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Open message to Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto

By Stephen Nana Boakye
Letter Open message to Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto
OCT 19, 2022 LISTEN

Happy Birthday, Dr.Owusu Afriyie Akoto, Ghana’s minister of food and Agriculture. The people of Africa and from all over the world are greatly honored to celebrate your birthday and wish you good health and strength. You have been an amazing person and you continue to inspire many of us to try to do better for mankind.

Although I send this message to you, I really intend it to be a message to our leaders in Africa especially ministers of Food and Agriculture. As we all celebrate your birthday with joy, I think it is an opportune time to remind ourselves why you are such a great statesman in the world especially Africa. On your birthday, I take the opportunity to remind fellow African statesmen of a few aspects of your character worth emulating to advance the course of development and peace in Africa particularly Ghana in major ways.

One of the reasons I most admire you is because of your capacity to forgive. Nearly years ago, your father, Baffour Osei Akoto was humiliated by Ghana’s first president Dr. Kwame Nkrumah due to his uncompromising stance and belief in the inherent rights and welfare of all human beings in Ghana. Your father was humiliated and separated from his family for agitating for the rights and welfare of all Ghanaians, however, not long after your father has been freed, you(Dr. Akoto) accepted to serve Ghana as Minister for food and Agriculture under the government of President Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo Addo for the first term and now the second term. You never looked back to the many years of suffering that your father went through and you did not seek to punish your father’s tormentors. Instead, you called for forgiveness and for all Ghanaians to work together and build the nation, never singling out any specific group. Your father’s firm stand for a united population created favorable conditions for building a united Ghana so as you are.

Unfortunately, many of our leaders have not emulated this quality. They continue to seek revenge against their fellow countrymen. The older generation compels the younger to seek vengeance against injustices inflicted upon them in the past. Members of some ethnic groups continue to engage in prolonged conflicts because leaders of these groups are not willing to forgive. Rather than seek ways to unite people from different races, clans, tribes and religious groupings, leaders preach the gospel of divide and rule. The result has been continued discrimination and marginalization of some parts of the population. I hope that we can use your birthday to reflect on the power of forgiveness in forging inter-ethnic and inter-regional differences. If only we can borrow this one thing from you—the spirit of forgiveness—, then Africa particularly Ghana could make major advances to achieving harmony and development. I use your birthday to ask our leaders to focus more on the power of forgiveness and compromise, for this is the right thing to do.

Another aspect of your life that I admire is your refusal to contest the NPP presidential primaries over the past years despite being poised for a landslide victory. Despite having the constitutional right, you opted out to let other leaders like President Nana Akuffo Addo and Former President John Agyekum Kufour to contest the NPP primaries all of whom have added their quota to the country’s development. I’m therefore happy that the right time has come that a good leader like you is prepared to lead the party(NPP), and subsequently lead the country to the promise land. Even after all your father’s struggles which reflected in your life, it was not power that you wanted, but the ultimate goal of securing economic stability through Agriculture for Ghanaians.

Sadly, sir, quite a number of NPP party faithfuls continue to hold the courage of contesting you in the upcoming primaries despite these huge sacrifices of yours to the party. It is these types of leaders that continue to undermine development prospects in the country. Some of these leaders will no doubt be sending you good wishes and admiration on your birthday– gestures that are hypocritical and undermined by their own actions. They should honor your works by relinquishing power now in the sense of reverting their decision to contest you in the upcoming NPP party presidential primaries. If for nothing at all, they should know that the sector in which you’re managing has salvaged Ghana in the midst of the two crisis (Russia-Ukraine unrest and COVID-19 pandemic). This is the right thing to do.

Finally, I have great admiration for you because you never used your political power and clout as the minister for food and Agriculture to enrich yourself at the expense of common Ghanaians. You saw the need for you to put all resources into the Agricultural sector to generate huge returns for the country which will help facilitate developmental projects. It is in light of this that your ministry has ever since your assumption as the minister for food And Agriculture remained the best ministry in the government of President Nana Akuffo Addo which has contributed over Ghc50billion to the public purse. The trend in Africa particularly Ghana has been the opposite—leaders have more often than not used the state to enrich themselves—literally transferring huge amounts of public resources to their personal bank accounts. Even in the most improvised countries, leaders have hidden millions of dollars.

So on your birthday, these corrupt leaders should celebrate your birthday by returning the resources to the rightful owners —the malnourished children and mothers who are not able to access healthcare or basic needs. This is the right thing to do.

Happy Birthday to you Our best Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto. Hopefully, our leaders will honor you by doing the right thing.

God bless you.

BY Stephen Nana Boakye (Sky B)

(Outgoing Tescon-UEW Vice President)

(NUGS male Student Leader of the Year 2021/2022)

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