Ghana's minister for information and media relations, the Honourable Mahama Ayariga, appears to be out of touch with the realities faced by ordinary people in Ghana. And Ghana is not alone in having such out-of-touch politicians in government. Unfortunately, they exist throughout Africa.
Yet, seldom has the need for selfless, visionary and competent leadership, been of more urgency in Africa. With global climate change making a complete nonsense of weather patterns, and endangering crop yields, populations across Africa have become increasingly vulnerable - as food security is threatened throughout the continent.
For many in Africa, the future looks bleak - as the major food producing regions across the world are also being impacted negatively by global climate change: and crop yields fall there too. It will lead to high prices globally for major staples such as rice, wheat and corn.
Against that backdrop, it is important for politicians in Ghana to offer honest leadership that understands clearly that ordinary people's individual experiences, in cost-of-living terms, as they struggle daily to survive, inform their view of the state of the national economy - not statistics churned out by clever politicians to support Alice-in-wonderland-claims about the state of the econony.
What your average citizen wants, is to live in a nation in which affordable healthcare is available countrywide - and that has an economy that provides jobs, which enable them to house, clothe and feed their families; educate their wards; pay their bills; and save for the future.
No amount of statistics bandied about by politicians to support claims that the economy is doing well, when it is not the case in the real everday world, will convince ordinary people - if their individual experiences clearly tell them that they are facing hard times.
The Hon. Mahama Ayariga and those Ghanaian politicians - across the spectrum: as the opposition New Patriotic Party also has its fair share of such individuals too - who think like him, must never forget that.
If the Hon. Mahama Ayariga wants to help the ruling party - that he is such a prominent member of - he must think up initiatives that will help alleviate poverty in rural Ghana.
With respect, for his information, an example that will enable his government create jobs and wealth, in much of rural southern Ghana, is the use of coir-fibre from coconuts to produce high-value high-density binderless boards, in local factories, for the building and packaging industries - both for domestic markets and for export.
Such initiatives, not propaganda and sophistry, will save his party from defeat in the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections.
The Hon. Mahama Ayariga can ask the ministerial team at the ministry of trade and industry to get the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), and the Building Research Institute (BRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), to collaborate with the Wageningen UR of Holland's research team headed by Dr. Jan van Dam, to replicate its ecocoboard project in the Philipinnes, in the Ellembelle District - as well as other coconut-growing districts in southern Ghana.
It is a perfect rural poverty-alleviation and wealth-creation initiative - that is bound to give his party enough votes in rural Ghana to enable it win the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections comfortably. In a nation full of wide-awake citizens - fed up with having to make never-ending sacrifices for the common good, but seldom receiving any tangible benefits in return - dissimulating about the national economy will definitely not win his party those crucial elections, which will determine the future direction of our homeland Ghana. A word to the wise...
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