LESSONS FROM THE HON. ATTA AKYEA’S CURRENT LITTLE LOCAL DIFFICULTY WITH THE LAW!

I was saddened by the astonishing revelation that the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) member of Parliament, for Abuakwa South, the Hon. Atta Akyea, has been accused of stealing money belonging to clients of his legal firm – who have apparently now taken him to court over the matter. I must confess that I detest his politics – for the insidious nature of its absurd elitism and its negative effect on our nation, and for the Akan tribal-supremacist ethos that underpins it (pure nonsense on bamboo stilts, dear reader!): all of which he and his ilk inherit from his political and genealogical forebear, Dr. J. B. Danquah. However, on a purely human level, I do feel very sorry for him: and hope that he is able to overcome this latest challenge in the very full, eventful, and successful life, which he has led thus far.

Consequently, unlike the most uncharitable of his critics and political opponents, I shall not gloat, and say that he has been hoisted on his own petard. I gather he has counter-sued his accusers, and one looks forward to future developments with considerable interest. One also keenly awaits the denouement of this rather curious and most cynical affair. Naturally, the assumption is that he can count on the NPP's allies in the judiciary dispensing their usual selective justice, based on the "if-a-friend-interpret-the-law" and "if-a-foe-apply-the-law" principles of Aequitas-Kokofu-Modus. Although some might consider it niggling, the question that many a Ghanaian patriot would want answered, in this most extraordinary of affairs, is: Would his accusers have opted for the same course of action, if the NPP’s presidential candidate, for the run-off of the December 2008 presidential election, Nana Akufo-Addo, had won that election?

Undoubtedly, Nana Akufo-Addo would have appointed the Hon. Atta Akyea, who is his cousin, as a cabinet minister in his regime, had he emerged victorious in that very closely-fought election. If he had, what then would have been the nature of the relationship between the Hon. Atta Akyea, and his present accusers, subsequently? How would they have treated the matter regarding the alleged theft of company funds – from a firm for which he apparently served as a lawyer, for quite a considerable period, once upon a time? It is said that just before the NPP won the December 2000 presidential elections, the National Investment Bank (NIB) was about to sell off the property of a gentleman who became a very important personage in the Kufour regime. It had apparently been used as collateral for a loan from that state-owned bank. Needless to say, in the end, no such auctioning of the said property ever took place, after the NPP took office in January 2001!

Knowing the culture in Ghana, the Hon. Atta Akyea’s present accusers would have definitely come to some arrangement with him, had he become a cabinet minister in a regime led by Nana Akufo-Addo, in the event the NPP had won the run-off of the December 2008 presidential election. (So, that, dear reader, is the secret of how some politically well-connected Ghanaians, end up becoming super-rich overnight: through the use of insider information from our leaders! But I digress.) How then would the Hon. Atta Akyea have dealt with the amount he is accused of stealing, in any asset-declaration form lodged at the Accountant-General’s Department by him? More to the point, how exactly did he account for it in his Internal Revenue tax-declaration form for the year the alleged theft took place, one wonders?

Obviously, if we are to avoid the situation in which the members of our country’s political class, end up following the example of Nigeria’s very corrupt political and business elite, it is crucial that somehow Ghanaians find a lawful means of forcing all those who are appointed to become government ministers, and to serve as District Chief Executives (DCE) in Ghana, to openly publish their net worth: before and after their tenure of office. Because of their wisdom, the leaders of China now insist that all government appointees (and their immediate family members!) in that dynamic nation do same – to ensure continued political stability in that one-party state: by minimizing corruption by politicians and bureaucrats. It is a real pity that our current leaders are not inclined to follow their example. Indeed, the continued refusal of our present leaders to do same is really not a very good sign for our homeland Ghana. As it will be recalled, during the campaign for the December 2000 elections, many of the NPP’s big-wigs constantly said that they had already made their personal fortunes, and were only coming to serve Ghanaians and bring about positive change in Mother Ghana.

Yet, we all saw how during the golden age of business for Kufour & Co., a few powerful individuals; favoured members of their family clans; and their cronies; all became super-rich within the relatively short space of eight years – as they succeeded in exploiting our national economy for their own benefit through sundry special-purpose offshore vehicles: set up specifically to hide the loot from their plunder of our nations’ resources. The extent of their greed has seldom been seen in the annals of our nation’s chequered history – and we are still suffering from the negative effects of the grand larceny those super-rogues engaged in whiles ruling Ghana. As is common knowledge, by the time they left office, their net worth had reached stratospheric heights. That relatively small number of very powerful crooks, who dominated the NPP so completely during their tenure, succeeded in creating a dog-eat-dog selfishness culture in our country – which has destroyed the very moral fabric of Ghanaian society. Truth literally disappeared from our country – and is still a very illusive creature throughout our nation's political landscape and social firmament.

That is how we ended up becoming a nation full of moral cowards – many of whom looked on sheepishly and silently as Mother Ghana was brutally gang-raped. The result is the prevailing nation-wrecking “the-end-justifies-the-means” attitude that underpins the wealth-creation agenda of many Ghanaians, for whom it also serves as a personal motto, and their life’s main guiding philosophy. It was adopted by many of those ruthless petty-crooks (in both the private and public sectors!) who mushroomed during the Kufuor-era, and emulated the crafty ways of the most dishonest of our rulers, during the NPP's eight long, painful, and disastrous years in office. Naturally, all those greedy little-emperor rogues too had seats in the first-class carriages of the very luxurious Kufuor-gravy-train. They all “chopped Ghana small” – and whiles some dodged paying their taxes; others laundered money from countless numbers of illegal activities; and the most clever amongst them profited from sundry schemes that transferred public revenue into private pockets by stealth, and with legal cover.

Ghana International Airlines (GIA) is a classic example. Why those bright young finance ministry chaps have still not asked the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to look carefully into GIA’s wet-lease agreement to date, remains a complete mystery to me. Many of those crooks were also paid vast sums they did not deserve through the presentation of fictitious invoices to various National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) offices across the nation, for goods and services they never actually delivered. Our second city, Kumasi, became the smuggling and tax-evading capital of Ghana, as goods ostensibly bound for neighbouring countries, were offloaded and sold there, to the detriment of Nkrumah’s Ghana. In effect, the whole edifice of the Ghanaian nation-state was turned into a criminal enterprise. Many of those crooks are the selfsame individuals who are now leading the NPP's Enkoyie propaganda war being waged so relentlessly on the airwaves of Ghana's many radio stations, and in the columns of its biased and mercenary newspapers.

They are all livid that the many loopholes, through which they used to milk Mother Ghana dry, are being closed, one at a time, slowly, but surely, and methodically: using due process. The question that many of those who actually care about our nation, in today's Ghana, would like answered is: How many too-clever-by-half individuals are there in the present regime who might also be hiding secrets that are variations of the Hon. Atta Akyea’s present little local difficulty with the law? Well, if we are to stop the bulk of our nation’s oil and natural gas revenues from literally disappearing into the ether, we must find a way of forcing all those currently in power (and their successors in office till the very end of time!), to publicly publish their personal net worth, and that of their spouses, before they also end up like their predecessors in office: who told us, before they came to power, that they had already made their own personal fortunes, and then proceeded to asset-strip Ghana for their own benefit, once in power. The record of Kufour & Co. clearly demonstrates the truth in the maxim: "Power corrupts."

Since those now leading our nation are not angels but mere mortals (like us all!), who continue to turn a deaf ear to repeated requests from many patriotic individuals that they publish their assets, together with those of their spouses (so as to enable them occupy the moral high ground in Ghanaian politics!), let us find a legal way to force them to do so whiles they are still finding their feet as rulers of Nkrumah's Ghana - before they too grow wings: as Kufour & Co. eventually did, much to Ghana's detriment. We must all understand that Ghanaian democracy will not survive if the crooks lurking in the present regime also end up looting Ghana to the same extent that the powerful crooks in the Kufour-era did. The truth of the matter, is that the 4th Republic was tailor-made to enable a military dictatorship, which was being forced by events to return Ghana to constitutional rule, successfully metamorphose into a democratically elected civilian regime. Ultimately, the 4th Republic that was founded by yesteryear's coup-makers, does not serve the interests of ordinary people.

We must end the inequity of a system that pampers our elite and showers them with limitless perks (at hapless taxpayers' expense!), when in office, and then guarantees them overly-generous ex-gratia retirement packages when they depart office; but leaves the nation's overworked and underpaid citizens (who devote decades of their working lives to serving Mother Ghana diligently!), high and dry, in their twilight years: to survive on derisory pensions that they cannot possibly exist on. What kind of democracy is it that allows the well-connected in society to almost always get away with stealing zillions of cedis of taxpayers’ money, but invariably ends up jailing the hungry and the poor for small misdemeanors (such as stealing plantain or chicken), which are occasioned by their dire circumstances? The chairperson of the National Democratic Congress (NDC ), Dr Kwabena Adjei, missed the point in his fulminations against the pro-NPP judges: What we need is a new constitution drawn up by a people now free from tyranny, as a prelude to the inauguration of a new 5th Republic: which will exist to protect the interests of ordinary people, and ensure their collective welfare at all times.

We must have a system that creates hell on earth for all law-breakers and heaven on earth for those who are law-abiding – so that the honest and the hardworking, as well as the strong and the weak, can all prosper together as a disciplined people in an orderly society: in which laws are applied without fear or favour. The 4th Republic must be brought to an end as soon as it practicable to do so – or our nation will have no real future, if things are allowed to continue as they are, in a democracy that has become a plutocracy, in which super-wealthy crooks exploit our national economy for their own benefit, at the expense of the rest of us. The lesson we must learn from the Hon. Atta Akyea's little local difficulty with the law, is that ordinary Ghanaians must always be mistrustful of the members of Ghana's political class, and constantly be vigilante in the protection of our freedoms – lest those who rule our nation end up impoverishing us and enslaving us into the bargain. The question we must thus pose to our politicians during the beginning of every election campaign is: What are the ends, which politicians who vie for power in the Republic of Ghana, seek it for? Is it to enrich themselves at our expense, or like the great Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, our nation's founder, endeavour to uplift ordinary Ghanaians: and make their country great, strong, and prosperous, for our collective benefit?


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