Let Us Give Praise To The Architect

Dumega Raymond Okudzeto
The penchant to destroy initiatives, especially on the business plane, continues to trigger telling repercussions in our body politics.

It has been many years now, and there appears to be no end in sight for the absurdity under the incumbent political administration.

With its genesis in the PNDC era when identifiable businessmen and women were earmarked for destruction out of sheer hatred, the diabolic trend has remained a hallmark of the offshoot of the junta, the NDC.

The latest evidence of this point was played out in the Volta Region where a multimillion dollar investment was botched after government appointees pulled strings in the background to achieve that goal.

An indigene of the region, Dumega Raymond Okudzeto, leading a group of South Koreans with an investment package for the Keta Harbour Project, is the victim of the political intrigues at the hands of NDC elements this time.

The reason for the withdrawal is as intriguing as it is heartbreaking.

Why would a deprived region, where thousands of youth are unemployed, be denied a golden opportunity such as the one under review? Dumega Raymond Okudzeto has been tagged a non-NDC person and so is unworthy of organising an investment drive in his home region, according to NDC-in-government standards.

No country can grow on such a frivolous premise. It is one of the many factors fuelling our stagnation. Over the years the tendency, especially under the NDC administration, to tag hardworking and industrious persons with a particular party colour and destroy their successful businesses has gained a disturbing notoriety.

Mr. Okudzeto's positive thoughts about his home region have been turned upside down because some government appointees consider him a threat and an outcast.

If what the victim of the vintage NDC intrigue is saying is veracious—and we have no doubt to dispute it—then we still have a long way to go in our search for development.

It is nonsense and crazy when government deliberately destroys the investments of persons who provide employment opportunities to thousands of Ghanaians, when that same government is unable to do same for her citizens.

We salute the courage of Dumega Okudzeto who, in the face of myths, pitched an investment camp in his part of the country, albeit one killed at birth.

We recall the many deliberate trumped-up charges against some pharmaceutical companies last year and beyond by government agencies after describing them as financiers of a political party and seeking to destroy them.

Are Ghanaians not free to support political parties of their choice? As we compose this commentary, a businessman who arrived from a foreign trip has been whisked away by security agents after being accused of money laundering.

A pro-NDC newspaper has described the employer of over 2,000 persons as a financier of the largest opposition party. Are other businesses not financing the ruling party with ill-gotten state funds?

Manouvres by state security agencies on the plodding of their employers sound cheap and mean, given where we have reached in our democratic practice. None of the security skirmishes have yielded any results in the form of prosecution and jail terms for the businessmen targeted and embarrassed by the state. We are embroiled in a vicious cycle of vindictiveness of the worst order.

Why won't we praise the architects who put up the wonderful mansions which provide shelters for our need when government is unable to do same?

For how long shall we allow avarice and selfishness to rule us?