LIQUIDATE GHANA INTERNATIONAL AIRLINES NOW – AS A PRELUDE TO SETTING UP A NEW NATIONAL CARRIER!

Why, dear reader, do so many of our politicians suddenly become hard-of-hearing, when they are offered good free advice - especially by those who seek nothing in return for such advice? Take the case of that international airline industry equivalent of a Dodo, the so-called Ghana International Airlines (GIA), for example: Why does the present regime not simply liquidate it - and invite Easyjet to partner Ghana in setting up a new national carrier that will dominate Africa’s present mostly-unsafe skies, and make them safe for all Africans across the continent? Would the outcome of such a bold move not be regarded as one of the best legacies of the administration of the hardworking and honest President Mills? On the home front, would such a new national carrier, using the low-cost-carrier business model, not quickly come to dominate routes in and out of Ghana along the West African coastline, and to the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and elsewhere, I ask?

Easyjet is a well-run and profitable carrier with a much-respected founder (Stelios Haji-loannou) who believes in corporate good governance principles, and is also a socially and environmentally responsible entrepreneur. Years ago, some of us pleaded with Kufuor & Co., to invite Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic Airlines to partner Ghana Airways in a joint-venture. However, self-interest and greed, made them turn a deaf ear to our pleas. Branson, of course, is famous for not ever giving bribes to obtain business, anywhere on the planet Earth - so one can draw one's own conclusions. Anyway, that massive drain on state resources (some transferred by stealth, and with legal cover, into private pockets!),GIA, is the unfortunate result of their self-serving idiocy.

The question is: Will those powerful individuals surrounding President Mills listen to us this time round – and move to invite leading low-cost carrier, Easyjet, to partner Ghana to set up a new Ghana Airways-Easyjet: and work together with its founder to get the African Union ( AU) to follow Europe’s example, and declare Africa’s skies a single free open-sky, accessible to all African airlines (and outside ones too!) to compete in for freight and passengers? Surely, dear reader, that must be the best way of making Africa’s present mostly-unsafe skies, safe for us all to fly around the continent: for both business and pleasure?

The end result of the refusal of the greedy tribal-supremacist chaps who dominated the Kufuor regime, to listen to us, whiles we were banging on about Ghana seeking project-funding from China, rather than fishing in the piranha-infested waters of the capital markets of the West (and in hairdressing saloons in the seedy backstreets of London!), is that today, our nation is forking out zillions of cedis in hard currency every six months, meeting coupon obligations owed to clever and farsighted foreigners, as well as the offshore entities that hide the wealth of the powerful crooks in the previous regime. If the powerful individuals who now dominate the present regime had listened to us when they first came to power, their regime would not have lost two precious years, would it? Why do Ghana's politicians hardly ever listen to those who offer them good free advice: proffered for purely patriotic and altruistic reasons, I ask, dear reader? Hmmm Ghana eyeasem oo!

Tel (powered by Tigo – the one mobile phone network in Ghana that actually works!): + 233 (0) 27 745 3109 & the not-so-hot and clueless Vodafone wireless smartfone: + 233 (0) 30 2976238.