LOOTING OF GHANA GOVERNMENT PROPERTY: MY DELIMA

I read with disbelieve a news item featured in all the media pages on 22/5/2012 that the supreme court has ruled in favor of Jake O. Lamptey, a former minister in the erstwhile Kuffour administration who bought a state bungalow during their tenure of office. The idea that he bought the building in the capacity of a citizen of Ghana and not as a minister is bizarre, outrageous, and epistemologically Inexactitude.

Since when has the state started selling official bungalows or lands to it's occupants? Was he not occupying the bungalow as a minister of state? Can all of us have that same opportunities to buy state bungalows? Can any public officer buy any Government of Ghana's bungalows? I am a health worker and occupies a bungalow;Government's bungalow. Can i one day buy that?This is preposterous. A siege mentally.

Our judicial system has for the past few years created a consistency of doubt in the minds of Ghanaians in their quest to ensure probity, accountability, justice and the rule of law in our society. What evidence was needed again to prove that the act was and is still criminal and should not be encouraged in Ghana? This is corruption to the highest degree and yet our courts have failed to ensure justice once again.

Ghana is gradually becoming a laughing-stock in it's dealings with matters of national interest. The scenario is like a murderer who confessed to killing an innocent man but plead that it was done on the influence of alcohol. You either sentenced him to full term imprisonment or reduce his crime to man-slaughter and then sentenced him accordingly. You don't throw the matter out of court for lack of evidence. We live in a society of indiscipline. Indiscipline pervades our life so completely today that one may be justified in calling it the condition par excellence of contemporary Ghanaian society.

We see and hear and read about indiscipline in the home, in the school, in the public service, in the private sector, on the roads and even in the air. In all these we rely on our judicial services and the national security to ensure freedom and justice(coat of arms). Indiscipline and corruption is a rampant phenomenon the world over and this judgement is malevolent and a bad precedence. It's disgusting.

As we have sunk more and more deeply into the quagmire, we have been "blessed" with a succession of leaders who are said to possess impeccable personal integrity but unfortunately are surrounded by sharks and crooks. I do confess to some personal difficulty in even beginning to visualize genuine integrity in that kind of fix; for it has always seemed to me that the test of integrity is it's blunt refusal to be compromised. But be that as it may, we are all living witnesses to the failure of helpless integrity to solve the problem of rampant corruption which threatens now to paralyze this country in every sinew and every limb. Achebe has never ceased to amaze me. I ask O. Lamptey today to as matter of true partriotism, and nationality to, hand over the property to the Ghanaian Government.

All the best Ghana.
ZIBLIM ARMIYAW,
KORLEBU TEACHING HOSPITAL,ACCRA
[email protected].