The gripping story of the sad fall from grace, of a tall and handsome young man blessed with considerable charisma, who was given an opportunity to blaze a trail for other young people, by being appointed to the government as a minister, but who unfortunately did not have the strength of character to make a success of his opportunity, has engrossed Ghanaians lately.
The Alhaji Munkata saga, clearly demonstrates the need for President Mills to act quickly to get Ghana’s political class to unite and put a bill together, and under a certificate of urgency, get Parliament to pass a new law that will require all government appointees and their spouses, to publicly publish their assets: both before assuming office and after the end of their tenure.
Since human beings are neither saints nor angels, we must not think that Ghana will not end up like Nigeria, if we do not take the necessary steps to ensure that the more dishonest members of our political class do not get the opportunity to steal public funds.
It is vital that our nation does not miss the opportunity to use our oil and natural gas revenues to transform our society – and turn our country into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia.
Those powerful and wealthy individuals in the oil industry, who know the many opportunities available in our country, and who apparently even offered money to some of our previous leaders as inducements, will do exactly the same to the present crop of leaders in charge of our country – as they will want to continue exploiting our country and its people for as long as they possibly can.
As we recall, President Kufuor once famously said that members of his regime were offered money by investors – although they never accepted it: but rather told such investors to go away with their money (when he should have ordered their immediate arrest, for attempting to bribe the president of the Republic of Ghana, no less).
President Kufuor and a small but powerful Akan tribal-supremacist cabal in the presidency, succeeded in dominating the New Patriotic Party (NPP), by maintaining an iron grip on it throughout his tenure.
As we all know, they prospered mightily during the eight years President Kufuor was given the privilege of leading Ghana – and succeeded in ushering in a golden age of business for members of their family clans, their favourite traditional rulers, and their cronies (both male and female).
All that was made possible because from the very beginning, when they started off by receiving kickbacks in the Osu Castle, which they apparently did not account for (one recalls the agonies of the then party chairperson Mr. Haruna Esseku – who despaired that they were not making the kickback-money available for the use of their party), no one could challenge them to see whether or not graft was suddenly enriching them.
That was because ultimately there was no way of comparing their personal net worth at the time they first entered office, and the boom years when the kickbacks had started flowing “waa waa” and they had become seriously rich - and were acquiring a multiplicity of parcels of land; hotels; giant (by our standards) supermarkets; secret stakes in special purpose offshore entities; buying posh homes and expensive luxury cars for delectable young bimbos; etc. etc.
It is imperative therefore that we rely on more than mere platitudinous statements from President Mills, when government appointees are being sworn into office, if we are to be successful in our quest to fight corruption and protect public funds from being dissipated by corrupt public officials.
A majority of Ghanaians voted for President Mills during the run-off of the December 2008 presidential elections, largely because they believed that he was an honest man, who was the candidate most likely not to end up presiding over a MK11 version of the Kufuor era – which is widely acknowledged to be the period when corruption reached its apogee in Ghana.
We cannot afford to see a repetition of those dark days of infamy, when powerful and amoral individuals in leadership positions, driven by unfathomable greed, used their positions to grab as much as they could possibly get away with – in an 8-year orgy of avariciousness unparalleled in our nation’s chequered history, during which they turned our democracy into a kleptocracy: and Ghana became a world power in crony-capitalism.
The only way President Mills can effectively control his ministers and other government appointees, and ensure that they do not follow the example of the greediest crooks from the Kufuor era, and end up destroying his reputation for honesty permanently, is for him to ensure that a law is passed quickly to force all elected officials, from the president himself down to the last district chief executive in the land, and their spouses, to publicly publish their assets.
President Mills cannot possibly leave a good legacy without such a law in place – and he must ensure that it is passed in the quickest time practicable: if he wants to have a successful tenure and be remembered till the very end of time as the leader who brought such legislation into being to protect public finances in Ghana.
Perhaps another lesson he can learn from the downfall of Alhaji Munkata is to ensure that whistle-blowers are not victimized in our country.
That can be done by passing legislation that specifically protects them from any form of victimization – by criminalizing such victimization in every shape or form it takes. In other jurisdictions, the transgressions of whistle-blowers (if any) are invariably overlooked, if they expose corruption in officialdom.
It will benefit our country tremendously if we adopt the same approach here – and offer them decent monetary rewards too: to encourage even more whistle-blowers to emerge. President Mills is clearly a very wise and God-fearing leader – so one hopes that he will heed such advice.
The fact of the matter, is that ordinary Ghanaians are far more likely to agree to make sacrifices, and put up with the hard times they are bound to experience before things get better, under a president they regard as an honest and reforming leader, trying hard to make a corrupt system more transparent.
And ordinary people will ignore all the “politricks” of his corrupt opponents and the harshest of his critics - because they know that most of those amoral and greedy rogues took turns to participate in the brutal and callous gang-rape of Mother Ghana.
The passage of a law requiring government appointees and their spouses to publicly publish their assets before and after their tenures, will send a clear signal to Ghanaians that a new era of transparency has finally dawned – and make them become more patient and bear with the Mills administration, as it sorts out the economic mess from the past, and works hard to bring about the better Ghana they promised them.
That will guarantee him an 8-year tenure too – so let the president heed the call to get such a law enacted and put onto our statute books quickly. It must certainly be on top of his personal list of priorities. A word to the wise…
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