CAN WE TRANSFORM GHANA INTO AN AFRICAN EQUIVALENT OF SCANDINAVIA’S EGALITARIAN SOCIETIES?

Listening to the breathtaking arrogance of Guinea’s military ruler, as he recently railed against civil society groups, and threatened media houses with closure for incurring his wrath, and to the antediluvian pigheaded pure-nonsense-on-bamboo-stilts from Niger’s minister of communications, as he airily dismissed calls by the opposition and other civil society groups, for President Mamadou Tanandjer to respect his country’s constitution and adhere to the term-limits placed on his tenure, one could not help but recall, and be grateful, for the past heroism of Ghanaian patriots like the late Tommy Thompson, Kwesi Pratt, Kweku Baako, and Kabral Blay-Amihere. Those four patriotic journalists fought bravely and suffered imprisonment, in the struggle against the military dictatorship that ruled Ghana, between 1981 and1991. Sadly, the more elderly Tommy Thompson eventually died from the effects of the harsh regime, which they were kept under, during their imprisonment. It was the resolve of such patriots (amongst other equally brave patriots such as Akoto Ampaw, Nana Akufo-Addo and others too numerous to mention here) during those dark days, which was largely responsible for finally ending tyranny in our country – and enabled the good people of Ghana to regain their freedom, in 1992, from the anti-democrats in our midst: who stole sovereign power from Ghanaians, by force of arms, at dawn on December 31, 1981.

The bravery and selflessness of those nationalists will doubtless be remembered by human rights activists, who fight for social justice in every generation of Ghanaians, till the very end of time. The question is: How can we, as a people, ensure that we never again allow the creation of the conditions, which enable the demagogues who are forever lurking in the shadows, and biding their time, to overthrow democratically-elected constitutional regimes in our country (and hold on to that power), to strike again in our homeland Ghana – and rob us of our freedoms by force of arms whiles claiming that they have come to end corruption: but invariably end up eventually enslaving us, and enriching themselves, by stealth, at the same time, in the process? Clearly, we cannot possibly countenance a return of those days of infamy, when that most tyrannical of military regimes, the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), succeeded in creating such fear amongst Ghanaians, that ordinary people sought safety sheltering in a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, say-no-evil personal philosophy: to ensure their basic survival and preserve their sanity. That was what led to the phenomenon that became known as the “culture of silence” in which no one dared speak out against the tyrants into whose ruthless and murderous hands Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana had fallen. Today, although a majority of Ghanaians have come to understand clearly that democracy is not a perfect form of government, because it is ponderous, slow, and often contentious, they are also smart enough to realise that it is far better than any other system of government known to humankind: and are determined to stick to it, so that every four years, they can have the opportunity to decide for themselves, whether or not to remove their current leaders from office, depending on their verdict as to the effectiveness and quality of leadership, shown by those leaders, during their tenure.

Luckily for the Ghanaian polity, even little primary school children have today come to the conclusion, that since men (and women) are not angels, it is in the interest of the ordinary people of Ghana, that their country has a system of government, which has checks and balances built in it, to prevent Ghanaians ending up with rulers who wield unfettered power: that enables them to eventually enslave the citizenry. It is often said that democracy does not thrive in conditions of extreme poverty. That is an apposite statement – that makes it clear, that it therefore follows, a priori, that if the quality of life and the living standards of ordinary people in our country, continue to deteriorate in inverse proportion to the stratospheric rise in the personal net worth of our ruling elite, the members of their family clans, and their cronies, Ghanaian democracy will definitely not survive for very long. Looking around the world today, one can safely conclude that the people of Scandinavia live in the most equitable and prosperous of societies on the surface of the planet Earth – and that if we are to protect Ghanaian democracy from its most powerful enemies (amongst whom are the narrow-minded tribal-supremacist progeny of the pre-colonial feudal era ruling elites in our midst – who exist in all the ten regions of our country: and see its Balkanization as being in their long-term interest: and therefore fan tribalism in our country by engaging in Kokofu-football politricks whenever in power), then we must transform our society into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia. To do so, we must make smarter choices in the way we deploy the power and resources of the Ghanaian nation-state. Our leaders must be as creative and as visionary as Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was – and use the power of the Ghanaian nation-state appropriately: so as to create a caring and sharing society, in which every citizen has the opportunity to realise his or her full potential, and lead happy and fulfilled lives, no matter their place in the various strata of society.

Whiles we all agree that our country needs to have a mixed economy, with a flourishing and vibrant private sector, we must nonetheless stop our unthinking and often knee-jerk resort, to handing over to foreigners and their local collaborators (those confounded quislings in our country) valuable state assets, which have been built at great cost: with the blood, sweat, and tears, of Ghanaian workers. Instead of selling state-owned commercial entities at the behest of self-seeking foreign ‘do-gooders’ and carpetbaggers, let us simply restructure them to make them more effective and profitable entities, and make them play strategic roles in our national economy, to enable us achieve certain social-good objectives: to improve the quality of life of all Ghanaians. Take the case of Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB), for example. Why do we simply not restructure it – by merging it with the National Investment Bank (NIB) and Agricultural Development Bank (ADB), and give a 20 per cent shareholding of the enlarged bank to a trust fund for its staff and management, with the government holding on to a 40 per cent stake, so that some of the profits will go to the government’s consolidated fund? After the restructuring takes place, there is no earthly reason why we cannot approach what many, who know about such things, regard as one of the world’s best-run and most profitable banks, which is also underpinned by the highest of ethical standards, currently existing in global banking – the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Bank Corporation (HSBC), led by that paragon of virtue, Steven Green, and invite it to become a joint-venture partner, for the newly-enlarged state-owned banking group. Surely, we can take advantage of the present economic crisis, and seize the opportunity to restructure the essential nature of our oil and natural gas industries too, can we not, dear reader (in a world in which everyone agrees and understands that the old economic rules no longer apply and in which we have seen even the government of the world’s leading capitalist nation, the United States of America, amongst other such nations, now owning major stakes in private American financial institutions and in automobile manufacturing firms such as General Motors: after bailing them out financially in what amount to partial-nationalizations)?

Let us revive useful defunct entities such as the Workers Brigade and the State Farms using the same principle – and invite Zambia’s biggest private farming enterprise to partner them in joint ventures to turn the Accra Plains into our breadbasket. In an uncertain world, in which our oil and natural gas deposits have become strategically important for the West, surely, the foreign oil companies must understand that no government in Ghana will survive, if it retains the unsatisfactory agreements the previous government signed with them? Ghana must maximize the returns from this finite gift of Providence – as the Ghanaian people will have to largely depend on the revenues from that sector of our economy to transform our society into Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia. The foreign oil companies have a choice – to join the people of Ghana, going forward into the future, in the transformation of our society: by being more reasonable and less greedy, about the size of their share of the profits, or depart from our shores henceforth if they feel that our country is no longer attractive to them: because we refuse to allow ourselves to be ripped off by foreigners, in which case they can depart on our terms, and get compensated with Ghana’s sovereign bonds, not cash (and receive the coupon contingent upon future receipts of revenue from the sector, as they wait to eventually redeem the principal). They will quickly come to realise, when the political climate for the present government changes (as it will in due course, no doubt), because it is unable to improve the overall condition of our country and its people satisfactorily within a four-year tenure, that the need for renegotiating the terms of our agreements with them, is a non-negotiable issue in reality – as in very real and practical terms, no democratically-elected Ghanaian government can survive today, without eventually doing so: so as to maximize revenue from a finite natural resource that we are relying on to fund the process of the radical transformation of our society.

Let them take a long-term view of things, and lower their expectations too – as the days of foreigners ripping off Mother Ghana successfully are gone forever. We will never again elect any stooges for neocolonialism and corrupt lackeys of Western commercial interests (such as the previous regime that was dominated by the most self-seeking and corrupt leaders ever elected into office in our nation’s chequered history), to power in this country again any time soon – so they had better pay heed to good advice and not “play hard-ball” (as some Americans are wont to say in such circumstances). Since China now leads the world in the fabrication of cutting-edge wind-power electricity generating plants, that also presents us with an opportunity to restructure and refocus the Volta River Authority (VRA). Let us merge the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) the VRA, and the body set up by President Kufuor to oversee the generation of power from the Bui Dam hydropower project – and invite the best-resourced of the Chinese state-owned operators and builders of giant wind-power generating plants, to set up a joint-venture to build wind-power energy-farms all along our coastline, for the newly-restructured energy giant to operate: and make our country a leader in renewable energy production in Africa. We must use such a new formula for all our state-owned entities: They must all have 20 per cent staff and management shareholding (held on their behalf by a trust fund set up for that purpose) to boost productivity, with the government retaining 40 per cent to ensure that they are always run with our national goals in mind, and 40 per cent going to a strategic investor that must always be world-class and class-leading in its particular sector. Using that formula, we can also restructure the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), by merging it with the state-owned petroleum products distributor, Ghana Oil Company Limited (GIOL), the bulk oil storage company (BOST) and the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), give its workers a 20 percent shareholding in the enlarged group, government keeps a 40 per cent stake, and then we can invite the best-resourced of the state-owned Chinese oil and natural gas companies to partner it in a joint-venture that makes us Africa’s leading oil refiners, and eventually take it right across West Africa as a regional integrated energy giant.

Again, that formula can also be used to revive the State Construction Corporation (SCC) and merge it with the State Housing Company Limited (SHCL), and seek the best-resourced Chinese state-owned road construction and house-building companies, which are world-class and class-leading in their sectors to become joint-venture partners – and build better-quality roads nationwide, build and operate a world-class canal from Akosombo to the border with Burkina Faso to transport goods cheaply and safely by barges, as well as five hundred thousand affordable houses and flats in each of the ten regions of Ghana, to rent out to ordinary Ghanaians at reasonable rental rates. We can also revive our sugar factories; extend the railway network to all the ten regional capitals; build domestic flight airports at every regional capital: and let the Ghana Air Force own and run them efficiently to make money for itself; set up a gold refinery; revive the jute bag factory; develop an integrated salt industry; revive the State Fishing Corporation; etc. etc. that way too. All that can be paid for with our sovereign bonds issued to China as “payment insurance” with long grace periods, as we breathe new life into, and give new meaning, to the special relationship between Ghana and China that Nkrumah established all those years ago. We must stop thinking that state-owned entities can never be profit-making undertakings. We must see them as strategic undertakings run efficiently and profitably to enable our country achieve certain social-good ends that assure a good quality of life for all the citizens of Ghana. It is important to point out, that China has a lot of world-class businesses that are class-leading, in their sectors – and that we must not base our understanding of the nature of Chinese industry merely on the strength of the evidence we see around us of the atrocious quality of the cheap counterfeit products, which some unscrupulous Ghanaian and Chinese businesspeople import from China to dump here, because our counterfeit surveillance systems are weak (as that irritating “Chuck” Kofi Wayo erroneously does constantly, in the Walter-Mitty fantasizing that his Vibe FM radio programme, in which he is forever spinning tales about his ’exploits’ in America and elsewhere around the globe, and insulting the intelligence of the good people of Ghana, represents). If we are to succeed in transforming our country into Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, we must think like Nkrumah did – and believe that we are capable of achieving that goal through our own ingenuity and hard work.

That is the historic opportunity Providence has given to President Mills – and he will not achieve it if he allows those who still refuse to come out of the shadow of conventional economic thinking, when even the capitalist nations of the West are doing so to ensure the survival of their national economies, to block us from breaking out of the terrible trap of under-achievement that we are caught in: because we refuse to believe in ourselves and to think creatively. Above all, he must send the minister of defence and our military’s leaders to Egypt immediately to study how the Egyptian military is playing a crucial role in the Egyptian economy – so as to prepare the Ghana Navy and the Ghana Air Force to play crucial roles in our oil and natural gas industries, and enable them to earn some decent money to help fund some of their operations (and be less of a burden on taxpayers). We must make the Ghana Navy the sole transporters of all oil produced in Ghana. If we even have to get the South Korean government to loan us money to buy the appropriate numbers of oil tankers and train our navy personnel to man them effectively, let us give them our sovereign bonds as “payment insurance” for those tankers. The Ghana Navy must also be given the type of large hovercraft ferries that are used by UK and EU ferry companies, which ply the English Channel between English ports and continental European ports ferrying vehicles and passengers to and fro, safely, daily – so that they can also ferry goods and passengers safely on the Volta Lake and along the entire West African coastline, and act as our Atlantic Ocean eyes and ears in the process, to forestall the kind of criminality that has brought the Nigerian oil industry almost to its knees.

We must also provide the Ghana Air Force with the best military transport helicopters in the world, and in sufficient numbers, to give them the capability to monopolize (by law) effectively the job of ferrying men and equipment to all the offshore oil production rigs operating in the waters in our continental shelf, at prevailing international industry commercial rates for such services. That will also enable us to effectively monitor activities on those rigs and get an accurate picture of production figures, on a daily basis. Finally, if the government also gets the Ghana Air Force to start a new national flag carrier (that will operate as a civilian carrier with all the appropriate insurance cover, licenses, international certification, etc. etc.), we can then invite that dynamic low-cost carrier, EasyJet, to partner it in a 50/50 joint-venture – to make it the most profitable airline in Africa: that will fly all the now-defunct Ghana Airways’ old routes and more: after the government has liquidated that airline equivalent of a Dodo, Ghana International Airlines (GIA). One hopes that President Mills will emulate the brilliant and dynamic Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and take such visionary ideas on board – to enable us transform Ghanaian society into a caring and sharing one: as far removed, as it is humanly possible to do so, from that dreadful culture of dog-eat-dog selfishness, which his selfish, greedy, and hypocritical predecessor introduced into our social fabric. He must seize the opportunity that Providence has given him, to be included in the Pantheon of great African leaders in the Nkrumah-mould, and change our country for the better – and leave a legacy that will make future generations of Ghanaians remember him till the very end of time. He must be bold and believe that he can lead us to achieve what many think is an impossibility – the transformation of our homeland Ghana into Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia: for, indeed, he truly can, and should. A word to the wise…

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