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22.09.2014 Feature Article

Gulliver Travels To Kofi Dubai’s Ghana

Gulliver Travels To Kofi Dubais Ghana
22.09.2014 LISTEN

GulIiver's Travels, written in 1726 by the Anglo-Irish man Jonathan Swift, is a timeless and universal classic. In this classic, Gulliver travels to Lilliput. The inhabitants of Lilliput are a miniature people standing at no taller than 6 inches. Gulliver finds himself a giant in Lilliput.

On a subsequent voyage Gulliver undertook after escaping from Lilliput, strong storms blew his ship of course. Gulliver ended up on the island of Brobdingnag. The average inhabitant of Brobdingnag stood at no less than 72 feet. Gulliver becomes a miniature human being in Brobdingnag.

In those two voyages (Lilliput and Brobdingnag), Gulliver observed a world of sharp contrasts.

Were Gulliver to travel to Ghana today, I am sure he would be no less amazed by his experiences, albeit of a different kind. Gulliver would most likely be given audience by imaginary President Kofi Dubai. President Kofi Dubai would waste no time telling Gulliver about plans for:

i. A befitting and ultra-modern international airport at Tamale.

ii. An international airport to be sited at Prampram in Greater Accra.

iii. A millennium city.
iv. A new national airline pending the recommendation of Pricewaterhouse.

v. A shoe factory that would be providing free footwear to all school children.

vi. A resurrected and vibrant Asutuare sugar factory that has brought the smiles back on the faces of sugar farmers and that sugar importation is now a thing of the past.

vii. $148,000 as rent in the last 33 months, and since then $456.25 in daily hotel costs to accommodate the Commissioner of a cash-strapped Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice. I am sure the President would feel that this amply shows how important the government views the work of the commission.

viii. A $300m loan to procure arms and equipment for external peace keeping duties.

Armed with this information, Gulliver might have a notion in his mind of a country that is well-positioned with the best of them as the 21st century rolls rapidly by.

Stepping outside of his hotel room or government guest house the day after meeting with President Kofi Dubai to get first-hand information from the people and the environment, you can imagine the astonishing experience of finding that the country the President was talking about can also be described in the following terms:

i. 10,000 of the 20,000 public schools in Ghana do not have toilet facilities.

ii. Students in these Non-Toilet League Schools (NTLS) use the bush for toilet purposes.

iii. Many girls miss 5 days of school every month (when they are in their period) because of the lack of toilet facilities.

iv. The toilet facilities in the Toilet League Schools (TLS) are dilapidated.

v. Whether using toilets or the bush, toilet users have no access to water and soap to wash their hands.

vi. Electricity Supply to homes and businesses lucky to be connected to the national electricity grid have been rationed for the better part of the last three years.

vii. Pipe-borne water is a luxury to many a citizen.

viii. Cholera, long considered an eradicated disease in most parts of the world has claimed no less than 50 lives since June of 2014, all as a result of staggering filth.

ix. Hills are not used to describe mountainous tourist attractions but rather heaps of refuse. All because of a mismanaged economy that has rendered district and municipal authorities suffering from delayed funds remittances from the central government.

Why would a modern-day Gulliver not find the sharp contrasts between “big” talk by President Kofi Dubai and “small” achievements on the ground to be reminiscent of the contrasts in the Gulliver travels of Lilliput and Brobdingnag?

Let the elected government plan seriously for the fundamentals like WET (water, electricity, toilets) and the big projects of millennium cities, ultra-modern airports, and national airlines will take care of themselves.

Gilbert Adu Gyimah
Alberta, Canada
[email protected]

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