bill and use a certificate of urgency to get parliament to pass a new law, which will enable local government authorities such as the Accra Metropolitan Authority (AMA), to deal effectively once and for all, with those backward and lawless individuals, who think they can turn pavements designed and built at great cost to taxpayers (in order to protect pedestrians from vehicles – in a nation with one of the highest vehicular accident rates in the world), into the equivalent of street markets.

The time has come for our political class to unite, and get parliament to pass a new law that will require all hawkers and petty traders in Ghana, to be registered by their local authority before they can sell goods to the public, at designated areas specifically allotted them by their local authority – and to prescribe sanctions for those who break that law. It should be a requirement for their registration that they can only trade in approved and designated places, specifically assigned them by the local authority – such as the Hawkers Market near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle. As things now stand, consumers who purchase the products of hawkers and petty traders, take an enormous risk, when they do so. Are those products safe for consumers for example – and have they been given official approval by the relevant state agencies, such as the Food and Drugs Board and the Ghana Standards Board, as being fit for sale to the public?

How does one know that one isn’t purchasing a contaminated product that has been rejected by other countries, and which have been smuggled by dishonest businesses into Ghana, for example, from a hawker or petty trader selling on a pavement in Accra? Do those hawkers and petty traders pay the correct amount of taxes to the authorities? Are the petty traders and hawkers carriers of infectious diseases, for example, which make them a danger to the public – and therefore unfit to be hawkers and petty traders, who sell food products to consumers? Why should hawkers and petty traders use pavements as markets to sell dangerous goods and unwholesome food? Should we allow “truck-pushers” to continue contaminating our environment by breaking up and disposing of computers, car batteries, compressors for fridges, rusty scrap metals, etc., etc. (all of which are toxic and dangerous to the health of the public), in public spaces such as city pavements?

All such concerns can be addressed and incorporated into any new law passed by parliament that requires hawkers and traders to be registered by local authorities before they can sell goods to the public. The recalcitrant ones who may want to defy their local authority and attempt to use pavements as markets after the passage of a such a law, can then be dealt with effectively by local authorities, which carry out ”decongestion” exercises in their areas of jurisdiction. It is time our political class started making laws to address issues of concern to society and which affect the quality of life of Ghanaians.

To help the police fight crime more effectively, for example, perhaps our politicians can also think of passing a law that makes it mandatory for all foreigners who intend to live here for more than three months to register with the police (in addition to registering with the immigration authorities) – and make it a requirement that they do not engage in crimes such as armed robbery and cyber-crime (known in local parlance as “Sakawa”), both of which ought to be made crimes that carry mandatory jail sentences of not less than twenty five years with hard labour. Our political class must learn to be more creative in using the law to help solve society’s problems. Let them start with the passage of a new law to help local authorities prevent hawkers, petty traders, and “truck-pushers” from using city pavements as markets and scrap-metal exchanges – and be seen for once to be working in the national interest as opposed to their parochial interests. A word to the wise…

KODJO MPIANIM MUST WELCOME OPPORTUNITY TO CLEAR HIS NAME!

Politicians are such an interesting breed. To hear some of the ministers in the previous regime, who gathered in front of the headquarters of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) yesterday, you’d think that life in Ghana today, was akin to living in President Iddi Amin Dada’s Uganda. When will Ghana’s politicians understand that there has been a sea-change in Ghanaian politics – and that the kingmakers of Ghanaian politics, whose crucial votes decide who wins the presidential elections (the independent-minded and nationalistic individuals who are collectively known as “floating voters”, i.e.) are determined to ensure that all elected officeholders are held accountable for their actions, when they end their tenure?

Rather than resorting to actions that disturb the peace outside the walls of the BNI headquarters (itself an infringement of the law that responsible men and women who have held high office before ought not countenance), when one of their number is invited for questioning by state agencies like the BNI, they must make the point to Ghanaians, that they welcome the opportunity for their colleague to clear his name. One hopes that those in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) who have clear consciences because they know that they refused to allow themselves to be contaminated by the virus of unfathomable greed that infected some powerful people in their party during their tenure, will ensure that their party does not take it upon itself to defend those in their midst whom they know so clearly abused the trust of Ghanaians, when they were in power. That will be a betrayal of mother Ghana.

They may take the “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types, whose blind support eventually destroys political parties when they win power, for granted – but they must never take discerning Ghanaians for granted. That type of Ghanaian understands perfectly, the outrage that the actions of those politicians whose acceptance of kickbacks, results in the delivery of shoddy work by contractors executing road and other infrastructural projects, represents. Who, but those who wear blinkers permanently and are too thick to think for themselves, does not see the infuriating evidence of poor quality workmanship, in the thousands of kilometers of roads and hundreds of public buildings, built at inflated prices across this country, that result from yesteryear's corruption in high places? Why should those who shortchanged our country in that egregious fashion get away with their crimes?

The NPP must understand that the Mills administration will be failing Ghanaians if it does not prosecute those who so shortchanged our nation – and investigations by the BNI form an important part of the process of holding those who gang-raped mother Ghana so brutally, to account. As the anniversary of June 4, 1979 approaches, let our political class understand that if they let ordinary people come to the conclusion that democracy is merely a legal cloak, specifically designed to protect clever men and women in the ruling elite, to enable them use loopholes in the law to enrich themselves with impunity, they will quickly become disillusioned with constitutional democracy – and to such an extent that the 4th Republic and its largely predatory political class will be swept away by “people power” in an unstoppable and popular mass revolt. Rather than maligning the Mills administration and making out that the government is persecuting them, the Kodjo Mpianims of this world must welcome the opportunity regime-change now offers them to correct the widespread perception amongst ordinary Ghanaians that their regime was the most corrupt ever elected into office in Ghana. A word to the wise…

PROTECT CONSUMERS FROM TELECOMS COMPANIES IN GHANA!

Recently, I heard an official from the European Commission department responsible for the telecoms industry, explaining to BBC world service listeners, how the process that leads to EU legislation works. In that particular instance, he explained how legislation limiting mobile phone rates charged by EU telecoms companies across the EU, was initiated by the commission – for eventual passage into legislation by the EU Parliament to protect consumers across the EU. I couldn’t help feeling a sense of outrage that in Ghana, where owning a mobile phone company is tantamount to being given a license to print money, there seems to be no one protecting Ghanaian consumers, from the perfidy of the telecoms companies operating here.

Millions of mobile phone users, as well as the relatively small number of broadband internet subscribers in Ghana, often wonder why the ministry of communications and the industry’s regulator, the National Communications Authority (NCA), don’t order the telecoms companies operating in Ghana to rather spend the trillions of cedis they splash out on advertising, to ensure that their networks work satisfactorily, instead. Surely, they are aware of the deep sense of dissatisfaction, which is felt by many Ghanaians, about the atrocious product quality of the mobile networks of the telecoms companies operating here? Could the cynics be right in saying that the mobile phone companies in Ghana are getting away with murder because they have most of officialdom in their very deep pockets?

Well, not too long ago, I heard a “grapevine-story” that one of the mobile phone companies had given the minister of communications a brand new Toyota saloon car as a personal gift – and immediately went to the ministry of communications and left a note in the office of the minister: asking him to confirm or deny the rumour. I am still waiting to hear from him – but knowing what a decent gentleman he is, I doubt very much if that brilliant young minister would accept such a gift. Hopefully, when he reads this, he will share his answer to my query, with the rest of the world. The minister for communications will do well to try and find out, for the sake of mobile phone and broadband internet users in Ghana, if in fact the cynics are right – that the arrogance of the mobile phone companies operating in Ghana is because they have been operating in this country on the basis that every Ghanaian official has a price and therefore can get away with making only the barest minimum investment needed in providing their services.

The minister of communications must make sure that those in officialdom who are supposed to protect Ghanaian consumers from being ripped off are not firmly on-side with the telecoms companies – because some of them have been compromised. As we speak, I am still waiting to hear from Vodafone, as to precisely when they will replace the defunct Alvarion broadband wireless internet service, which GT used to provide its “Broadband 4U” internet subscribers, who live in McCarthy Hill. My pre-paid service (account number 207888 which still has 95 Ghana cedis in it) was suspended without anyone from GT giving me advance notice – apart from a gentleman and a lady who called to give me a “smartfone” and said someone from GT would come and replace my antennae in due course because GT was upgrading the Alvarion system. Nothing was said about a sudden shutdown of the system.

I doubt very much if Vodafone would be so bold, as to completely ignore an EU broadband internet subscriber it had treated in similar fashion, who had even gone as far as posting complaining articles addressed to its CEO online in a web-blog, if one lived in an EU member-nation. Yet, he has no qualms about doing that here, in my case. Perhaps the minister of communications can find out from the CEO of Vodafone just when they will replace the Alvarion system for their broadband internet subscribers who live in McCarthy Hill. Over the period since the Alvarion system was discontinued, I have been to their Dansoman “Care 4U Centre”; their customer service centre in the Kwame Nkrumah Circle HQ building; and to their High Street Greater Accra regional office; without getting any satisfaction whatsoever. I hope they will do the decent thing and give me a year’s free internet service to make up for the inconvenience they have caused me, thus far.

The latest outrage, is that the lady who originally gave me my Vodafone Connect USB device (Vodafone Connect is a lousy and super-expensive dial-up service that is no substitute for the discontinued Alvarion wireless broadband system, incidentally) at their Dansoman “Care 4U Centre”, now incredibly denies being the one who actually gave it to me – and only heaven knows why she is now playing hide-and-seek with the truth. The last straw was buying some units (10 Ghana cedis) from that selfsame Dansoman “Care 4U Centre” just recently, to top up my USB as an experiment (after I had come to the rather painful conclusion, that I had to try the Vodafone Connect service again, if I wanted to get online from McCarthy Hill – following a conversation I had had with the regional manager at their High Street Greater Accra regional office), only to find a message on my computer screen informing me, amazingly, that it was a wrong SIM card. Consequently, I am back to square one and still have no internet access. However, I am a tenacious fellow – and will never give up my quest to ensure that Vodafone treats disgruntled customers like myself fairly (and with a modicum of respect too, if I may add), and eventually compensates me for messing up my online writing output.

Vodafone Ghana’s CEO may choose to ignore complaining articles written and posted online by insignificant individuals in Ghana – but he must always remember that in the internet age, the transgressions of powerful multinational companies in the developing world can be brought to the attention of the rest of the world, by the click of a computer mouse. He must also take note of the recent ruling by a US federal court judge that US companies can be sued at home in the American law courts by foreign entities and individuals, for actions arising out of their overseas operations. The EU may choose to follow suit someday – so he had better change his ways fast. Clearly, the telecoms companies in Ghana have adopted the telecoms equivalent of the “pile-‘em-high-sell-‘em-cheap” strategy so beloved of cowboys of the Arthur Daley ilk to rip Ghanaians off successfully – and by saturating Ghana’s cash-strapped media with advertising revenue, they appear to have successfully bought the silence of society’s watchdogs too: and thus think they can act with impunity.

The minister of communications and the regime he is such a prominent member of, must understand that the Vodafones of this world are here to exploit our country for the benefit of their shareholders abroad – not to help the government of Ghana build our nation. That is why when it bought shares in Kenya’s state-owned telecoms company, a secret stake was given to corrupt Kenyan politicians – presumably to enable them get way with sharp practice there that they wouldn’t dare engage in, in the EU, the US, and elsewhere in the developed world where they operate. He must keep a close eye on the operations of Vodafone and the other telecoms companies here – and ensure that they provide quality service at affordable prices to consumers in Ghana. How some of us vote in the next elections in December 2012 will depend on how the government treats companies like Vodafone – and protects Ghanaian workers and consumers from such companies: especially predatory foreign companies that are able to persuade crooked Ghanaian politicians to railroad bills through parliament securing them legislation indemnifying those who strike privatization deals that benefit them from future prosecution. A word to the wise…

ARE THERE FOREIGN PLANS TO DESTABALISE GHANA?

Over the years, there have been persistent reports of sophisticated weapons being seized from people in parts of the three northern regions, from time to time. Discoveries of such weapons ought to be food for thought for all of us whenever they occur. During the civil war in the Ivory Coast, there were reports of rebels from the north of that country, crossing over to our side of the border – in order to have their “rest-and-recreation” in some areas in the north of Ghana. The sophisticated weapons found in parts of the north may very well originate from some of our neighbours. Today, as we speak there are rumours circulating in the Ivory Coast of a coup emanating from their eastern border – Ghana.

Could it be the case that for some of the powerful and corrupt politicians who govern the neighbouring countries (and elsewhere in Africa, no doubt) that we share borders with, Ghana is an irritant and a constant source of worry? Clearly, for the citizens of our neighbouring countries, Ghana is a shinning example of a politically-stable African nation whose citizens enjoy all the basic freedoms, and in which there is also a free and vibrant media – which constantly shines the spotlight on its political class. The idea that such a state borders the nations they are busy looting cannot be good for corrupt African politicians – and some of them might be tempted to look for vulnerable spots in the Ghanaian polity to enable them destabilize our country.

Furthermore, what corrupt African politician looking to rig elections and hang on to power forever, wants to see an example like Ghana (that has had two successful handovers of power from different ruling parties to opposition parties after peaceful elections), which his or her own citizens can point to as an example their leaders ought to emulate, located bang next door? Perhaps the time has come for our secret services to start thinking along such lines – and take steps to ensure that our country is protected from any such politicians across our borders (and elsewhere in Africa), who might not like to have a neighbouring state in which citizens can speak their minds freely on the airwaves and in newspapers, and where corrupt politicians are tried and jailed for willfully causing financial loss to their country, as an example to their citizens. Instability in Ghana is what such politicians may very well seek – and Ghana’s secret services must do everything they can to stop them succeeding in destroying the stability of our country. A word to the wise…

LET US CELEBRATE WORLD TOURISM DAY AT THE MOLE NATIONAL PARK!

The Mole National Park and the other eco-tourism destinations in the north are vital for Ghana’s eco-tourism industry. The drop in tourist numbers in nations such as Kenya and Zimbabwe, as a result of the bad press they got when they experienced bouts of political violence not too long ago, opens up an opportunity to market the Mole National Park’s wildlife internationally – particularly its spectacular herd of elephants. At a time of global climate change, anything that helps preserve our nation’s biodiversity ought to be encouraged – especially if it also creates wealth in rural communities: as community-based eco-tourism does.

Those in charge of the development plan to rejuvenate the economy of the northern savannah belt ought to work with organizations such as the Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission, A Rocha Ghana, the Dutch development organisation SNV, the Nature Conservation Research Centre (NCRC), and Ghana’s leading green tour operator, M&J Travel and Tours, to develop the huge eco-tourism potential of the three northern regions, as well as the northern parts of the Brong Ahafo and the Volta regions. They should also contact the brilliant young architect Mr. Kojo Derban (at East Legon) who has designed the most spectacular ethnographic museum for Tamale – and use his traditional-style architectural design to build a museum in Tamale.

We have lost countless opportunities of marketing the three northern regions internationally in the past – because we have never really thought of sending visiting dignitaries on safari in the Mole National Park. It is most unfortunate that because of Kokofu-football politics, when we got the opportunity to showcase our best eco-tourism destinations at the time Ghana was chosen to host the World Tourism Day celebrations, we did not seize that opportunity to show the world some of Ghana’s spectacular wildlife in the north. However, it is not too late to make amends – and elect to celebrate this year’s World Tourism Day in the Mole National Park: instead of holding yet another durbar of Chiefs in Kumasi to celebrate the occasion.

The overwhelming numbers of tourists from the wealthy nations of the world who travel to Africa prefer to see Africa’s wildlife above all – and are happy to travel thousands of miles from their home countries to our continent for that rare privilege. Let us start to take advantage of the good press our country gets for its stability and peaceful political atmosphere – and let the world know that we also have lions, leopards, hippos, cheetahs, crocodiles, elephants, birds galore, butterflies and some spectacular rain forests such as that of Akim Abuakwa Juaso, which are part of the Atiwa Range rain forest. One hopes that those politicians in charge of the tourism ministry will do all they can to change the venue for the World Tourism Day from Kumasi to the Mole National Park – and seize a golden opportunity to put that part of our country on the world eco-tourism map. A word to the wise…

PRESIDENT MILLS MUST NOT REPEAT FORMER PRESIDENT KUFUOR’S WORST MISTAKE!

Hardly any ordinary Ghanaians were astonished by recent news reports that some of our former rulers (who were past masters of the art and science of Kokofu-football politricks), allowed our diplomatic passports to be so debased, that they were distributed like confetti – and handed over to their kith and kin, as well as to scores of their cronies. Their tribal-supremacist nature was plain for all to see, in their insistence that their favourite tribal Chiefs be described as “Kings” in the diplomatic passports they were given. Yet, those well-educated imbeciles knew perfectly well that this happens to be a unitary Republic – in which no kingdoms actually exist (except in the rather vivid imagination of the megalomaniacs amongst their tribal-supremacist traditional rulers).

Former President Kufuor (our erstwhile “Hypocrite-in-Chief”) will doubtless go down in history, as a politician who divided this country like no other elected Ghanaian leader has, since we gained our independence. The reason is not hard to fathom. His tenure more or less coincided with the occupancy of the “Golden Stool” by the most politically ambitious of the modern-day Asantehenes – whose harshest critics say, somehow thinks he was born to recover the sovereign power, which his predecessors lost, when the British colonized our country. When Mr. Kweku Baako recently described former President Kufuor as the most successful Busia-Danquah leader, ever, thus far, perhaps even he did not realise just what a profound statement he had just made.

Incidentally, the “road-to-Damascus” conversion of Mr. Baako – from an Nkrumaist and Socialist, into Ghana’s foremost spokesperson for, and staunchest defender of, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and all it stands for – is one of the tragedies of our time for Ghanaian progressives: for, he, like his friend and brother, Mr. Kwesi Pratt, has one of the most incisive minds in Ghanaian journalism today. But I digress. There are many of former President Kufuor’s critics, who say that in the short space of eight years he was able to fulfill a greater part of the secret Akan tribal-supremacist agenda, of the notorious National Liberation Movement (NLM), and its various post-independence offshoots. From its very beginning, the NLM tried desperately hard to break up our country along tribal lines, and physically eliminate Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah – in order to achieve the “ethnocentric-triumphalist” ends its members sought for themselves, when the British colonialists finally departed our shores.

The tragedy for our nation is that Kufuor’s presidency more or less coincided with the early years of the occupancy of the Golden Stool, by the successor to Otumfuo Opoku Ware 11 (a humble gentleman whom many regard as the greatest of the modern-day Asantehene’s). Unlike that great traditional ruler, the present incumbent, sadly, completely misunderstands the role of the modern-day Asantehene in a 21st century African nation-state that is a unitary Republic – and which is also a multi-party democracy that aspires to be a meritocracy. Inherited privilege, as every little primary school child in Ghana today knows, is the greatest enemy of any meritocracy.

It is no accident that the gentleman, who before occupying the Golden Stool was known in private life as Barima Kweku Dua, was sponsored by Baffuor Akoto – who was one of the pillars behind that ruthless political entity, which used terrorism as a political weapon, the NLM. That is why it was such an intolerable situation for most progressives in Ghana that during the tenure of the NPP, President Kufuor literally hijacked the whole machinery of state, to benefit a group of tribal-supremacist Chiefs – who owed their stations in life to inherited privilege: and were led by a man nominated to his position by his own mother.

The outrage, for most Ghanaian progressives, is that throughout his tenure, President Kufuor went to such great lengths to give the world the unfortunate impression, that somehow his tribal Chief was a de facto sovereign – although even ignoramuses in the law know that such thoughts are treasonable: and totally unacceptable to any Ghanaian patriot who believes in the rule of law and in constitutional democracy, and regards this country as the land of diverse-ethnicity, which Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah succeeded in moulding together into a united nation, whose citizens share a common destiny. It is the hope of all Ghanaian progressives that the new administration of President Mills will not tolerate any traditional ruler carrying on in this country as if he or she were a sovereign. That is totally unacceptable to Ghanaian nationalists– as there is no state within a state in Nkrumah’s Ghana.

Why should one set of traditional rulers in Ghana be singled out and given preferential treatment by our elected leaders – when our country is literally awash with equally eminent traditional rulers whose pre-colonial feudal ancestors also once commanded vanquishing armies and had large kingdoms to rule too? Even if former President Kufuor’s tribal Chiefs are the descendants of the most powerful rulers the world has ever known, what does that matter to the freedom-loving citizens of today’s Ghana – a sovereign people who most certainly have no wish to exchange their constitutional right to elect national leaders, who are accountable to them, in free and fair elections every four years, for the dubious privilege of becoming the serfs of men and women (often of questionable character) who owe their leadership positions in society solely to their family backgrounds? President Mills must certainly not repeat President Kufuor’s most egregious mistake. A word to the wise…

UPROOTING TRIBALISM FROM GHANAIAN POLITICS!

It never ceases to amaze me, when I hear politicians who deliberately use tribalism as a political weapon (as part of their long-term strategy to dominate Ghanaian society permanently), cynically bemoaning the rise of tribalism in our country. A look at African nations that have experienced serious internal conflict, such as: the Ivory Coast; Chad; Sudan; DR Congo; Burundi; Rwanda; Kenya; and Zimbabwe, should show us why we must never tolerate those who promote tribalism in our country. Tribalism poses the single biggest threat to the long-term survival of the Ghanaian nation-state – and those who are guilty of engaging in it are enemies of our country and its people. We must never tolerate such individuals in the politics of our nation – and above all we must speak out boldly against them whenever the opportunity to do so arises.

No one who knows the history of our country will fail to appreciate just how lucky we have been, that our country has remained united, thus far – despite the threat to its cohesion posed by the determined efforts of the tribal-supremacist politicians in our midst. It is important, in discussing the issue of tribalism in our country, to distinguish between the vast majority of ordinary Ghanaians (who don’t care one jot where their fellow citizens hail from), and the few tribal-supremacists in our nation: made up largely of the progeny of the ruling elites of our pre-colonial feudal past (who can be found in every tribe in Ghana) who think that their own particular tribe is superior to every other tribe in Ghana.

They are our equivalent of the odious white-supremacists of the Western world – who incredibly think that people of colour are inferior beings. Clearly, if Nkrumah had not appeared on the scene during the struggle for independence, the tribal-supremacists in the National Liberation Movement (NLM) and the Northern Peoples Party (NPP) who declared, on November 20, 1956, that they had seceded from the Gold Coast, would have ensured that a federal state made up of the pre-colonial feudal territories, which existed before the first Europeans set foot on our shores, became the successor-state to the Gold Coast colony after independence. Their goal was to ensure that the progeny of the pre-colonial feudal ruling elites would replace the departing British colonialists as our rulers (and dominate our country till the very end of time).

Helping the progeny of the pre-colonial feudal ruling elites to regain the sovereign power they lost, when the British colonized our country, has been the long-held dream of the few powerful Akan tribal-supremacists in our political class. They take their ideological inspiration from Dr. J.B. Danquah and his ilk – the Akan tribal-supremacists and quislings who worked for the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies, because it benefited them financially and politically, during our struggle for independence. In order not to cause offence, one must always make the point, in referring to the hypocritical Akan tribal-supremacist elite, that ordinary Akans, like ordinary Ghanaians of other ethnic extraction, are not tribalistic in their outlook in the slightest – which is why virtually every extended family in our united nation of diverse-ethnicity, is made up of family members from different ethnic groups: who are bonded together by marriage and blood-ties in modern-day Ghanaian family clans (that invariably include Akans).

Shortly after the Jackson Commission’s report was published in 1958, Nana Ofori-Atta 11 of Akim Abuakwa, was deposed by a section of the Akim Abuakwa State Council and replaced by Nana Kenna 11 (who acted as a regent), on June 13, 1958. The Jackson Commission accused Ofori-Atta 11 of failing to act as “an impartial statesman” during the campaign for the 1956 elections – when all the Chiefs of Akim Abuakwa were made to swear the “Great Oath” and promise that they would support the NLM against the Convention Peoples Party (CPP). Fifty-two years after gaining our independence, it appears that nothing much has changed in respect of the behaviour of some traditional rulers in the Akan areas of our country – as far as their acting as impartial statesmen during elections is concerned. It is due to the patriotism of ordinary people (including ordinary Akans) that on both occasions, in 1956 and 2008, those bastions of tribalism backed the losing side, in crucial national elections

During the December 2008 elections, many Chiefs in the Akan areas of our country, worked actively to ensure that voters in the Zongos, which were perceived to be National Democratic Congress (NDC) strongholds, were prevented from casting their votes for the NDC. They openly threatened to evict Zongo residents from the areas they lived, if they voted for the NDC. Clearly, the Akan tribal-supremacist agenda of the NLM is alive and well in a section of its political progeny today, the New Patriotic Party (NPP). During the tenure of President J.A. Kufuor, a small but powerful Akan tribal-supremacist cabal within the presidency, literally hijacked the whole of the machinery of state, to help President Kufuor’s tribal Chief’s realise their dream of regaining, by stealth, the sovereign power their predecessors lost when the British colonized them.

They worked closely together to create the kleptocracy in which crony-capitalism thrived so, and enabled some of them to rob our country blind. Luckily, not all the Akan members of the NPP are tribal-supremacists. Many of the party’s relatively younger members joined it simply because they naively believed its propaganda that it is a party that believes in free enterprise and the creation of a property-owning democracy – when its real agenda is to enable the progeny of the pre-colonial Akan tribal-supremacist feudal elite to dominate our country successfully. To prevent another set of tribal-supremacist politicians from hijacking a ruling party and repeating the harm inflicted on our nation by President Kufuor and Co., we must make sure that the 50 per cent plus one rule that determines who wins the presidential election is changed. No political party will have the incentive to play Kokofu-football politricks, if its candidate for presidential elections in our country has to win in a majority of the ten regions, in order to become president of the Republic of Ghana.

As we all know, by the end of his tenure, many Ghanaians were sick and tired of the favouritism shown by President Kufuor, to his tribal Chiefs – and that was a key factor in his party’s candidate eventually losing the December 2008 presidential election. Ghanaians were simply not prepared to see a Mk 11 version of the Kufuor presidency – in which yet another powerful cabal of Akan tribal-supremacists, this time from Akim Abuakwa, in a Nana Akufo-Addo presidency, would also hijack the machinery of state to promote the overweening ambitions of their tribal Chiefs. It is instructive that the regime that never missed the opportunity to tell the world that it believed in the rule of law, actually issued diplomatic passports to two publicity-loving Akan tribal-supremacist traditional rulers, who were deliberately and falsely described in their passports as “Kings” – in a country that is a unitary Republic in which no kingdoms exist: and happens to be a united nation of diverse-ethnicity.

The Mills administration can help uproot tribalism in Ghanaian politics if it gets Parliament to change the fifty per cent plus one rule that determines the winner of the presidential election – and persuades it to pass a new law that makes the winner of a majority of the votes in the ten regions of our country, the winning candidate in future presidential elections. Ghana as we know it will not survive, if we have to endure another presidency, during which one set of tribal Chiefs is favoured to the degree that President Kufuor’s tribal Chiefs were, during his tenure. President Mills can help make our nation more stable politically, and bring Ghanaians together again, and make our united nation of diverse-ethnicity as cohesive as it was under the great Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, if he leaves a legacy that includes the passage of a new law that makes the winner of the presidential election in a majority of Ghana’s ten regions, the president of the Republic of Ghana. One certainly hopes that he will do so. A word to the wise…

YES, THE NDC GOVERNMENT MUST “FIX” OUR “BROKEN ECONOMY”

Perhaps four years hence, some of the members of the government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), will look back and thank the defeated presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the December 2008 election, Nana Akufo-Addo, profusely, for the wake-up call, which his latest comments on the government’s performance, thus far, represents. The Mills administration must not forget that it was elected into office to improve the quality of life of all Ghanaians – and to ensure that those members of the previous administration who took our country for such a huge ride, are tried and jailed, for abusing the trust of Ghanaians.

Nana Akufo-Addo is absolutely right in asking the government to “fix” the economy if it thinks it is “broken.” That is precisely what Ghanaians expect – and the Mills administration must step out of the shadow of conventional economic thinking if it is to succeed in “fixing” Ghana’s “broken economy.” Above all, they must not allow themselves to be distracted by the Gordon Browns and the Barrack Obamas of this world – who are only keen to ensure that ultimately UK and US investors in our telecoms, gold, oil and natural gas industries don’t lose out to the Chinese. The trip to the UK at Gordon Brown’s invitation was an unnecessary distraction – the president of a bankrupt Ghana ought to stay at home and see to the revival of our nation’s ailing economy: not gallivant around the globe like his predecessor used to. Let him stay in the Osu Castle and concentrate on planning projects to the tune of some 20 billion dollars – which we can implement in joint-ventures with the best-resourced of the Chinese state-owned enterprises: and finance with sovereign bonds we can issue to China in exchange for her funding those projects.

The NDC must not forget that the four years that President Mills was elected to rule our country for, will pass very quickly. It is therefore important that the government takes bold decisions to help resolve our nation’s problems. They must aim to create Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia in our country, as quickly as it is possible to do so. If they allow their thinking to be dominated by the same old “chew-and-pour” economic theories that have failed us so woefully in the past, they will wake up to discover, in 2012, that Ghanaians have become disenchanted with them – and want regime-change. The pointless arguments about inflation, the depreciation of the cedi and the total value of foreign direct investment that the NPP and NDC have attracted into Ghana, betrays a certain poverty of thought amongst our political class. Ghana is not alone in that regard – nations across the globe from Iceland through Hungary to Kenya are all in the same boat. It is called the global recession and credit crunch, is it not?

Why don’t our politicians take a cue from the capitalist nations of the West – who tossed the old rules aside when their economies were melting down: and pumped trillions of dollars of taxpayers’ money into private entities to save their economies from collapsing? Instead of wasting time waiting for foreign direct investment that will never come in sufficient quantities to make any real difference to society’s living standards, why don’t our leaders help the zillions of Ghanaians imbued with the entrepreneurial spirit, who could create millions of jobs in our country, if they had access to loans from banks at rates of interest that aren’t usurious? If our leaders had the imagination to prevail on the Bank of Ghana to bring interest rates down to less than three per cent, for example, from the initiative-killing rates of over 25 per cent currently prevailing in our country, will that not quickly help create an enterprise culture in our country, and see an explosion in the number of well-off individuals with the ability to employ their fellow citizens?

Why, for example, does the Mills administration not think of putting money directly into the pockets of working Ghanaians – by the simple expedient of removing the burden of personal income tax that working Ghanaians currently shoulder: by abolishing it? By also lowering the corporate tax rate to the point where it is the lowest anywhere in the world, will that not make companies with investments in Africa make this their regional headquarters, as well as help bring down some of the cost of doing business in our country, somewhat, in addition to helping businesses in our country to become more profitable undertakings? Paradoxically, lowering corporate tax, granting an amnesty to tax-evaders (who agree to pay up all their tax arrears over an agreed time-frame!), and passing a law making tax evasion a crime punishable by a mandatory prison sentence, will, far from reducing tax revenues, rather increase them dramatically.

The government can increase revenues yet further, by checking the veracity of the often-bogus claims of some of those who evade duties payable on the perfectly-okay vehicles they import into Ghana, and falsely describe as “accident-vehicles” to the Customs authorities – if they get the police and insurance companies in the countries such vehicles are imported from, to confirm that the chassis and engine numbers match those on their data-base of salvaged accident vehicles. To protect revenue, all importers who make false declarations about the type and value of goods they import, must be made to forfeit those goods. Above all, the Mills administration must not venture down the same path that the self-seekers in the previous regime trod. They must never allow the national interest to be sacrificed for the self-interest of any hypocrites lurking in their regime – who desire to send their personal net-worth into the stratosphere, by stealth. A transparent and open administration whose members and their spouses publicly publish their assets, prior to and after their tenure, is a sine qua non for a two-term Mills presidency.

The Mills administration must know that many companies on the make (such as the Yuhuda security companies of this world!), are standing by ready to collaborate with any wolves in sheep’s clothing in the government, to fleece our country, when the opportunity to do so presents itself. If those hypocrites succeed, their regime will definitely fail to “fix” Ghana’s ”broken economy” and will be turfed out of power by the same independent-minded “floating-voters” whose crucial votes helped get them elected into office in December 2008. Political parties can take the millions of “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types whose blind support eventually destroys political parties when they win power, for granted, but they must understand that it is not those individuals (who wear blinkers permanently and are too blind to see what goes on in our country, and too thick to think for themselves!), who decide who rules our country on election-day. The real king-makers, Ghana’s discerning and independent-minded “floating-voters,” are watching and rating their performance, on a daily basis. A word to the wise…

WATER-RATIONING NO FIX FOR THE “KUFUOR-GALLON” PHENOMENON!

From the standpoint of the saboteurs within the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), who are busy working hard on behalf of their erstwhile masters in the previous regime, to help destroy the new Mills administration, “water-rationing” is a perfect cover for their nation-wrecking activities. Many of the inhabitants of the city of Accra are now wondering if it was the same GWCL that told them, when President Kufuor inaugurated the interconnecting-pipeline (that apparently links the western and eastern parts of the city to the different water-production facilities serving the two parts of Accra), that water shortages would become a thing of the past.

The beauty of spreading the pain and inconvenience of not having water regularly to virtually every household in Accra, by “rationing” it, in the view of the nation-wreckers within the GWCL, is that it guaranties the disaffection of millions of Accra’s residents with the Mills administration – and is a potent addition to the series of “narratives-of-failure” being prepared by the NPP’s various propaganda offshoots (such as the so-called Danquah Institute – named after that neo-colonialist quisling, Akan tribal-supremacist, and hireling of the CIA), to be disseminated throughout the country, during the campaign for the December 2012 elections. Not having water flowing through taps in households across Accra is simply intolerable – and the government must make it plain to those in charge of the GWCL that it will sack them if the situation continues.

The Mills administration must not forget that the prospect of seeing an end to the phenomenon of the “Kufuor-gallon” (that it promised those living in the city it would banish once in power), was a key factor in attracting votes (especially those of many of Accra’s discerning and independent-minded “floating-voters”) in that part of our country, for the National Democratic Congress’ presidential candidate: who is now Ghana’s president. If Accra’s residents fail to get water flowing through their taps on a daily basis soon, they will regard it as an egregious failing of the Mills administration – and make them feel that they must vote the regime that promised them they would see an end to the “Kufuor-gallon” phenomenon if they voted their party into office, but failed to do so upon winning power, out of office, in December 2012.

The simple question that many of Accra’s residents would like to ask the new Mills administration is: Are there not many cities around the globe that have populations far in excess of Ghana’s total population of some twenty-three millions, which provide potable water for their residents on a daily basis, without fail? Surely, ensuring that the residents of a city of only a few millions have water flowing through the taps in their homes daily, and on a regular basis, ought not to be an insurmountable problem for those in charge of Nkrumah’s Ghana in the 21st century ICT age? Clearly, the GWCL’s corporate culture isn’t customer-focused. One gets the impression that the interests of its politically well-connected local suppliers determine its fate – and obviously most of them did enjoy the patronage of the previous regime, whose demise they rue. The solution to the myriad of problems facing the GWLC is not to privatize it – it is simply to put it into the hands of efficient, disciplined, incorruptible, and selfless public-sector managers.

To ensure that the saboteurs in the GWCL are thwarted, the NDC must make sure that the Mills administration rids the company of the baleful influence of that self-serving stalking-horse (Aqua Vitens Rand Limited) currently casting such a long and unwelcome shadow over the state-owned water company. In the long-term, putting the GWCL under the control of the 48 Engineers Regiment, and making water production an integral part of that regiment’s mission, will change the ethos underpinning what is an unwieldy commercial entity, far too large to control, for the civilians tasked to run it. Only the 48 Engineers Regiment can save the GWCL from itself. That, and giving the company a monopoly over the production of filtered bottled water that is specially branded to replace the ubiquitous (and dangerous!) sachet water – the production of which must be banned for public health reasons as soon as it is practicable to do so.

The truth of the matter is that no matter the brand, sachet water is just not wholesome for human beings to consume – because the pores in the plastic container always expand and open to admit pollutants whenever the weather is hot. And as we all know, as a result of global climate change, temperature figures are a great deal higher now, than at any time in our history. The many private companies currently producing sachet water can become the distributors of the GWCL’s specially-branded bottled filtered water that will replace the sachet water those companies produce. At a time when the entire world now experiences pandemics of one sort or the other, from time to time, with regularity, the water Ghanaians buy to drink on the move, in restaurants, and elsewhere, must always be wholesome. Above all, it is imperative that potable water flows through taps in homes and other kinds of properties throughout urban Ghana, on a daily basis, for public health reasons.

The Mills administration must not think for a moment that it can possibly win the next presidential and parliamentary elections if it does not keep its December 2008 campaign promise to end the city of Accra’s never-ending water shortage. Rationing water is definitely no fix for the “Kufuor-gallon” phenomenon – and every day that passes by without Accra’s residents seeing a resolution of a very worrying problem facing them, makes them feel that the NDC made an empty promise to them when it said it would bring an end to the “Kufuor-gallon” phenomenon. Water rationing was never part of the bargain Accra’s voters struck with the NDC – and it is most certainly not a fix for the “Kufuor-gallon” phenomenon, as far as they are concerned. Let the powers that be give us a time-frame within which the problem will be fixed – and act fast to end this intolerable situation, which has led to an existence akin to hell on earth, for families in the city struggling to maintain basic hygiene, in homes without potable water. A word to the wise…

PARLIAMENT IS NOT A STATE WITHIN A STATE – IT IS A MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY!

Brigadier-General Nunoo-Mensah, Ghana's National Security Advisor, is reported to have recently said that the general rule, which ensures that officials leaving public office leave behind all state property in their possession, should apply to Parliament - since "Parliament is not a state within a state."

My take on that: Yes, Parliament is not a state within a state - it is (at any rate, the 4th Parliament, definitely was!) a mutual admiration society: most of whose over-pampered members’ sole preoccupation is uniting to grab as many perks of office as they can possibly get away with. Its leadership (from across the spectrum!) constantly works closely together to rip mother Ghana off.

About the only thing most of our parliamentarians are good at is feathering their own collective nest – which is what occupies many of them most of the time: instead of diligently playing the oversight role our constitution earmarked for them, to closely check the executive branch of government, on our behalf. That is why they sanctioned the fraudulent sale and purchase agreement for VALCO, without batting an eyelid – to a non-existent consortium grandly named “International Aluminum Partners” by the crooks who dreamt it up.

If they were patriotic and not self-serving oligarchs in our kleptocracy (masquerading as a democracy!), they would never have agreed to give President Kufuor a cool one million US dollars to play at running a foundation with - to enable that globetrotter par excellence cope with the withdrawal pangs of leaving the office he hardly ever occupied in his 8-year tenure. What perfidy. Hmmm, Ghana – ensem ewohapaa oo!

Re: “Is NDC back to old days, signaling left, turning right?”

I couldn’t help laughing, when I read an article entitled: “Is NDC back to old days, signaling left, turning right?” by Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, which was posted on the features web-page of www.ghanaweb.com of Friday, 15th May 15, 2009.

Not having any formal education myself, and being a rather daft sort of chap, I am still scratching my head trying to figure out, exactly what the point of this loquacious chap's piece, is! It is so typical of the writing of this confounded right-wing journalist – who is so full of himself: and loves the sound of his own voice, so.

One wonders if one would be right in describing his article, as the writing equivalent of a narcissicitic dandy, preening himself, in front of the mirror – and thinking what a frightfully good-looking fellow he is. Well, I guess that being an ignoramus (and I am not ashamed one bit, to admit to being an ignoramus, incidentally!), I’ll simply put it down as an example of the offering of a High-priest of inherited privilege, fervently worshiping at the “Cult-of-the-mediocre” in an “all-night” service – involving much dancing and clapping in a democratic nation that aspires to become a meritocracy. Hmmm, Ghana – nsem ewohapaa oo!

Re: "Ghana International Airlines in Trouble?"

I refer to the article entitled : “Ghana International Airlines in Trouble?” that was posted on Friday 15th May 15, 2009, in the www.ghanaweb.com general news web-page, by a Nana Sifa Twum. Hmmm, Ghana – will this country ever change for the better, one wonders? It appears that clever women with pretty faces (a la Ms. Cotton!), who are politically well-connected, will continue to twist our big men (most of whose brains appear to go to sleep whenever they see a pretty face up-close) round their dainty little fingers, till the very end of time.

Why has this ignoramus of an airline executive, who has never managed an airline in her life before, and is clearly out of her depth, not been dismissed yet – by the regime that tells us it has come to create a better Ghana for us all? Ghana International Airlines should simply be closed down - and a new airline, Virgin ECOWAS started, to replace it.

That can be done by collaborating with Virgin Nigeria to create a West African equivalent of Air France-KLM. That is what should have been done by the geniuses in the previous regime. However, because Sir Richard Branson famously never pays bribes, they did not go down that route – because prospects for kickbacks were practically non-existent down that “corporate-road-of-transparency.”

A Virgin ECOWAS can gradually be expanded organically to include all the largely non-profitable national carriers from the member-nations of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) – and help develop the sub-region as a multi-nation eco-tourism destination. An additional benefit would be that Virgin ECOWAS could treat the sub-region as a domestic market – and make internal flights in the skies across an area of a continent notorious for its unsafe domestic carriers, as safe as flights across the skies of the European Union (EU).

No serious government anywhere in the world that cares about how it spends taxpayers’ money will keep this claptrap of an airline flying. The Mills administration must simply let Ghana International Airlines die by starving it of funds. Funding what is the airline equivalent of a Dodo is akin to pouring money down a financial black-hole. In view of the chicanery involved in its setting up, and the "Bush-telegraph" stories that the wet-leasing contract was in effect a cloak of respectability for an offshore money-laundering special purpose vehicle, it just does not deserve to survive! A word to the wise…

Re: “Ayariga responds to comments about President Mills' UK visit”

I read the comments of Mr. Mahama Ayariga, the president’s spokesperson, which the Ghana News Agency (GNA) reported, and were posted on the general news web-page of www.ghanaweb.com, on Monday, 11th May 2009, with considerable interest. Sometimes one wonders why so many of those who speak for the new administration, allow themselves to be led round in circles by those in the opposition, who have resorted to lying as a political weapon and propaganda tool.

It is such a pity that those who speak on behalf of the Mills administration are unable to set the national agenda, as far as open discourse in the political sphere, is concerned. Instead of wasting precious time playing the daft comparison game, they must get their regime to quickly get parliament to pass a new law that makes it mandatory for all the members of the government and their spouses, to publicly publish their assets. They must also take up Dr. Tony Aidoo’s brilliant idea – and take it a step further, by getting parliament to pass a new law that makes it mandatory for the government of the day, to publicly publish the cost to the nation of all official trips abroad, undertaken by the president and the ministers in his regime.

As soon as both laws are finally put into place, it will allow them to occupy the high moral ground in Ghanaian politics – and virtually make their regime unassailable in Ghanaian politics. When that happy day arrives, they can then rebut all the nonsense on bamboo stilts that the lies published by some newspapers today, represents, by making the point that they are busy ushering in an era of true transparency, to help fight corruption in Ghana, and will not waste precious time responding to those who still live in the past: and seek to destabilize our nation for base parochial ends by spinning lies, whiles President Mills works hard to build a better Ghana, for all its citizens.

Transparency and ethical behaviour, is what the crooks amongst those who used to rule our country in the past (and gang-raped mother Ghana so brutally), fear most from a Mills presidency – and it is those two virtues, which, if adopted by our new rulers, and demonstrated clearly to Ghanaians in all their actions during their tenure, will put clear blue water between their regime and that of the largely discredited New Patriotic Party (NPP). Sadly, that party appears to have been hijacked by a small group of the nastiest of the many Akan tribal-supremacists in it – which has now occasioned a friend resorting to describing it as: “That dreadful party of Akan tribal-supremacists.”

Such people fear nothing more than the spotlight being shone on the secrecy that usually shrouds the activities of those whom we elect to run our country – and enabled some of them to rob our nation through the opaque offshore vehicles they specifically set up for that purpose. The Mills administration must make the business of the running of our state machinery a truly transparent and ethical one – if they want to stay permanently one step ahead of their political opponents. They must conserve their energies for attaining that goal before the end of their four-year tenure – and leave the inanities of the well-educated morons amongst our previous rulers, who incredibly seem to think that all Ghanaians are stupid, and can be tricked into voting them back into power again in 2012, if they trap them in the massuve web of deceit, which they are busy spinning at the moment, through their mercenary lackeys in the media.

Luckily, not all Ghanaians are the "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidon-types, who wear blinkers permanently, and are too thick to be independent-minded. It is their blind support for political parties, when such parties eventually win power, which ends up destroying them. The new Mills administration must concentrate on leaving a legacy of true transparency behind. If it works hard to win the hearts and minds of those who wanted change in December 2008, and voted for their party to make that happen, by being honest stewards of our nation's resources, all the sophism in the world that is deployed by the shameless individuals and media outlets, now seeking to paint them black, will get those saboteurs absolutely nowhere. If they fail our homeland Ghana however, they must remember that some of us are standing by, ready to criticize them in the harshest possible terms. A word to the wise…

OPEN LETTER TO THE METRO ROADS ENGINEER, ACCRA!

Dear Sir,

Request for information about the digging of trenches in Accra - and the damage to the pavements caused by that in the city.

I am writing to book an appointment to see you for some information I require. Essentially, I am curious to find out precisely what has necessitated the massive digging of trenches all over Accra – and what steps your department is taking to ensure that those responsible for those trenches replace the pavements they have destroyed, thus far, when their work is finally completed.

Yesterday, whiles driving through Kaneshie on my way to Tesano, I stopped to ask some men who were digging a trench on the left side of the road, as you approach the old Swanlake supermarket (which closed ages ago, incidentally!) from St Theresa’s Catholic school in Kaneshie, who they were working for, and what they were digging the trench for.

I was taken aback by their reaction. They were so cagey and refused to say anything to me about the work they were doing – and referred me to a young man, whom I beckoned to come and speak to me. Incredibly, he told me they were widening the gutter, and that he was only keeping an eye on the work for a friend (as a favour!), but did not know the name of his friend’s construction company. I thought it was a rather odd answer for him to give – and it immediately raised my suspicions.

Surely, which particular contractor is awarded a job to improve part of Accra’s infrastructure, is not an official secret too, is it, Sir? To shed some light on the matter, I would be most grateful if you could let me know if that particular job was put out to tender by the AMA (or whichever organ of state is responsible for awarding contracts for widening gutters in Kaneshie), and what the overall value of the contract was.

I am doing some research for a feature article for my blog. Perhaps if you google the word “ghanapolitics” you will see some of my writing. I am a journalist who maintains his independence by working exclusively online and as a freelance – and for the same patriotic reason, I deliberately shun writing for the local print media, so I can speak my mind freely. I do look forward to a positive response from you soon.


Yours sincerely,

Kofi Thompson.

WHAT LESSONS SHOULD THE MILLS ADMINISTRATION DRAW FROM THE ACTIONS OF THE KOSMOS ENERGIES IN OUR MIDST?

One gathers that the clever Dicks at Tallow Oil's partner, Kosmos Energy, now want to cut and run from Ghana – and claim that their major shareholders want out. The government should simply block this outrage – the Kosmos Energies of this world must not be allowed to play games with the future of our country. Period. The government should draw a lesson from this - and simply nationalize our nation’s entire oil and gas industry.

They must put Tsatsu Tsikata in charge of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) again – and get it to go into joint-venture partnerships with the best-resourced of China's state-owned oil and natural gas companies. The ultimate aim should be to make Ghana the oil refining capital of Africa, as well as the centre of gas liquefaction in Africa. They should compensate the Kosmos Energies of this world with Ghana's sovereign bonds, not cash - and let them redeem them in future: and only after a longish period when enough oil and natural gas revenues have flowed into our national treasury.

Above all, they should expose this disgraceful attempt to destabilize our country by such ruthless cowboys – by bringing their actions to the attention of readers of newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times in the US, and the Financial Times, the Guardian and the Independent in the UK. They can do so by alerting their investigative journalists who report on issues to do with corruption overseas (especially in the poorer parts of the developing world, such as Africa) by US and UK corporate entities and their partners from other Western nations. They should also alert Global Witness – which has the contacts to get to the real reasons at the bottom of Kosmos Energy's actions.

This move by Kosmos Energy certainly has a lot to do with the government’s decision to take a second look at the contracts and agreements the crooks amongst our previous rulers sanctioned (and influenced to enable them benefit personally from those agreements).

If necessary, the government should get the relevant US Congressional committee to investigate the actions of Kosmos Energy in our country, as regards their decamping at precisely the point that the government here is taking a fresh look at the contracts and agreements the previous government made in the oil and natural gas industry. In a sense, it smacks of insider dealing – with the saboteur-officials loyal to the crooks of old who are still in place in the administration eagerly passing on confidential information to the Tallow Oils operating here.

There are rumours that some of the oil companies struck secret deals with some of the crooks in our previous regime - who used special purpose offshore vehicles to hide their ownership of stakes in companies of that ilk and in other sectors of our economy. That is exactly the same way they structured the fraudulent sale and purchase agreement for VALCO.

In that instance, they used a special purpose offshore vehicle they grandly named International Aluminum Partners, which the two reputable metals conglomerates, Norske Hydro and VALE, refused to be a part of. Both companies, which are clearly ethically-run, vehemently denied ever agreeing to purchase VALCO: although our dishonourable 4th Parliament had no difficulty allowing the crooks in the previous regime to railroad that most egregious of frauds through parliament and gladly sanctioned it

The government must keep an eye on our financial services sector too - where Ghana’s equivalents of the notorious US fraudster Bernie Maddox are comfortably ensconced. Some of them are even rumoured to have played “Kokofu-football-politricks” with depositors’ cash sitting in escrow accounts in non-banking financial institutions they own and manage.

The politically well-connected Titans amongst them are said to have made a killing in the era of crony-capitalism during the tenure of our erstwhile Hypocrite-In-Chief, our former president, Mr. Kufuor. That blessed gentleman, described by the most uncharitable of his critics, as “a sly and shameless man” thought his party was going to be returned to power again after the December 8, 2008 elections – and got the Chinery-Hesse Committee (which was specifically jam-packed with sycophants whom he had given cushy sinecures to at our expense to make them amenable to his wishes) to recommend that he be given a cool one million dollars to set up a foundation.

And this, in a nation where many families can neither afford three square meals a day, nor pay for their children's school fees on a regular basis! The Mills administration must be super-ruthless in its approach to dealing with the unethical crowd of foreign carpetbaggers, who clearly do not believe in either ethics or show common decency, to derail their efforts at building a better Ghana for all the people of Ghana.

The government of the National Democratic Congress (NCD) should thank God that Kosmos Energy has shown its hand so early in their tenure. They must see the shabby attempt by Kosmos Energy to destabilize our country as an opportunity to enable us work with the Chinese to exploit our oil and natural gas deposits. We can rest assured that they will never attempt to interfere in our country’s politics under any circumstances, in the outrageous way that Kosmos Energy is attempting to do. A word to the wise…

MASSA RAS MUBARAK, THE BRITISH WERE NOT OUR “COLONIAL MASTERS”!

Massa Ras Mubarak, I refer to your www.ghanaweb.com article of Friday, 8th May, 2009, which appeared on the features web-page, entitled: “Life and debt: President Mills’ UK visit.” Opanin, may I humbly make a small point? The British colonialists were occupiers of our country – but they were never our "colonial masters."



For the sake of the younger generation of Ghanaians, it is important to make the point that no Ghanaian from Nkrumah's Ghana, who has any self-belief (and self-respect!), should ever use that servile phrase "colonial masters" to describe those who once illegally occupied our country in the past. Period.

OPEN LETTER TO THE CEO OF VODAFONE

Dear Sir,

I received an email (from a complete stranger!)today, which I am sharing with you. Incidentally, I have given up hoping that your company will ever provide a substitute, which will enable those of its McCarthy Hill “Broadband4U” customers, who used to be served by the discontinued Alvarion system, access the internet again.

Our previous rulers told us that selling Ghana Telecom to Vodafone (for a song, in the view of many Ghanaians!) would bring about an improvement in the quality of service offered by Ghana Telecom to its customers. Unfortunately, in my case, it has been nothing short of disastrous - as my numerous complaints to your company have all fallen on deaf ears.

Yet, I doubt very much that if this had been the UK, Vodafone would have ignored a very dissatisfied customer - who constantly complains about been shortchanged by your hard-of-hearing company. Hopefully, the mail I received today will prod you into action - and let you take the necessary steps to ensure that I am compensated by Vodafone for messing up my business model: which was underpinned entirely by my having reliable broadband internet access from McCarthy Hill. Many thanks.

Yours sincerely,

Kofi Thompson


PS Do find below the email I mentioned earlier:


“RE:Vodafone Broadband rip-off.
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Kweku Folson to me
show details 3 May (5 days ago) Reply


Hello,
I stumbled across ur blog while doing a Google search for Vodafone
broadband in Ghana & urs was quite an interesting read.I was
contemplating on signing up to their service but i'm having 2nd
thoughts after seeing how much hell they've put you through.My
recommendation,get rid of them and sign up with iBurst internet
service provider instead.Their service is simply excellent,speedwise
and reliabilitywise,not to talk of their unparalled customer care.I
couldnt believe it when i filed a query form on their site and they
called me within 24hrs on the no. I provided on their site in response
to my enquiries.They are rate-based and charge u according to your
usage at pretty good rates.For the amount you were paying to GT,I
think iBurst Africa is a much better deal for u,seeing how essential
it is to you to be connected online to work.Like their motto which is
"Serious Internet",it serves the purpose of serious-minded people like
us who mean serious business.If you are interested,you can just notify
me by mail and i'll link you up with my contact there.He will find you
wherever you are located and come and do the setup on for you,at your
convenience.We deserve much better services than these existing
providers are shortchanging us for.Cheers!! and all the best.

--
Kweku G Folson
KNUST-UNITY HALL
Kumasi
+233-24-4480957
+233-20-8447046

Reply Forward Invite Kweku Folson to chat”

THE MILLS ADMINISTRATION MUST TREASURE EVEN ITS SEVEREST CRITICS IN THE MEDIA!

It is said that those who manage the public image of the new Mills administration have been busy patting themselves on the head lately – because there were no major slip-ups during the presidential press conference held at the Osu Castle on Tuesday, 14th April 2009. If, however, it is true that the absence from that press conference of a number of newspapers like The Independent, The Daily Guide, The Statesman, The Ghanaian Observer, and The New Crusading Guide, was not accidental but deliberate, as is being alleged in certain quarters, then those officials have done a great deal of damage to the image of their new administration.

Tolerance of dissenting views is a sign of political maturity – even when those dissenting views are intended to mislead the public. An example of such mischief was the misleading claim in one of the previous editions of The Statesman that the president had traveled to the Eastern Region in a longish convoy – when in actual fact he had ventured nowhere near the Eastern Region, but had been in Accra the whole of that day. As it happens, he had only gone to church and returned home again after that on the day in question (in his usual minimalist convoy). The discerning public (those who aren’t the “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types whose blind support eventually destroys political parties when they win power, i.e.) can make its own judgment about such reportage – and decide the level of credibility to accord newspapers of that ilk, for themselves.

However, those who manage the public image of the new administration, must, of necessity, always keep their doors open to all Ghanaian media houses without exception.
If the new masters of the universe at the Osu Castle care to ask members of the previous administration who are honest enough to admit the truth, they will tell them that looking back, one of the biggest mistakes they made, was paying too much attention to the views of the sycophantic media praise-singers they spent zillions cultivating. Those in charge of media relations at the presidency must keep their lines of communication open to all Ghana’s print and electronic media outlets – particularly those which they think are on the side of the opposition.

It is the best way to gauge the prevailing national mood at any given point in time during their tenure. Keeping their lines of communication open to all media houses will also enable them provide biased hacks with the correct information that will make it hard for them to continue misleading the public in the blatant fashion some of them have now adopted. Subtlety, not showing unfriendly media-types where power lies, by excluding them from the Osu Castle (and elsewhere that the great and the good congregate), ought to be the guiding principle in the battle to win the hearts and minds of the Ghanaian public. It is no good adopting the Ostrich-approach in handling today’s media.

In any case, in the final analysis, the best way to shame those who peddle falsehood in the media, is for our new leaders to govern our country in a fair and transparent manner – and for them to rule this nation as honest and competent stewards of the public purse above all. Against that, no amount of sophism on the part of the mischief-makers in the media (especially those who sold their consciences to our previous rulers and now wish to see their return to power again by any means necessary, including deploying falsehood as a political weapon) can move the ordinary Ghanaians who voted for regime-change in the December 2008 elections. In that regard, the president was wise in making it clear to the nation that all those in the previous regime who abused the trust Ghanaians placed in them whiles in office will be held to account. He is likely to retain the trust of those who voted for change if that happens – even if he is unable to change their personal circumstances very much within his four-year tenure.

The men and women surrounding the president must never forget the wise old Ghanaian saying: “No condition is permanent.” If those of them responsible for managing the public image of the administration of a leader, who says he wants to be a president of all Ghanaians, want to avoid being condemned in future for humbug and hubris, they must revise their notes quickly – and ensure that on subsequent occasions they invite all the media houses they failed to invite to cover the president’s maiden press conference at the Osu Castle. If they do not want to make the same kinds of avoidable mistakes their predecessors made whiles in power (when they elected to court a section of the media assiduously – whiles subtly persecuting those of us who criticized them regularly), then they must learn to treasure even their severest critics in the media. A word to the wise…

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN!

I received an email from a complete stranger, today, which seems to follow a pattern. I do not own Vodafone, yet I have received emails from a number of strangers giving the impression that I do. I do not know if some of the telecoms companies in Ghana have “dirty tricks departments” – but the emails of the type I have copied below, seem to be the work of some dirty tricks department of a telecoms company that thinks it can trip me up, somehow.

Incidentally, I have also received phone calls on my radiophone “smartphone” asking me if I was “Vodafone.” Even when I have politely told the caller after the call is repeated a second time that I am a private individual who treasures his privacy and would she kindly not disturb me any further, it has gone on in the same vein.

Whoever the morons are that are behind this pure nonsense on bamboo stilts, who think they can trip me up, may I please inform them that I am sorry to disappoint them, but that Kofi Thompson is not a crook? He is only a patriot who loves his country – and resents imbeciles who take our nation for a huge ride, also trying to trip me up and taking the Mickey on top of that outrage, too.

Kofi Thompson wants to be left alone – and let those who resort to such inanities understand that in future I shall forward their email to The Insight Newspaper - who will deal with them appropriately. A word to the wise… The email I received is reproduced below and readers may make up their own minds about it:

"GREETINGS MR. KOFI THOMPSON Inbox

Reply


Reply to all Forward Print Add nana to Contacts list Delete this message Report phishing Show original Message text garbled?


nana yaw to me
show details 14:02 (4 minutes ago)

DEAR,
MR. KOFI THOMPSON MY NAME IS BISMARK OFOSUHENE
AND I HAVE GRADUATED AS A GRAPHIC AND WEBSITE
DESIGNER I SENT MY CV TO VODAFONE BUT I WAS LATER
TOLD BY A FRIEND THAT THERE IS NO MORE VACANCY
SO I WOULD LIKE TO PLEAD IF YOU HAVE ANY CONTACT
THERE SO THAT YOU HELP ME GET A JOB AT VODAFONE
OR ANY OF THE MEDIA FIRMS.

CONTACT -( 0242920536 )

THANK YOU FOR HELPING AND MAY GOD RICHLY BLESS
YOU."

"UTOPIAS" - A KWEKU ANASE SHORT STORY BY KOFI THOMPSON.

In years past, long before market capitalism swept all before it and conquered the world, Ghana’s politicians would never have dreamt of spending zillions shoring up an overvalued currency that was fast losing its shine. Their cure for that ailment was called “devaluation” – which was said to be very good for Ghana because it stimulated exports. Life was pretty simple then - and intelligent leaders like Dr. Busia, would rather have pumped the nearly one billion dollars his political progeny spent shoring up the new Ghana cedi, merely to save their faces, into rural development: in order to secure the votes of rural Ghana for generations to come.

Those were the halcyon days, when some of us cut our teeth as teenagers watching markets in far-off lands, for fun, as a hobby. Today, in the age of Alice-in-Wonderland economics, we are graying grandparents and although our teeth are falling out, we are still watching markets, both at home and abroad – and are appalled by the opaque way our previous leaders ran the economy, when they held power. But one digresses - here is my Kweku Ananse story, with a moral in it, for those who now run our nation today.

Warren Buffet, the famed sage of Omaha, once said that it is when the tide is out that those who have been swimming without their trunks on can be seen. In "Nudetopia," a luxury biosphere where worn-out ex-tycoons from the financial services sectors of the Western world go to be rejuvenated in Olympic-sized swimming pools by delectable bimbos of different races, cameras are banned completely. Thus, the security people in “Nudetopia” spend countless hours searching for cameras.

Their brief is to make sure that confidence does not evaporate from "Nudetopia" amongst burnt-out former investment bankers and hedge-fund managers looking for fun in troubled times and anxious to remain virile. Confidence is a pretty important intangible commodity to crooks in the markets - so they like to keep up appearances in “Nudetopia” come what may.

"Samboland" is a corner of Africa in the City of London, where African versions of the US fraudster extraordinaire, Bernie Maddox, operate under the radar-screens of the UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA), and clueless African regimes are ripped-off on a regular basis – by African crooks running investment boutiques in the UK that call themselves funny names, such as: “Impala,” “Tireko,” and “Sambo.” They are registered to underwrite bonds and sell other financial products by the FSA – and act in London for many poor African nations (also run mostly by nasty and brutal crooks), which they charge usury rates (in fees and interest charges) to act as “transaction advisors” for.

Thus, bonds for example, are issued by these masters of the universe for governments and entities in some of the nations in sub-Saharan Africa. These financial instruments are usually issued at “Tireko” rates – meaning those nations end up paying zillions directly to the “Tirekos” for sovereign bonds, corporate bonds for state-owned enterprises, etc., etc., (some with rates of interest as high as 17 per cent!), which the “Tirekos” then repackage and quietly sell on to clueless, supposedly-clever blond blue-eyed investors, in London and elsewhere, at more sensible rates (between 3 and 4 per cent), with the coupon difference being pocketed by the “Tirekos.”

Quiet a nice way to make easy and fast money in a global recession – if you are a well-connected African crook running a financial services company in the UK, with local lackeys spread across sub-Saharan Africa: happy and willing to bring you business regularly. But if you are a “Tireko,” a “Sambo,” or “Impala” raking in zillions in London from desperately poor African nations, you had better pray that the spirits of the ancestors of those you rip off regularly never catch up with you in the end!

THE NDC ADMINISTRATION MUST AVOID FALLING INTO THE TRAP OF ITS ENEMIES!

One could not help but admire the wisdom of the ordinary Ghanaian, when one heard the reaction of listeners who called in to Radio Gold FM on the morning of the 22nd April, 2009, to pass comment on Professor Karikari’s unfortunate remarks about the youthful deputy-minister, James Adjenin-Boateng, and Radio Gold FM itself. Many of those callers clearly got the point about the events and issues contained in some of the programmes broadcast by Radio Gold in the days between the end of the 7th December, 2008 presidential election and the immediate aftermath of the run-off of that election, which raised the ire of so many New Patriotic Party (NPP) members – when they said that the matters broadcast by Radio Gold FM during the period in question were matters that concerned the security of our country, which sober minds such as Professor Karikari, ought to recommend that the president orders the security agencies to investigate quickly and thoroughly.

Clearly, those members of the previous regime who are guilty of participating in the brutal gang-rape of mother Ghana (carried out mainly by the small but powerful cabal with its HQ in the presidency during the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration), who grew super-rich ripping our country off in those opaque transactions that they thought no one would ever unravel, are fighting a determined rearguard-action to prevent the new administration from eventually exposing them. It would appear that Professor Karikari may have been an unwitting tool of those who are now busy using sophism as a political weapon to enable them paralyze and ultimately destroy the Mills administration – as it now emerges that he had not even actually heard the Radio Gold FM “Election Forensics” tape-recordings, presumably based on which he passed such unfair judgment on the work of dedicated journalism professionals who were only doing their patriotic duty to thwart those seeking to subvert the sovereign will of the Ghanaian people in an election.

Since all the troubles of our nation stem from the fact that it has been ruled mostly by greedy and dishonest self-seekers throughout the post-Nkrumah years, rather than castigating President Mills, perhaps decent and patriotic Ghanaians like Professor Kwame Karikari ought to point it out to the enemies of the masses that whatever its perceived shortcomings, the administration of a newly-elected president who is determined that he and the members of his regime will leave a legacy that ensures that going forward into the future, all elected politicians and their spouses publicly publish their assets, does indeed deserve to succeed and must be given time to complete its tenure. In that regard, the Radio Gold FM listeners who called in to say that the new administration should not allow itself to be diverted from the task ahead, by its detractors, but to remain focused on fulfilling its pledge to improve the general condition of our nation and quality of life of ordinary Ghanaians by the end of its four-year tenure, were spot-on.

The whole purpose of those who are now seeking to undermine the Mills administration is to lead it on a merry-go-round – in the hope that they, and not the new administration, will set the national agenda: as the regime wastes precious time responding to their inane criticisms. An example is the latest NPP press conference during which the party’s chairperson more or less accused the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the Mills administration of deception. Another example of this unfortunate negative mindset of some members of the opposition was the absurd demand by the NPP’s Asare Otchere-Darko on the Metro TV current affairs programme, “Good Evening Ghana”, which was telecast on 21st April 2008, that Dr. Tony Aidoo tells him what solution the government had for halting the depreciation of the cedi – as if the government that had just recently won a four-year tenure to prove itself faced an imminent election to renew its mandate: after only 100 days in office.

Yet, these well-educated morons jolly well know that the root of the problem of the depreciation of our currency lies in the irresponsible smoke-and-mirrors economic policies that the previous regime pursued – mainly because it personally benefited the crooks amongst them and their cronies, instead of serving their nation’s interests: as well as that of the generality of Ghanaians. It was “short-termism” at its worst as policies designed largely to benefit foreign carpetbaggers and their politically well-connected local lackeys in our financial services industry ended up crippling our nation financially. Doubtless, ordinary Ghanaians will eventually come to learn the shocking details of those self-serving economic policies and their dire consequences for our nation, in due course –and Ghanaians will then understand why those rogues never wanted strong characters like Fifi Kwettey anywhere near the ministry of finance.

The government must continue focusing on the things that will grow the real economy, such as its very sensible (and long-overdue) policy of subsidizing fertilizers for farmers – and ignore those in the NPP who quote macro-economic statistics endlessly to score political points (but forget that one can use the same set of statistics to justify every conceivable economic view-point – which is why a depreciating currency is music to the ears of so many Ghanaian exporters!), to continue living in cloud cuckoo-land. For the sake of Ghanaian democracy, one prays that the nationalistic-minded NPP members will try and wrestle control of their party from those of their colleagues whose greed, whiles they were in power, was such that they were always prepared to sell out our country to foreigners – as long as it benefited them personally. To allow their party to remain in the firm grip of the few greedy and dishonest tribal-supremacists amongst them, who hijacked it for their own benefit whiles they were in power, will be suicidal. The truth of the matter is that Ghanaians simply do not want to be led by such greedy self-seekers again.

It is such a pity that some of those in the inner circle of the NPP’s presidential candidate who led the NPP campaign, and are now being blamed by many in their party for losing them the December 2008 presidential election, think that there is traction in the lost cause they are passionately pursuing (trying to make out the Mills administration is clueless). Perhaps one ought to remind the sober minds in the NPP that ordinary people are not nearly as stupid as some politicians think. They must understand that those ordinary Ghanaians who decided in December 2008 that it was time for regime-change, and voted accordingly to make it happen, clearly understand the absurdity of making a three-month old administration, which has just taken over a nation suffering from acute “debt-distress” (to use a World Bank/IMF euphemism!) to rule for the next four years, appear to the world, as some kind of failure already. Obviously, some people never learn from the past – because they are too arrogant to admit their mistakes.

Perhaps good people like Professor Karikari should also ponder why there is such desperation in certain quarters to give Ghanaians the impression that they are now ruled by a dishonest, incompetent, and clueless regime – when that clearly isn’t the case. As a cynic said to me, “Perhaps the reason for all the kerfuffle is that the desperate Titans in our financial services sector who prospered mightily from the fat fees they earned as “transaction advisors” in the privatization deals galore and our daft forays into the piranha-infested capital markets of the West under the NPP, want their overseas collaborators to still remain hopeful that business will flow again soon at some point going forward.” Do those who abused their positions to acquire super-wealth illegally in the previous regime really think that in this day and age they can stop their crimes against our nation and its people from ever coming to light?

It is a pity that good and respectable people like Professor Kwame Karikari, who have worked hard to build such a good reputation for themselves over the years, seem to have unwittingly allowed their judgment to be clouded – as the ruthless and greedy politicians whose tribal-supremacist tendencies whiles in office during the tenure of the Kufuor administration destroyed the cohesion of our nation, as never before in our post-independence history, deftly manipulate them. Clearly, whiles the members of the NDC must keep their lines of communication open at all times to even the newspapers that oppose them (such as The Statesman), they must, however, keep the so-called Danquah Institute at arms length. It is not what they think it is: an intellectual powerhouse generating ideas for the deepening of Ghanaian democracy. Has it not occurred to them, that perhaps those cynics who insist that in reality it is nothing but a reactionary Akan tribal-supremacist sponsored NPP propaganda unit and centre for spin-doctoring, which masquerades as an independent think-tank to give it some respectability, may actually have a point?

There are some of its critics who even say that it was set up more or less as a vehicle to enable those in Nana Akufo-Addo’s inner circle, who thought that they were going to become the Mk11 version of the family clans and cronies of the small but powerful cabal of Akan tribal-supremacists in the presidency, who succeeded in hijacking the NPP during President Kufuor’s eight-year tenure (and ended up abusing their power to such an extent that it enabled them send their personal net worth, as well as that of their family clans and cronies, into the stratosphere), to wield maximum influence through the back-door: in what they clearly thought was going to become the next NPP administration, which was coming to power after the December 2008 elections. The NDC’s membership must avoid functions organized by the so-called Danquah Institute like the plaque – for its aims are neither benign nor non-partisan. They must not lend respectability to it by partaking in its activities – as that would be tantamount to allowing themselves to be used by those for whom it serves as a vehicle designed to smoothen the path to the acquisition of political power.

They must never forget that their political opponents are desperately seeking clever ways to undermine their administration – as they plot their way back to power again in 2012. As far as the economy goes, rather than focusing mainly on negotiating with the IMF and World Bank for funding, the new administration ought to try and also leverage the goodwill Nkrumah built with China to source funds from the Chinese to fund the bulk of their projects. The Chinese are still quiet happy to fund projects in Africa despite the global recession – and accepting the sovereign bonds of Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana (underpinned by future oil and natural gas revenues) in exchange for China funding joint-venture projects in our country’s energy and housing sectors, as well as in other sectors of the economy to the tune of even some twenty billion dollars, if need be, is not an impossibility for them, if our leaders approach them with creative proposals. Better that than taking up the NPP’s cheeky suggestion that the Mills administration collaborate with their party to solve Ghana’s many problems that they could not themselves solve in eight long years in power. Whatever it does, the new NDC administration must avoid falling into the trap of its enemies, at all costs. A word to the wise…

THE AFRICAN UNION MUST PROTECT ORDINARY AFRICANS – NOT THE CONTINENT’S DESPOTS!

Over the years since the Rwandan genocide was brought to an end, some five million Africans have died in the DR Congo – yet, hardly anyone in the international community expresses their outrage that so many members of the human race have died: largely as a result of the lack of security in their country. Every single one of those millions of Africans who have died as a result of the fighting between the various armed groups in the DR Congo is a victim of the greed of those who seek to profit from the vast mineral wealth of that unfortunate nation – and fan the numerous conflicts in the Eastern DR Congo for that purpose.

As a believer in Nkrumah’s pan-Africanist vision, I am saddened that rather than seeking to protect ordinary Africans from some of the modern-day Adolf Hitlers who rule a number of the nations in the continent, the African Union (AU) rather seeks to protect those evil monsters – who are guilty of some of the most unspeakable and abominable acts of cruelty perpetrated in the 21st century, thus far. As we speak, the AU is actively working to protect President Omar Bashir from the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) reach. Yet, it remains strangely silent about the plight of the millions of black Africans in Darfur whom he is victimizing. The truth of the matter is that Omar Bashir hopes that a majority of them will eventually die from the deprivation caused by the enforced absence from Western Sudan of the international NGO’s he has expelled from his country specifically for that purpose.

Omar Bashir is the leader of a brutal and cruel dictatorship that is engaged in ethnic- cleansing on an apocalyptic scale in Darfur. He is directly responsible for the current humanitarian crisis caused by the expelling of a number of international NGO’s assisting internally displaced persons in refugee camps in Darfur from Sudan – despite the fact that those charitable organizations have been the main source of sustenance for his many victims in Western Sudan. Ever the cynic, Omar Bashir realizes that hunger and starvation will achieve his ethnic-cleansing agenda for him even faster than his armed agents of death the Janjaweed ever could. That is why he promptly decided to expel the international NGO’s the minute the opportunity to do so presented itself to him.

If the victims of the cruelest despots in Africa, such as Omar Bashir, cannot rely on the AU to protect them from their oppressors, why should they not look to the ICC to protect them from their evil tormentors? The idea that millions of unfortunate Africans, who are being slaughtered and brutalized by their leaders on a daily basis, should regard the targeting of those leaders by the ICC (which is only holding those cruel leaders accountable for their crimes against humanity, after all), as some form of Western racism and a conspiracy to re-colonize Africa, is a cruel and sick joke. It is an argument that no African of conscience who cares about his fellow Africans should ever make. Taking such a stand is an affront to the many decent men, women, and children across the globe, who show their solidarity with those suffering at the hands of Africa’s dictators, by insisting that they are their fellow human beings who are deserving of the protection of the international community.

The time has come for world leaders, such as US President Obama, and the leaders of the nations of the European Union, to put diplomatic niceties and political correctness aside, and speak out boldly against the AU for neglecting the many victims of the continent’s cruelest leaders. The international community must condemn the AU in the strongest possible terms for its outrageous stand on the indictment of Omar Bashir by the ICC. Venezuela’s President Chavez in particular ought to think about the awful plight of the victims of Omar Bashir in Darfur – not give succour to a cruel African leader indicted by the ICC for the crimes against humanity he is responsible for in Darfur.

The international community must demand that the AU acts to protect the human rights of the millions of Africans currently suffering in places like Darfur, the northern and eastern parts of the DR Congo, Chad, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea, Mauritania, and Libya. The AU must consider the protection of the human rights of ordinary Africans as its primary mission – and it must demand that Omar Bashir allows the international NGO’s he recently expelled from Sudan to return to Darfur immediately to help alleviate the suffering of the people there. It must stop regarding itself as an exclusive club for African leaders: on whose behalf it feels obliged to lobby the international community from time to time – even when their monstrous actions bring them to the attention of the ICC.

SHOULD FORMER PRESIDENT KUFOUR & CO. NOT BE MORE REASONABLE IN THEIR DEMANDS?

An evening news item telecast on 9th April, 2009 by Metro TV, which highlighted the appalling state that some of the medical equipment at the La General Hospital are in, caught my attention – and made me ponder the disconnect between many in our political class and ordinary Ghanaians. Earlier that day, I had been listening (with a great deal of incredulity at his arrogance and petulance) to former President Kufuor’s spokesperson, Frank Adjekum, on one of Accra’s many FM radio stations – who said that the former president was apparently unhappy about the “piecemeal” manner in which the new Mills administration was dealing with his retirement package.

I was dumfounded when Mr. Adjekum, who was clearly irritated by it, said there were some people who even made the point, when referring to former President Kufuor’s (overly-generous in my humble opinion) ex-gratia retirement benefits, that there were many ordinary Ghanaians who had worked for their country for a “hundred years” but only had miniscule retirement benefits. Do our politicians not understand that the unfair society they have succeeded in creating, in which there are such huge disparities in wealth, is one that sits on a time-bomb of social discontent that could explode at any time – if the large underclass that has grown so rapidly over the last eight years finds a demagogue who decides to champion their cause in order to ride to power?

Did they not hear the disenchantment with officialdom and our political class expressed in media interviews by some of the Ghanaians recently deported from Libya – many of whom are currently stranded at Accra’s international airport? How can politicians in a nation so poor that in the 21st century ICT age mothers can die during childbirth because of the inadequacies of our healthcare system, be so insensitive as to argue endlessly about the purchase (at hapless taxpayers’ expense) and allocation of expensive luxury cars and office accommodation: particularly at a point in time when our homeland Ghana is in such dire straits? Why are some of them trying to stampede our country into giving a former president a million-dollar “seed-money” to set up a charitable foundation – just to help him cope with the “withdrawal pangs” of leaving office: when that sum could make such a huge difference in the quality of life of many rural communities?

Surely, ordinary people do not force any of Ghana’s politicians to enter politics, do they? Since those benefiting from those overly-generous ex-gratia payments appear so determined to have their pound of flesh, are we to conclude that most of our politicians enter politics just to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of society? Our political class must stop using legal technicalities to enable some of them get away with outrages such as those obscene ex-gratia payments recommended for payment to a number of retired high public officials. It is important that they understand that in the long run ordinary people will become disillusioned with a system in which only the elite benefit from the so-called “democracy dividend.” They should not be surprised if the events of June 4th 1979 are repeated again someday - and the 4th Republic and its iniquitous system are abruptly swept away (together with its predatory political class).

They must not continue to be so insensitive about the plight of our nation and the poor quality of life endured by the vast majority of its citizenry – who daily have to struggle to survive against such great odds: due largely to their being ruled by such an incompetent and unimaginative political class, over the years since Nkrumah’s overthrow. Former President Kufuor and his spokespersons must remember that he admonished Ghanaians to learn to cut our collective coat according to the size of our cloth, in the early days when he first assumed power – at a time when he too did not see how he was going to be able to fulfill his many campaign promises to Ghanaians because having then come into power he had suddenly discovered how financially-challenged we were as a nation.

Nothing has changed and he must be reasonable and accept to take away a smaller retirement package. Has he not heard his many critics say that he and some of the members of his regime helped increase the net worth of their own family clans (as well as that of their cronies) sufficiently enough during their tenure, to be able to provide for themselves comfortably for the rest of their natural lives as it is – without them seeking to bankrupt our impoverished country with those outrageous ex-gratia retirement benefits?

Do they know that the cynics amongst us say that they specifically designed those benefits for themselves – with the connivance of the hand-picked Chinery-Hesse committee (which they say was jam-packed with the well-paid sycophants he chose specifically for the purpose)? Isn’t the real truth that if they had had the slightest inkling that there would be regime-change after the elections that would see the return of a National Democratic Congress administration, they would not have dared ask for the “Chinery-Hesse-moon” contained in that committee’s monstrous recommendations?

With respect, former president Kufuor and Co. ought to be a great deal more reasonable and agree to have their retirement benefits trimmed drastically – and let that help them get rid of some of the great harm, which the widespread perception amongst ordinary people that their regime was underpinned by an ethos of unfathomable greed, never seen in our history before, will do to their legacy (such as it is). Surely, if they want to be regarded as statesmen in their retirement years, it is important that they put the interests of our nation and its people above their own creature comforts – and avoid getting a reputation as retired leaders who insisted that they should be allowed to live the life Riley at the expense of the hard-pressed ordinary citizens of a poor developing nation that can hardly afford such profligacy? A word to the wise…

PETER JEFFREY: ORDINARY GHANAIANS ARE NOT TRIBALISTIC!

Opanin Peter Jeffrey, I refer to your article of 6th April, 2009 posted on the features web-page of www.ghanaweb.com, entitled: “And Mills took it ‘home’ – A Rejoinder”. Opanin, on the thorny subject of tribalism, it is always important to separate ordinary people from the tribal-supremacist progeny of the pre-colonial feudal ruling elites of the various tribes in Ghana.

Ordinary Asantes and ordinary Akims, like ordinary Ghanaians of other ethnic extraction, do not discriminate in their day to day interactions with their fellow human beings – and accept their fellow Ghanaians, irrespective of their ethnic background, as members of the one human race.

They are not the problem – it is the tribal-supremacists (our local version of the odious white supremacists of the Western world) one finds in the palaces of traditional rulers up and down our country, from the northern-most part, to the southern-most tip and from our eastern and western borders, whose narrow-mindedness and intolerance, poses a threat to our country’s unity.

The rise in tribalism in recent times can be attributed largely to the fact that some of the tribal-supremacist progeny of our pre-colonial feudal ruling elites were able to hijack the New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime. They then set about to exploit the tribal sentiments Ghanaians of Akan extraction have for their traditional rulers – as part of their secret agenda to enable them dominate our country by stealth, successfully.

It was the unholy and outrageous alliance between the Akan tribal-supremacist cabal in the presidency during the Kufuor era, and certain of their tribal supremacist traditional rulers, that was so resented by many Ghanaians – as they incredibly (and foolishly) sort to impose the over-ambitious and publicity-seeking successor, who replaced the noble and humble Otumfuo Opoku Ware 11 (may his soul rest in peace), on Ghanaians, as some kind of de facto king.

It is no accident that many Ghanaians had a great deal of respect and genuine love for Otumfuo Opoku Ware 11 – and he is regarded by many of them as the best of the modern-day Asantehenes. That great man understood perfectly that because of the weight of history behind it, it was important for the occupant of the Golden Stool to always shy away from politics – and to keep a low profile.

He also understood that it was neither possible, nor desirable, in a unitary Republic, for any traditional ruler to try and seek a revival of the pre-colonial feudal kingdoms – as it could lead to ethnic tension and possibly threaten the cohesion of our nation. Perhaps it was because he was a lawyer that he understood this important aspect of the role that modern-day traditional rulers ought to play in our national life.

Clearly, there can be no Ghana without Asantes and Akims, for, they, like their compatriots from other parts of our nation, also play important roles in our struggle to make our country a better place for all its citizens. In the same vein, there can be no room in our united nation of diverse-ethnicity for Asante or Akim kingdoms: just as there can be no Ga Dangbe kingdom or Dagomba kingdom in Nkrumah’s Ghana. It is important that all our politicians and our traditional rulers understand that perfectly. Traditional rulers in our country are not the modern-day equivalent of the constitutional monarchs of Europe. They are mere private citizens - albeit very important citizens, of the Republic of Ghana: and it is crucial that they never forget that bald fact of life in Nkrumah's Ghana. Period