Much Furore Over President Spouse’s Salary

My head continue to reel as I read some Ghanaians waxing lyrical and eloquent as they struggle to justify the revelation that the spouses of the president and his deputy will not only receive the equivalent of cabinet ministers’ pay as salaries, but that the payments will be backdated to 2017!

I enjoy splicing my arguments with African proverbs, those who have been reading my articles will know that one of my favorite proverbs is the Yoruba saying: Iri ti a ba ri oja la nna. It means that goods are priced the way they are displayed.

Our ancestors were wise.

There’s a saying that a people get the type of government that they deserve.

Our misrulers in Africa understand our psychology perfectly well; hence their utter disdain and contempt for us.

Without our rulers thinking that we mindless zombies, how else do we explain the opulence we see them display amidst the mind-bending poverty in the land? How else to explain Presidents tooling around town in endless cavalcade of expensive Jeeps in a country where citizens break limbs as they struggle to get space on the rickety contraption we call Molue in Nigeria, Trotro in Ghana, and Matatu in East Africa?

That citizens who struggle to obtain life’s basics like water and electricity came out to vociferate loudly in support of the payment of salaries to wives of Presidents and Vice President not only beggars belief, but it calls for a redefinition of the term Stockholm Syndrome.

By any indices known to developmental statisticians, the Netherlands is a super rich country. The tiny north European country not only boast of one of the highest standard of living in the world but its infrastructures is second to none.

This country of about 17 million people is also among the country that give economic and financial aid to Ghana.

The Dutch state is rich enough to pay salaries to the spouses of all its political leaders, but the Dutch will find the very idea so repugnant that whoever suggests will be asked to seek psychiatric support.

The Dutch place so great an premium on their egalitarianism that no politician in his right mind will demand any special favor from the state.

And while some Ghanaians questions the dignity of seeing MPs in buses; it is a common thing for Dutch politicians to take the same transportation system as ordinary citizens.

Until the threats of terrorists attack forced her to move to the Mayoral palace, the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, was my neighbor in Amsterdam-Oost. She and her family ride bicycles like every other Dutch family. I ran into her several times in the same Albert Heijn supermarket we patronize.

I saw my favorite Dutch PM, the late Wim Kok, several times riding his bicycle on the streets of Amsterdam together with his wife.

The question is beggared: what exactly is wrong with us in Africa that makes our political elite consider our countries like conquered territories whose wealth must be disposed off in haste?

I addressed some of these issues in my defunct column in the Daily Dispatch.

Here are two of the articles:

1. Give the slum a try - http://alaye.biz/give-the-slum-a-try-2/

2. Ghana Ministers in Trotro - http://alaye.biz/ghanas-ministers-in-trotro/

Fẹmi Akọmọlafẹ is a writer and author

July 8, 2021