Haruna Iddrisu and the $72 Million SSNIT Theft

Parliamentary Minority Caucus Leaders like Mr. Haruna Iddrisu may be banking on the purportedly short memories of Ghanaian citizens and voters, when they make such intemperate statements as Finance Minister Kenneth Ofori-Atta’s cavalierly presuming to be endowed with executive powers that go far beyond the statutorily mandated oversight powers of Parliament. But the former Gnassingbe Mahama-appointed Labor Minister must rest assured that Ghanaians who were old and mature enough during the runup to the 2016 General Election have not forgotten all about the humongous $72 million (USD) theft of the lifesavings of civil and public service pensioners and retirees, as well as the lifesavings of some private entrepreneurs and their employees (See “You Can Run Riot on Akufo-Addo but not Parliament – Haruna Iddrisu Warns Ofori-Atta Over DDEP” Ghanaweb.com 1/26/23).

The subject of the conniption or ire of the recently ousted National Democratic Congress’ Minority Caucus’ Leader was in regard to the apparently unilateral decision by the Finance Minister to reschedule the repayment terms of treasury bonds held by some public servants, in particular bonds owned by some retirees and pensioners, whose major means of economic survival stood the risk of endangerment, if such unilateral decision was allowed to prevail. In the main, such arbitrary decision has been necessitated by the Akufo-Addo Government’s woeful inability to effectively manage the country's economy, largely as a result of poor strategic planning and unforeseen deleterious impact of overborrowing and overspending in the wake of the COVID-19 Global Pandemic, and the grossly deficient national taxation system and institutional architecture.

Vis-à-vis the latter problem of structural and institutional deficiency, it well appears that the appointments of Finance Ministers and the latter’s two or three deputies, going forth, will have to take into necessary consideration candidates with formidable knowledge, practical experience and expertise on how an efficient system of taxation works and, even more importantly,, the imperative need for our government to learn how to live squarely within the means of our available capital, human power and natural resources, even as we diligently and progressively strive to create more wealth for the sustenance and comfort of both our present generation and the long-term survival and prosperity of posterity.

So far, it pathetically well appears that our elected leaders and their executive appointees, for the most part, are far more interested and morbidly fixated with the morally and the socioeconomically shallow culture of instant gratification and the blind and reckless looting and the elitist sharing of the collective resources of the State, without any worthwhile and diligent thought of adding any significant value to these resources for the long-term benefit of all and sundry, as it were. Which fundamentally explains the initially vehement opposition to the landmark Akufo-Addo-implemented Fee-Free Senior High School System (SHS) by former President John Gnassingbe “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama and the entire kleptocratic leadership of the country’s main opposition political party, to wit, the National Democratic Congress, and even some prominent leaders of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), led by Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufuor, Ghana’s longest-serving Defense Minister and younger brother of former President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor.

On the latter count must also be highlighted the very disturbing, albeit not the least surprising, fact that it was those among our politicians who have been described by the globally recognized and authoritative Forbes and Bloomberg financial market and business- and governance-monitoring establishments as being the wealthiest in the country, who most vehemently protested both the necessity and the feasibility of this most significant and strategically indispensable national development agenda and, unarguably, most salutary and progressive social-intervention program.

On the whole, Mr. Iddrisu, who is also the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Tamale-South, in the Northern Region’s capital, made the right judgment call on Mr. Ofori-Atta’s rather arbitrary and insufferably presumptuous and scandalous decision to unilaterally and single-mindedly alter the contractual terms of the so-called Domestic-Debt Exchange Program (DDEP), except for the rather characteristically obnoxious and intemperate manner in which Mr. Iddrisu registered his protest. Which may be aptly envisaged to have eloquently and, perhaps, even unimpeachably vindicated the putatively despotic decision by the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress to summarily demote Mr. Iddrisu from his leadership of the Parliamentary Minority Caucus, in particular “Lt.-Col.” Johnson Asiedu-Nketia’s plaint that the three topmost NDC Parliamentary Leaders did not appear to hold Speaker Alban S K Bagbin with the kind of esteem that the former NDC-MP for the Nadowli-Kaleo Constituency, in the Upper-West Region, deserved to be held by his NDC peers.

We must also recall, here, the fact that Mr. Iddrisu had also been contumelious in his conduct during the tenure of the widely venerated Speaker Aaron Michael Oquaye, the former Dean of the University of Ghana Law faculty and a distinguished legal scholar and political scientist and an ordained evangelical clergyman. At any rate, were our currently Hung-Parliament performing as efficiently as it needed to or ought to, Mr. Ofori-Atta, in all likelihood, would not have dared to so casually tinker with the legally established contractual terms of the aforementioned treasury bonds and not be worried about the possibility of losing his job or being promptly forced to tender his resignation to the President. You see, it takes two to tango.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]