Opinion › Feature Article       09.04.2022

Akufo Addo Government: A Graveyard of the Ghanaians Economy

A tragic comical marathon race by kids representing the former presidents of our dear republic vividly captures our present situation as a people with Akufo Addo as president.

In that video which has attracted a lot of views in the social media, the kid representing Atta Mills started the marathon race in appreciable pace and gap and brought the baton to the next kid purportedly representing President Mahama who, in turn, gives the baton to the kid representing Akufo Addo. Upon receiving the baton, instead of running forward, the Akufo Addo kid runs backwards with the baton at a breakneck speed that ruined their team's stake in the whole marathon race.

Nothing can exemplify the current administration's abysmal performance than that tragic-comedy. And like the former President and a president in waiting, come January 2025, In Sha Allah, John Dramani Mahama, has also added his voice, "corruption, general incompetence, and profligacy" have in conjunction with arrogance of power plus unfortunate appetite for borrowing, have combined to bring the current suffocating economy in the country.

People elsewhere where prudent and judicious economic policy steps were taken before the arrival of Covid and lately, the Ukranian war, are not in this level of drudgery Ghanaians are living in.

Akufo Addo has taken Ghana back in light years that would take only a miracle to reverse and rescue this country from both political and economic perdition and extinction.

After the State of Nation's Address by His Excellency, the President, I personally decided initially to heed to the call made by the National Organizer of the National Democratic Congress, NDC, Lawyer George Opare Addo, imploring discerning Ghanaians to ignore the shenanigans and mischief of the Vice President, Dr. Bawumia after his address of the economy.

I saw the SONA as a declaration of war on the cognitive abilities of the citizens of this country and I thought responding to the President on that would have given him some importance as he has become butts of jokes having dwarfed the economy beyond growth.

However, fellow Ghanaians, with the "Economic vice" Vice President of our republic now joins his Boss who has become Judas-cum-Pharasee President that Ghana has ever had and would ever have, to prolong their blame game of economic mess which their misgovernance has caused, I presume it is important to rescue gullible citizens who may fall for their machinations.

In fact, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr, “sometimes silence is a betrayal of justice and morality”. We cannot ignore the outright lies and deception by the Akufo Addo government that has created a graveyard of the Ghanaian economy.

Aside the fact that the SONA was fraught with cooked up data, there was little trace of truth in what the president was saying.

For instance, regarding the kilometers of roads the President purported to have been constructed turned out to be a flat lie. Fact-check Ghana did a follow up on some of the wild claims by the president and they were astonished to find them nothing more than a negotiation of facts, untrue, and fraud!

The president boldly and audaciously claimed in his SONA that a whopping 10, 875 km of roads have been built in the last five years under his stewardship as president. (I guess those roads of have been constructed in the Ionosphere, farther away from our sight and appreciation, where his hired luxury jets cruise)

However, the Ministry of Roads published 4,263.37 km of roads built as at May last year. How could the government build up to 6,638.63 km of roads within 10 months?

Nevertheless, cursory glance at what both the president and his “economic vice” vice president have been saying suggest the duo are now looking for Ukraine War stimulus funds to be donated to Ghana. Another kumbaya dance they are looking for.

Apparently and most certainly, the blame game of the Akufo Addo government has since moved away from blaming the erstwhile Mahama government to first, Covid-19 and now the Russia Invasion of Ukraine.

Actually, the government has been gasping for breath and looking for a way out having thought they have found peace and comfort in corruption which, however, unfortunately, turns out to be a cataclysmic sudden "boomerang effect".

In my last article, I intimated that the only way out for the government is to retrieve stolen monies from the national kitty to revamp the economy.

Unless Ghanaians who have been leaving under rocks since the advent of the Akufo Addo administration, the government has been engaged in the business of passing of blame on others and stealing in amazing ways stranger than fiction those who came before us never witnessed. Yet not a single appointee of the government has been prosecuted. And this is happening at a time we have an office designated for prosecution of corrupt officials.

Perhaps the president is neck deed in the honeypot of that same corruption and filthy lucre. A reason why Martin Amidu could not function as the first Special Prosecutor but disarmed in every imaginable way.

Call them a government of saints and angels.

Fellow Ghanaians, if there's anything the current administration has mastered apart from corruption and thievery, it is their ability never to own up and accept responsibility for the economic nosedive we have been struck with.

They are a government who never make mistake. It is always someone else's fault and mismanagement, never theirs.

Otherwise how could they anchor the economic management of the country in "economic painkillers" policies like the expansionary fiscal policy which is only used after a disaster has been struck but they used it before a disaster and still expect to have a normal economy when a disaster later strikes?

How could stimulus package funds have been diverted and siphoned away without using it to douse the economic tension, yet expect miracle to manage the economy?

Okay,fine. Let us decide to give the government the benefit of the doubt against any highest form of tomfoolery, and agree that Covid-19 crashed the economy they "built", what did the government do with its package in the form of monetary donations donated to the government both international and local?

This is what crippled the economy motivated by misplaced and misapplied economic priorities and mismanagement.

For example, the BBC Pidgin reported in July 2020 that an amount of 9, 383, 487 dollars was used to "cook food" for Covid-19 locked down victims in only some parts of Kumasi and Accra.

How? "Did we go or did we come?”

And how much is a bag of maize?

In fact, for the Ghana government, Covid-19 was a blessing and not a curse, largely because of the huge looting field the pandemic created through international donations from IMF and World Bank Support Groups who generously donated to member states substantial amount of dollars to cushion economies of member states.

Sadly, such monies immediately vanished into bottomless pockets of government officials and the regime that is collapsing in stages!

I am personally predicting that Akufo Addo would flee the presidency sooner than we expected. The man is perplexed and confused.

No wonder the president and his "vice" (as in evil, like vice news) president have decided to start beating the TomTom for another stimulus package of funds to cushion economies by pointing at the Ukranian war. In their expectations that IMF and the World Bank would cushion them again?

Both the World Bank and the IMF donated generously to Ghana in cash and kind. While World Bank donated $100 million the IMF gave Ghana 1 billion dollars. Yes, “b” for “billion”. This is notwithstanding local donations as well as donations from bilateral relations. How much has been received, we don’t know.

Where is that money? I supposed if that fund had been honestly used as anticipated by these international financial bodies our situation won’t be like this. People are literally eating with the animals – leaves.

Let the President be told loud and clear, that both the IMF and the World Bank are not Ghana government. They have in fact, lamented painfully the siphoning of their donated funds to help helpless and hapless citizens.

Fellow Ghanaians, to open the can of worms, unbeknownst to many unsuspecting and utterly deluded citizens, the unsolicited and unnecessary presidential address every Sunday night during the pandemic by President Akufo Addo, was a "pseudo fight" against the disease of Covid-19 which paved the way to cart a way huge sums of its money donated by the International Monetary Fund, IMF and the World Bank.

It was to create the impression of government's effort (or fraud) in the management of the pandemic in Ghana while the funds are being siphoned away in the most barbaric manner.

In fact, stealing in larger quantities and quantum was what orchestrated the idea of generating a GH¢ 200.00 and the GH¢100 denomination in order to make stealing in larger sums simple. It is why Ghana government, however incompetent its managers maybe, decided to use an economic policy (expansionary fiscal policy that later veered into monetary policy) for for consecutive years!

We have been stripped naked in this country by the Akufo Addo government that has been a huge home for criminality and political gangsterism; we have been financially dehydrated and defrauded; the government has over the past five years been twisting a dagger in the chest of Ghanaians. Especially during the pandemic, in this country.

For me, the meritless address given by the Vice President which was dubbed "Bawumia Speaks on the Economy" should have rather been dubbed "Bawumia lies on the Economy".

Apart from the irrelevant graphs and unnecessary curves the address of the economy was fraught with, there were also cooked up data and misapplication of scenarios to beguile gullible Ghanaians.

It's just amazingly amazing how our collective gullibility as a country has led to the persistent mockery of our intelligence by few evil politicians in this country.

Uncritical with seemingly cognitive impairment we may seem to be, why should we continue to allow politicians to attack our sense of reasoning?

How can a blind man leads the way of a man who ain't blind? Only Ghana can such a thing happen.

Personally I was thinking when Bawumia finished with his "propaganda" address on the state of the economy he may not have gotten home safely and in peace because of the level of insults rained on Ghanaians.

But I have been perplexed and appalled to see a tribe of sycophantic writers and hired praised-singers eulogizing this mess. Where have they found the "humanity" and the hearts to defend this palpably indefensible economic mess.

Akufo Addo shall be remember for creating a graveyard of the Ghanaian economy and reducing the country to a poverty capital of Africa.

That's why today Bloomberg is reporting that the Ghana Cedi (¢) is the worse performing currency in Africa and the whole wide world.

May God save us.

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