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25.11.2020 Feature Article

Akufo-Addo’s Competence Transcends Oil Revenue

Akufo-Addos Competence Transcends Oil Revenue
25.11.2020 LISTEN

You cannot simply explain off the far better administrative and economic performance of the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) by facilely and superficially attributing the same to the relatively greater flow of oil revenue under the tenure of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in the crassly misleading manner that the Mahama-appointed former Finance Minister, Mr. Seth Terkper, has been doing with his media propaganda pieces, in a desperate, peevish and outrageous bid to making up inexcusable excuses for the grossly incompetent administrative performance of former President John Dramani Mahama, the man who ruled Ghana for the longest single presidential term of office – of four-and-half years – in the country’s Fourth Republic (See “Oil Cash for Akufo-Addo Gov’t in 3 Years More Than Mills-Mahama 8 Years Combined – Seth Terkper” Modernghana.com 11/25/20).

You see, the logical problem that a truth-challenged Mr. Terkper has in shamelessly pushing his inescapably devious and mendacious propagandistic argument and agenda here is that the previous John Agyekum-Kufuor-headed government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), that first struck oil or black gold in commercial quantities at the end of 2008 and early 2009, when the Mills-Mahama regime acceded to the Presidency, had absolutely no access to oil revenue. And yet, President Agyekum-Kufuor left behind a far better economy than the latter had inherited from the Cash-and-Carry thoroughly bankrupted economy bequeathed him by the late President Jerry John Rawlings-led regime of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) that held the reins of governance, initially as the sanguinary and extortionate junta of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), for some 20 protracted years.

As we all know, President Kufuor had to courageously take Ghana through the IMF-World Bank-cocktailed fiscal disciplinary program of HIPC – an economic remediation program for Highly-Indebted Poor Countries – to be able to resuscitate an effectively comatose Ghanaian economy, in much the same way and manner that the Rawlings-led junta of the Provisional National Defense Council had taken Ghana through the globally infamous Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). The salient difference here is that under SAP, the grossly incompetent leadership of the PNDC, chaperoned by Dr. Kwesi Botchwey, the latter junta’s make-believe economic guru, had near-irreparably run the Ghanaian Ship-of-State aground. Under HIPC, President Agyekum-Kufuor would be able to not only bring back the ICU-admitted Ghanaian economy to the regular patient-admission ward, the New Patriotic Party, under the ministerial genius leadership of the extant Finance Minister, Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, would be able to get an increasingly convalescent and robust economy back home to at least a lower-middle-income level and a fast-rising middle-income status of an economic miracle.

Using sophistry and whole cloths of untruths to make it seem as if President Akufo-Addo had been handed a sound national economy by January 2017 will not wash. You see, the average Ghanaian citizen and voter is far smarter and more sophisticated and intellectually astute than Mr. Terkper would have the global Ghanaian community believe. As well, the fact of the matter is that the departing John Agyekum-Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party bequeathed the Mills-Mahama regime a far better economy with such functionally robust social intervention programs as the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which the kleptocratic Mahama Posse had effectively bankrupted, a sound and globally competitive Four-Year Senior High School System, which the Mills-Mahama regime would scandalously reduce to an irreparably defective Three-Year System and globally uncompetitive shadow of its former self. The United Nations-sponsored and Paris-based Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) would shortly rank Ghana’s public high school system as the worst and bottommost of its kind among some 145 countries around the globe.

Read More: Oil Cash For Akufo-Addo Gov't In 3years More Than Mills-Mahama 8years Combined — Seth Terkper

By the time that President-Elect Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo assumed the democratic reins of governance from the then-President John Dramani Mahama, the Agyekum-Kufuor-minted National Health Insurance Scheme had effectively collapsed, together with the Aid for the Poor, Nursing Mothers, the Aged and Underprivileged social intervention program, also established by President Agyekum-Kufuor. In other words, it was not a relatively stronger oil economy that had determined that President Akufo-Addo would be a far better manager of the socioeconomic development of Ghana than his immediate predecessors. It is simply a matter of the fact that Ghana’s former Attorney-General and Justice Minister is generously endowed with the vision, fiscal discipline, the ingenuity and the genius of what it really takes to revive, grow and significantly improve the general quality of life of the Ghanaian citizenry. One only needs to critically examine the masterful manner in which President Akufo-Addo has managed the COVID-19 Global Pandemic, even much better than the Trump Administration here in the United States of America, the most scientifically and technologically advanced country in the world, vis-à-vis the grossly incompetent in which the then-President John Dramani Mahama managed the significantly much lower impact of the Cholera Epidemic in 2014, and Dumsor throughout Mr. Mahama’s 4½-year tenure.

Mr. Terkper may also have so soon forgotten that for at least about six months, the meter gauges used in measuring the exact quantities of oil lifted from the offshore mining rigs by the foreign-owned Government of Ghana-contracted mining companies had gone missing under the double-salary Ghanaian taxpayer-creaming kleptocratic Mills-Mahama regime. This is what a patriotic Mr. Terkper ought to be boldly, courageously and fearlessly discussing. But, of course, the former Mahama-appointed wallet-holder is darn too busy blindly crusading for the Gonja-Mafia Looting Brigade to return to Jubilee House in order to be able to do some more looting, a la SADA, SUBAH, GUBAH, Nkonfem-Kanazoe and European Airbus-SE scam-artistry, to worry about telling the unvarnished truth about the Dumsor-inflected Presidency of Mr. John Dramani Mahama.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

November 25, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]

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