Simple Request

From the desk of GLU

These 3 days have been interesting.
However, friends, let us remember that we can easily be distracted and take our eyes off the ball, so to speak.
The President's staff or campaign has released an interesting 25 minute Youtube video showing him commissioning, opening new classroom blocks in the North, and lots of fanfare to demonstrate his love and hard work.
Some of us think it is the job of the President to manage the huge amounts of loans incurred in just over 2 years, doubling the national debt in 2 years, from $8.1 billion to what I have been told is now close to $20 billion.
I would love for us to demand and insist that the President share with the public, as an obligation and duty to the nation, the list of the loans and grants, the targeted Projects, How much money, who the Project Managers are to hold responsible, how long, and Payment terms for the loans.
A simple Spreadsheet table from the office of the President or the Ministry of Finance to the Media will suffice.
I consider it our constitutional duty for the government to release this information, our duty to demand it.
Obviously we don't want the Presidents security urinating in the street around his house at Regimanuel, and defecating around the Presidents or Regimanuel Grays residence should be against the law! If the CEO of the company has made an offer of a gift in rental and/or estate property for the President or to the government, it is fine, provided there is full transparent disclosure and there is a leadership guideline on such matters.
It is my feeling that the transition from Chieftaincy to Presidency has not been clearly explained to our people, and a friend told me of how many Chiefs would arrive at Kufuor's residence every morning, some with goats and sheep as gifts.

Folks, what makes me sad is the possibility that our seniors who have attained the status of President seem to have closed their minds as to their responsibility to set guidelines, rules, laws, for our people who seem lost in the wilderness of modern global jungle.
In the year of our Lord 2011, electricity, water, phone lines, Internet service are being rationed, and no new road designs are in the plan while a typical worker takes 4-6 hours daily in city traffic.
Such things os social neglect and negligence in the duty of our Presidents to set new guidelines to bring our nation at par with the world needs to be our emphasis.
Whether Colonel Koku Anyidoho got his tight muscles by sparring with Arnold Schwarzenegger or from his previous job at a block factory should be totally irrelevant, let alone whether he know the difference between rental and purchase, gift or deed.
Folks, please let us jointly hold the President responsible for ensuring the delivery of the needed basic human needs such as water, roads and transportation for our people and communication
And other services for us to conduct business.
We have another 4 months to see results or find another President. This is very critical. Please let us make our President aware the status quo will not suffice and he owes us all as a people a duty to tell us what he doing with and how he is managing the loans, grants, toll collections, duties and taxes, NHIL levies.

Thank you.

In Defence Of the Ahwois

By Kwasi Adu




In our part of the world, where the predominant economic activity is partisan politics, it has become the norm for the elite to spend most of their time striving to be in control of the commanding heights of political power. Their very survival depends on it.

The reason for this state of affairs is that we have an elite that is underdeveloped in terms of adequate private sector capital resources or money that they could use to build manufacturing or processing industries. By far, virtually the only indigenous body that is capable of mobilising the required capital to establish industries and which would be capable of creating jobs is the government. Paradoxically, the same elite have adopted a rigid ideological position that the government should not engage in business. Without a manufacturing base, the country is condemned to a situation where we have to rely on the importation of products from foreign lands for our continued existence. Another truth is that the only way that our local business community can obtain foreign exchange to import their wares is to rely on the resources that the government obtains from the sale of raw materials, such as cocoa, wood products, and mineral resources.

It has therefore become crucial for the elite to want to control the government, so that by so doing, they could control the foreign exchange resources and borrow from abroad to satisfy the consumer needs of themselves, with the crumbs going to the rest of the population. To achieve this control, the elite are embroiled in a fierce competition with each other, using their political parties, in a bid to control the commanding heights of the political economy.

The faction of the elite that achieves the desired political control uses the government machinery to dispense patronage in order to maintain themselves in power. On the other hand, the faction of the elite that is not in power sets itself on a path to destroy those in government so that they can win at the next elections. To achieve this, the opposition may engage in the mundane enterprise to discredit those in power by foul or fair means. They are usually not interested in “national interest” issues. What they do, in their frustration, is to keep attacking personalities within the government, hoping to isolate those opponents from the rest of the population. The reason for choosing this path is simple. Because both opposition and government are in agreement about the use of state resources on themselves alone, the only option left for them is to describe the other in disparaging terms hoping that, by so doing, the electorate would turn away from their opponent.

The method is to portray their opponents
as “bastards”, “greedy”, “blind”, “thieves”, “homosexuals”, “chimpanzees”, etc. In this enterprise, the accusers do not need to produce evidence to back their claims. All that they need to do is to shout the claims on radio and in the newspapers. They also hire “serial callers” among the unskilled and hard-to-employ sections of the society (due to a deliberately bogus educational system designed to keep the poor that way) as well as some unemployed persons, to occupy the radio airwaves. These people, who otherwise would not know where their next meal is coming from, would eulogise their masters while they lampoon the opponents of their masters. When these opposition elite are challenged to produce supporting evidence to back their claims, they would go and invent one. Imagine how the current major opposition tried to “prove” a state of insecurity in the country by relying on an incredibly fictitious story of passengers on a YuTong bus who were allegedly forced by armed robbers to rape fellow passengers on the Kintampo-Tamale Road! It turned out to be a figment of their imagination. Everyday on the radio and in the newspapers, the population is subjected to an orgy of unsubstantiated claims against personalities.

In this enterprise, there are two names that have become virtually endangered species in the politics of Ghana: “Tsikata” and “Ahwoi”.

In July 2008, I wrote in this paper (The Insight), how some people have been afflicted by a disease, which I called “Get a Tsikata”. The sufferers have an innate irrational fear and detestation of anyone called Tsikata. In that article, I wrote:

“The sufferers of this disease, when asked, cannot point to any substantive reason for their affliction. However, these sufferers appear absolutely convinced that there is “something” about a Tsikata that makes him or her a ready target of their phobia. It does not matter what that “something” is. It does not even matter that they cannot point to that “something”. As far as they are concerned, there must be “something” that makes them feel that they have to dislike a Tsikata to the extent that they have to victimise him or her. It appears to me that there is some policy behind this affliction. The policy appears simple: “If any Tsikata pops his head above the parapet, cut him to size”.

That crusade has continued until today, to the extent that even an effort by Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata to earn an honest living has been subjected to an international campaign of vilification, inviting the Internationla Finance Corporation to disqualify him. It is clear that the loathing of the Tsikata’s was originally informed by their thinking that the Tsikata’s were close to the PNDC leadership and therefore needed to be prised off.

Following the 2008 elections, many of the sufferers of this Tsikata-phobia have had their affliction develop and extend into a full-blown Ahwoi-phobia. A few other NDC people have also contracted an Ahwoi-phobia and are shouting themselves hoarse against the Ahwoi’s, instead of improving their arguments (if they have any) against the Ahwoi’s. In the wake of President Mills’ victory, some who thought that they have a divine right to control anyone who runs on the ticket of the NDC were distressed that the new President was charting his own path. They had expected that it was they, who were going to instruct the new President in the appointment of Ministers and other appointees and determine which companies would benefit from contracts. Most important of all, they wanted their political opponents jailed, in spite of the decisions of the normal courts. They fail to realise that however the political bias that the judiciary may have against the NDC, it is unthinkable to expect President Mills to ask Lance Corporal Amedeka to visit judges in the night and abduct them to Bundase.

The stance of some of the anti-Ahwoi crusaders within the NDC has been informed by the view that it is the Ahwoi’s who, being friends of the President, are strengthening his hands against being controlled by those who think that they should be the ones in control. Having lost out in their political game-play, they have resorted to name-calling, describing the Ahwoi’s as “greedy bastards”, etc. On what exact issue that they claim the Ahwoi’s have been guilty over, they are unable to state. As for being “bastards”, the detractors appear to be only engaged in some sort of reverse thinking since that word more describes their own status of parentage rather than the Ahwoi’s.

So far, no one has been able to point to one single issue over which the Ahwoi’s have been “greedy” or corrupt. When they come to point to any such instances, we would gladly stand to change our minds. What the campaigners have confined themselves to, is some weird analogy that if the Ahwoi’s are close to the President, then they might have been “greedy”. Kwamena Ahwoi is still teaching in a university. Ato Ahwoi does not occupy any Ministerial position. He is not even a member of the NDC executive. What he occupies is a non-Executive chairmanship of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC). It means that he does not manage the Company. If it is because of the nature of the company of which he is Chairman, would they describe the Chairman of the Board of Directors of COCOBOD or that of VRA in similar terms?

Mr. Ato Ahwoi was not among the “advisors” who were prevailing on the President to cave in to the machinations of Kosmos Energy when Kosmos decided to off-load their shares to ExxonMobil without the consent of the government. He was not among the “advisors” who asked the President to drop any action against Kosmos for selling confidential information about Ghana’s oil to third parties. In fact, during the debate over those issues, Mr. Ato Ahwoi’s “national interest” position incurred the wrath of the US government that it ended in Mr. Ato Ahwoi being refused a visa to visit the United States. After all that fight for the “national interest”, Mr. Ato Ahwoi now virtually has the proverbial rotten egg on his face because the government decided to cave in to Kosmos. Mr. Ato Ahwoi was not among the NDC leaders, who, for reasons best known to themselves, ambushed the President to insulate the EO Group from corporate prosecution by allowing them to sell their shares to Tullow Oil.

Mr. Kwesi Ahwoi is the only Ahwoi who has a Ministerial appointment at the Food and Agriculture Ministry. So far, no one has been able to say that he has been greedy or corrupt. The latest allegation that he has just formed a haulage company to “cart imported rice to several destinations in and outside Ghana” flies in the face of the truth. While working for a Ghanaian businessman in 2007, I was the one who drafted a tenancy agreement between his company and that of Mr. Kwesi Ahwoi for the leasing of his work yard in Dansoman to Mr. Kwesi Ahwoi’s company for the purpose of using part of the businessman’s work yard for the parking of the haulage trucks of Mr. Ahwoi. That was in 2007, when the NDC was not in power. For the detractors of the Ahwoi’s to claim that suddenly, Mr. Kwesi Ahwoi, has used his ministerial position to form a company to “cart rice” is contemptible.

Left with nothing substantial to allege, they extend their revulsion to the brother-in-law of the Ahwoi’s. The critics question why the brother-in-law should have headed the Research Department of the Foreign Ministry. In 1983, I knew that brother-in-law to be working in Ghana’s Embassy in Liberia. I saw him when I was in exile in Monrovia in 1983. To express suspicion about the appointment of a person who, for the past twenty-eight years has been working in the Foreign Service, can only be classified as sour grapes on the part of upstarts whose only rise to high office is through the hijacking of the genuine struggles of other people to usurp power for themselves.
In my view, the real greedy bastards in the NDC are those who, in 2007 and 2008, moved from one African Head of State to the other, soliciting for funds, ostensibly for the NDC campaign, but who kept those millions to themselves. The real greedy bastards in the NDC are those who screamed against a government investigation into the circumstances surrounding the dubious award of contracts (in the NPP days) to an Israeli company to refurbish our embassies abroad, but who did not do the job after being paid millions of US Dollars. Their reason for opposing the investigation is that, the Israeli company has been giving them money. The real greedy bastards in the NDC are those who are buying government bungalows (just like the NPP did), in spite of the NDC 2008 campaign promise against that policy. The real greedy bastards in the NDC are those who prevailed on the government to sell out to Kosmos and the EO Group. The real greedy bastards in the NDC, are those who are asking the government to sell the Tema Shipyards to their Israeli business friends, following a CJA expose of the mismanagement by the current Malaysian owners. This is a classic example of taking advantage of the CJA’s call for the government to take it over and run it as a state company. The fact that Tema harbour could risk being a terrorist target if the Shipyards are sold to the Israelis does not matter to the greedy bastards- as long as they get their cut.

People should ask themselves whether any of the Ahwoi’s is involved in any of these.

As for the anti-Ahwoi’s in the NPP, all they can do is to descend into the gutter by claiming that Ato Ahwoi is a homosexual. What a laugh!

In writing these, I am fully aware of the possible backlash. I could almost hear the opponents saying “He has been paid to write this” or that it is because “he comes from the same area as the Ahwoi’s”. The misfortune of such people is that they know fully well, after working with some of them some time in the last century, whether someone ever paid me to sell my conscience. As for the tribal bigots, they do not care whether they contradict themselves when at some times, they describe the Ahwoi’s as part of a “Fante Confederacy” while at other times, depending on what they want to do, describe them as Sefwi. It would not matter. Their only real bellyache would be that someone should dare to come to the defence of their victims whom they are bent on devastating “pasa pasa”.

Now, the real greedy bastards must stand up!

These Fulanis Are Testing My Patience

By Kwame Yeboah
Harding University College of Pharmacy
Searcy, Arkansas. USA.


The good Christian book and the Akan culture of Ghana advice us to love our neighbors like ourselves. And to a large extent Ghana has done her fair share of accommodating and helping citizens of other nations in their times of struggle. Under President Nkrumah we spent more than a fair share of our resources to liberate them from colonialism. Even in our times of need we spared our moneys in their development projects so their independence will be meaningful. For the past few decades, we have sent our soldiers to help in peace keeping efforts in their tribal wars.
We in Ghana have to a large extent ignored the political boundaries set by colonialists and have allowed nationals of other countries particular fellow West Africans particularly the Fulanis to come to Ghana with little impediments. Ghana is one of the few countries if not the only one who for a long time has gone without national identity card that allows differentiation between Ghanaians and citizens of other nations. In spite of a brief period in our history when we were forced to deport nationals of other African countries, we have tolerated these nationals in the spirit of the proverbial Ghanaian hospitality.
Our leading role in Africa has made us to understand what our Fulani brothers and other nationals of Niger, Chad and Mali go through periodically. We know they live in places where water is scare year after year and that crop production is marginal at best. We know that nature and the ever worsening global warming have turned them to nomadic and semi-nomadic people who tend sheep, goats and other livestock which they move large distances to reach rain-fed pasturelands to survive. Out of love for the fellow African, we in Ghana have for a long period of time allowed the Fulanis to bring their cattle down south to graze, anytime the weather makes it difficult for grass in their county to sprout naturally, especially, during the long dry season. As good neighbors, we have abided by the regional right-of-passage laws and made things comfortable for them when they have come to the country because of difficulties they periodically face. Recently when our country was going through devastation as a result of the bush fires in the middle 1980s, we accommodated a large population of Chadians.
Yet evidence has shown that when they arrive in Ghana, the majority of these people treat us as if they have more right than us in our own country. When they came in the 80s, all they were interested in only begging for saraka. All attempts to let them to some productive work were resisted based on what they considered as religious grounds. About a third of Ghanaians are Muslims and there is not African religion that is not practiced in Ghana. The plan was to take our hospitality for granted and make us look like fools.
They are back in Ghana again this year where they have been reported to be involved in armed robbery. Many Ghanaian farmers have borne the brunt of Fulani herdsmen and their rampaging cattle. They have raped, killed, and destroyed large track of farms belonging to peasant farmers of this nation. It is reported in the Brong Ahafo, Volta, Greater Accra and other regions where they have taking the law into their own hands. In Nkawkaw, a whole section of the town is reported to have been seized by these barbarians making normal live for the citizenry difficult. Conflict resolution NGO the West African Network for Peace Building (WANEP) has been identifying Fulani herdsmen as a major security threat for the country in its quarterly Ghana Alert reports since 2010. Many of them cross into the country fully armed with no regard to our laws.
We have done our best to be good neighbors to these people who have taken our hospitality for granted. Our experiences with others when we migrated to their countries are not the type they can with impunity test our patience. If we have tolerated them this far, it is not because we are weak but because we are civilized. There is a limit to which the normal Ghanaian citizens can go with their barbaric behaviors. We can’t be muzzled out of our own house.
I hope the government of Ghana will take measures to calm our people and to protect them from these unruly visitors. In Ghana there are leaders in every town, locality and family. These leaders should be made collectively responsible for any agreements that will allow these Fulanis to have access to our resources and ensure community supervision. This will prevent unilateral agreements with some individual Ghanaians to allow universal understanding and prevent bitterness that can lead to resistance and conflict in the communities where they go. It should be noted that the country side of southern Ghana is for farming. Already, the inhabitants have little plots for subsistence farming because of land tenure system. No single individual has large tract of land that can accommodate herdsmen and their cattle. This is why the indigenous people don’t keep cattle. It will be the right thing for the government to let them know where the country can accommodate them and their cattle and where we cannot.
Also, we like any other African country have immigration laws that need to be respected. As it happens to Ghanaians wherever we go, individual coming to Ghana must have papers stamped, or cross at established border crossings to enter legally. We seem to be the only country where immigrants and foreign criminal gangs have more access to our passport than the citizenry because of corruption.
We can’t be too kind to be stupid.

Kwame Yeboah

Ghana Ain't Working Folks !

By Dr Yaw Ohemeng


It is a slowly dawning fact that Ghana ain’t working and the very fabric of the nation is in tatters. The Police are politically-controlled, unsanitary conditions abound everywhere, street lamps are without bulbs, traffic lights are out, roads are pot-holed and every road junction is a bottleneck. Taking a short trip through the nation’s capital is an arduous task that could take you the best part of two hours. The country is polarised along political and tribal lines and the President is doing nothing to help matters. Every time he has had the opportunity to bring the nation together, he has woefully failed. The Police have become an automaton controlled by the political classes. It is baffling that the Ghana Police would be willing to arrest an NPP sympathiser who said unflattering things about the President but do not see the need to apply the same laws to people allied to the President who say worse things against opposition politicians.

The majority of roads in Ghana are potholed and the condition of the roads and streets of Accra is a pointer to what is happening nationwide. Road projects in and around Accra have stalled and in some cases appear abandoned. In spite of this, some major through roads, closed in connection with the works, remain closed two years on. These are adding to the congestion in the capital. One of such is the closure of the through road from the Atomic junction to Madina Zongo junction on the Accra-Aburi road. Are the cost and inconvenience of the detour through Haatso not apparent to anyone in authority? It would only take a temporary through road to ease the congestion yet nothing is being done. Another eyesore is at the entrance to the University of Ghana. Is it satisfying that the entrance to the nation’s premier university is blocked off by a fence of rusted corrugated sheets whilst the road works that necessitated that appears stalled? Is it not possible to barrier off the new road (if its completion is years away) to allow the university entrance to function?

This morning (06/08/2011), on Joy’s Newsfile programme, there was a young NDC man (Kwadwo Twum Boafo) bemoaning the fact that their predecessors left them these projects without putting the necessary funding in place. This young man does not know that when you decide to go into politics to form a government you have to accept both the good and bad hands dealt by your predecessor. The NDC government was happy to gratefully accept the budding oil industry and cannot accept the responsibility of completing road projects started by their predecessor? What sort of leadership would that then be?

I have a funny feeling, though, that nothing much will happen to address these concerns. Of course this is Ghana where the ruling classes do not feel for the ordinary folks. They prefer to ride in air-conditioned 4x4 vehicles that cushion them against the twists, turns and jerks of the pot-holed roads. You only have to drive outside Accra, say from Nsawam to Asamankese or Nsawam to Suhum and you can appreciate what I am talking about. Where are the maintenance departments of the Ghana Highway Authority or the Department of Urban Roads that they cannot resurface roads in even the capital? Are they being starved of their budget allocation to carry out their function?

The most serious challenge facing our nation has been ignored by successive governments. There was a seminar by the Ministry of Finance in October 2010 during which it was announced that the nation spends up to 84% of annual receipts on statutory payments. After setting aside 9% of the remaining 16% as contingency, this leaves only 7% for investment. Thus we have an untenable situation where we have to source loans for every development we undertake. The size of Ghana’s public sector is the largest in Africa, even larger than that of South Africa. The nation’s attention was drawn to this by the British High Commissioner to Ghana. In the usual fashion, Mr Kwesi Pratt accused him of arrogance and the advice fell on deaf ears. But it is a fact that until we shrink the size of the public sector, we cannot undertake any meaningful development from our own resources. We have to cut down on the number of boards and the people who serve on them. We have to cut down on the number of political appointees and aides who feed on the public purse. I am yet to see a government that would be bold on this front. This is the challenge that Ghana faces which our politicians and their numerous hordes of supporters as well as the media have yet to address.

It is a sad fact that our politicians who should be solving problems of the day are caught up in the battles of yesteryears. Today we remember the politicians of yesteryears (i.e. the Paa Grants, the Danquahs, the Nkrumahs and the Busias, etc.) because they selflessly served their nation and had a vision. What is the vision of the Ghanaian politician of the 21st Century that would make us remember him/her 50 years from hence?

Our media have taken press freedom to absurd proportions. They spend decibel-hours of radio time and column-inches of print material discussing and dissecting meaningless pronouncements by politicians. How much time do we spend on finding solutions to sanitation problems, water problems, poor BECE results and the spate of motor accidents on our roads? Not significantly much. We appeared preoccupied with inconsequential issues whilst the fabric of the nation wears and fades away.

We have a President who never interacts much but rather surfaces every now and then to muddy the waters, and then goes back into hibernation. We have a government that has no clue on how to run a country. I wonder how they would have fared if there were no already existing state institutions. They have no idea about how to: draw up joined-up and integrated policies; cost them; announce them; and implement and monitor them. Thus they have no idea whether they have created 23,000 jobs or 1.6m; whether they have eliminated 165 schools under trees or 1000. Simply put, this lot are running our country down and this is why Ghana ain’t working.

The professionalism with which the NPP ran Ghana has been replaced by insults-based governance. From the President down to party operatives, the NDC cannot join any debate with a view to convince Ghanaians. Whether it is STX or collateralisation of oil or purchasing of aircrafts, they rely only on insults to advance their case. Oh how I wish people choke on their words anytime they mention “Better Ghana Agenda”. If this is a better Ghana then I shudder to think what a “good Ghana”, let alone a “bad Ghana” would look and feel like.

I detect from Ghanaian radio reports on the unrests in the Arab world (especially Libya) a certain amount of gloating. If I were the Ghanaian politician, I would not be gloating for there is something distinct about what is happening. The changes are not being driven by the military but rather by a hapless youth whose national leaders have failed to present them with a vision of the future. This can be said of Ghana and other sub-Saharan African countries too. What is happening with the NDC foot soldiers is an indication of the youth beginning to hit back. If we do not address their situation with concrete policies (rather than bribes and empty promises), a time would come that they would be joined by the youth from other political parties. The consequences then would be similar to what we saw on the streets of Tunis, Cairo and Benghazi!

Dr Yaw Ohemeng

Manchester, UK