Not too long ago, the Hon. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, the leader of the Minority in Parliament, made a statement, during a press conference, claiming that the judgement-debt payment, which a legally constituted court of law had ordered be paid to Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, was the single biggest loss of money, suffered by the Ghanaian nation-state, since independence.
Actually, that is not factual, dear reader. It needs to be pointed out - to each one of those hypocrites, who occupy most of the seats on the side of the Minority in Parliament, and all of whom, incidentally, knew exactly how dishonest and crooked Kufuor & Co., were, during the tenure of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime, from January 2001 to Junuary 2009 - that as a matter of fact, the cause of the single biggest loss of money to the national treasury, since Ghana gained its independence in March 1957, is not the relatively paltry sums a properly constituted court of law ordered be paid to Woyome, as judgement-debt.
If truth be told, the single biggest instance of loss of money, suffered by the Ghanaian nation-state, since independence, are the billions of dollars of revenues that should rightly be coming the way of our nation and all its people, but are not - as a result of high-level sleight-of-hand manoeuvring, which gave a stake in oilfields off our nation's shores, to two well-connected Ghanaians, who did not even pay a pesewa upfront for same.
Does the US$350 million-plus, for example, which should have been paid into the national kitty, but was not, and went instead to that opaque "front" (to use a word from the erstwhile crook-in-chief's own lips, once upon a time, in a Freudian-slip on national television!) for Kufuor & Co., the E. O. Group, when Tullow Oil acquired some of that nebulous entity's interest in the Jubilee oilfield, not too long ago, not make Woyome's GHc 52-plus millions, pale into insignificance, I ask, dear reader?
Did we hear a whimper from those hypocrites-in-Parliament, expressing disquiet, that private individuals from our country, should get away with such obscene sums - which rightly should have come to all Ghanaians: if Nkrumah's vision of a caring and sharing society guided our leaders and informed government policy today, instead of the rip-off culture and ethos of private greed at public expense, which, alas, now underpin virtually everything our ruling elites do?
How Kwame Nkrumah must be turning in his grave - that what he abhorred most: that a powerful few with greedy ambitions, could succeed in hijacking Ghana's natural resources, at the expense of the rest of us, with complete impunity, is now the reality of our times. O, how one weeps for Mother Ghana - now dominated mostly by super-ruthless blackguards. Pity.
If the Hon. Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu - who now appears so solicitous about Ghana's well-being - will continue being so quick to act to protect the interests of our country and all its people, should his party win power in the December 2012 elections (God forbid!), then there's hope yet, for Mother Ghana.
One certainly hopes he has now turned over a new leaf, and that if the NPP were to return to power again (God forbid!), he will never aid and abet the asset-stripping of Ghana's accumulated wealth, by those who will then be running Ghana.
Going forward, he must never compromise himself again, by repeating the pivotal role he played, in the speedy passage, by Parliament, during the Kufuor-era, of that fraudulent sale and purchase agreement for the purchase of the Volta Aluminium Company Limited (VALCO), by a non-existent company, grandly named International Aluminium Partners (IAP).
Now, that, dear reader, definitely was fraud specifically designed to rip-off the Ghanaian nation-state - as both the Norwegian headquartered Norske Hydro, and the Brazilian-domiciled VALE, who it was purported were partners in IAP, strenuously denied ever agreeing either to purchasing VALCO or being in partnership as IAP.
That outrageous example, of the sanctioning, by Parliament, of gargantuan fraud, the sale and purchase agreement for VALCO, by a non-existent entity, is a classic example of how during the golden age of business for Kufuor & Co., Ghana was constantly short-changed - by those in the tribal-supremacist cabal, which dominated and controlled a regime elected by Ghanaians, ostensibly to protect the national interest.
Naturally, the many oh-so-arrogant NPP self-seekers, who now have the gall to engage in endless criticism of the honest and selfless President Mills, 24/7, on the airwaves and in the print media, and virtually all of whom took part in the brutal and repeated gang-rape of Mother Ghana, when the NPP was in power, and prospered so mightily individually - but no longer have access to easy money, because the era of pork-barrel politics is finally over: consigned to history by the principled and incorruptible President Mills - have all now conveniently forgotten what an actual threat, the unfathomable greed that underpinned the Kufuor-era, posed to the stability and well-being of our nation.
(The confounded Gabby Asare Otchere-Darkos; the perfidious John Boadus; the dissimulating Samuel Awukus; the supine Ken Kuranchies and the many mercenary-hacks of his ilk in the Ghanaian media landscape - jam-packed with third-rate individuals who have failed to master even the basic tool of their profession, the English language - all come readily to mind.)
No one who actually cares about Mother Ghana, must forget those dark days of high-level corruption, in Ghana - when the African sun used to shine only on: the favourites amongst members of the family clans of Kufuor & Co.; ditto the many regime-golden-princes of the era - that super-arrogant high-net-worth-brat, the verbally-aggressive and uncouth Kennedy Adjapong, being a prime example, incidentally; sundry bottom-power girlfriends of the confounded Big-men-with-big-bellies of the time, and above all, on the crony-capitalists of the Kufuor regime - a majority of whom were experts at dodging taxes and, in the end, succeeded in turning our second city, Kumasi, into the smuggling capital of West Africa, no less.
Let no one who truly loves Ghana, forget those forlorn days of infamy - when a fortunate few, ruthlessly exploited our national economy, for private gain, at public expense. So rotten were the Kufuor-era rogues, that they make even the crooks who lurk in the shadows, in the Mills administration, look like veritable saints.
That is why the Hon. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, must let us all know, whether he has now suddenly experienced a road-to-Damascus moment - just like St. Paul did in the Holy Bible: and is thus a changed man and now happens to be a politician who will never allow the Ghanaian nation-state (and all its citizens, without exception!), to be ripped-off, by the powerful and crooked elements, who, though small in number, still dominate his party so completely.
Still, despite our political differences, and in the spirit of the season, I do wish him, all his colleagues in Parliament - on both sides of the chamber - and the aforementioned oh-so-arrogant NPP self-seekers above, as well as all the readers of my Ghanapolitics blog, a happy holiday season. May 2012 be a peaceful and joyous year for all of us, and for Mother Ghana, above all!
Finally, and at the risk of sounding presumptuous, my humble advice to the Hon. Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu, is that he must weigh his words carefully, whenever speaking to the good people of Nkrumah's Ghana - for they are not fools, at all. A word to the wise...
Tel (Powered by Tigo - the one mobile phone network in Ghana that actually works!): + 233 (0) 27 745 3109.
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