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20.12.2014 Feature Article

Clutching At Straws In 2014

Clutching At Straws In 2014
20.12.2014 LISTEN

May my head grow like onions in the ground if I pretend that I live in a great country.2014 was a difficult year. Ghanaians have been clutching at straws in the most difficult circumstances, hoping against hope that somehow things will shake down well if we tried harder. But life became more difficult as we tried and even experimented with some desperate survival measures.

The lights never came. There was never water. The labour strikes never stopped. The jobs never came. Corruption soared. Life sucked. Certainly, a Daniel has to come to judgment on this (somebody needs to tackle the difficulties with decisiveness and precision). An allusion to the Daniel in the Bible, Shakespeare first used the expression in 'The Merchant of Venice' to refer to a person who settles a difficult matter. Well, John Mahama is the Daniel at this point. The problems stare him in the face; what decisions is he taking to bring some sanity to Ghana? Has he so far shown effective leadership in the governance of the country?

I felt the drastic change in environment when I jumped into the country from Canada, where I had built a temporary home in the snow of Ontario. I had been away for twelve years and called myself a Canadian-Ghanaian when it suited me, or Ghanaian-Canadian when I needed to feign some patriotism to identify with my African identity. I was quite comfortable in a country where city council officials found it necessary to knock on my door to check if I liked the quality of the air I breathed in my environment. They would leave a number behind to call if you felt unsafe. When the street lights in my neighbourhood blinked or dimmed, engineers were only a phone call away.

My wife picked me from the airport to Dansoman, where it was our turn to endure dumso, dumso. I couldn't see my son's face properly in the candle-lit living room. A mobile phone provided some light in the bathroom as I took a shower. “This is how we do it here”, my wife muttered. With candles everywhere in the house, I asked how safe Reagan was. The situation looked pretty awful and unpromising. Was the game worth the candle to have headed home when the coast was not clear?

I asked: What is the government doing about all these? There was a feeling of misery and despondency in the country. In the heat of it all, upper middle-class citizens had taken to the streets to 'Occupy the Flagstaff House' to demand answers. They would later 'Occupy Corruption' when cases of public graft and mismanagement were no more news. To survive, the average Ghanaian needed enough energy to beard the lion in its own den. People woke up every day to a new question, yet no answers were coming forth from those who made the policies. The general sentiment was that things needed to change; a fresh perspective was needed to tackle the problems.

How do we change a difficult situation? We have a President; don't we? John Mahama is his name. In this one man is invested lots of power to chart a critical pathway to address the problems. The other day, we heard he was dancing to a sarcastic hi-life song which suggested that he was doing well but people have just decided to be unappreciative. The Daddy Lumba song urged him not to bother with people for whom the sacrifice of death was never enough. Matthew 7:6 tells a very apt story.

Who doesn't feel the heat in this country? When there is so much sloppiness in the management of public resources, and protracted problems are handled with worrying amateurishness, you wonder whether we wouldn't have done a better job leaving things as they were. What is the effect of making laws when nobody is accountable? We have borrowed so much and what do we have to show for all the trouble?

Leadership requires a subtle range of qualities, which are usually difficult are describe, but easy to experience. Is John Mahama a good leader like Kwame Nwia-Kofi Ngologma? The circumstances and the contexts are different, but the urgency is the same. First, Mr. Mahama has been sincere about the difficulties in the country; he has acknowledged that the meat is down to the bone, calling for effective management of the little meat left on the bone. Second, he has acted on that admission by sacking a few public officials who didn't spare the little meat. A committee, a commission there, there have been a few attempts to check abuse and mismanagement of public resources while many more abuses slip through our fingers.

Suddenly, Ghanaians feel the urgent need to show dissent and express dissatisfaction at things we parried awaywithout incident just a few years ago. The staff of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ),are dissatisfied with their Chief Accountant, and they want everybody to listen to them. A public official cannot live in a hotel for that long whether their accommodation is ready or not. There is a creeping sense that public office is no more a privilege to be enjoyed, but a responsibility to serve. These are good developments for a country like ours.

2015 should bring some good tidings for the people of this country. It is difficult to tell what will change in this country when the changes we have seen so far are things that have hardly changed. President John Dramani Mahama would need more than rhetorical brilliance and oratorical fireworks to convince Ghanaians that no country can remain sedated on hope forever. He should either spare us an end of year message or tell us exactly what he intends to do to solve the problems in the country.If he needs to change his name to Daniel to come to that great decisive judgment in 2015, he would not be the first. JomoKenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah were good Daniels, too.

KwesiTawiah-Benjamin
[email protected]

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