Ofori-Atta’s IMF Deal Far Better than P/NDC’s Structural Adjustment Program

I just finished perusing the news story captioned “Top 10 ‘Conditions’ in the $ 3 Billion IMF Deal the Akufo-Addo Government Got” (See Ghanaweb.com 5/19/23) and can confidently vouch for the fact of its definitely being far better than the late Prof. Kwesi Botchway-brokered economic bailout package that globally infamously, albeit euphemistically, came to be dubbed as the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). It was the latter genocidal economic sabotage, desperately and unwisely negotiated on behalf of the democratically usurped and politically cannibalized Ghanaian people that led to the effective and near-irreparable collapse of the Kwame Nkrumah-established seminal industrial base widely known as the Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation (GIHOC), comprised of some 120-plus factories and industries and, with the latter self-induced catastrophe, the complete collapse of the hitherto fast-advancing middle-level Ghanaian economy in the 1980s and the early 1990s.

So, it comes as nothing short of downright ironic and morally inexcusable for the leaders of Ghana’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to be cynically pretending as if the latest Kenneth Ofori-Atta-negotiated Bretton-Woods economic bailout deal was the worst of its kind that ever happened in postcolonial Ghanaian history. We must also hasten to significantly add that it was the downright extortionate SAP procrustean imposition on the country that culminated in the complete destruction of the country’s system of public health and education, and the unpardonably callous introduction of the Social Darwinian Cash-and-Carry P/NDC-fangled National Health Policy – for the woeful lack of better terminology – to be certain, a reckless and morally irresponsible policy decision and grossly misguided agenda that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of unspeakably poor and economically vulnerable Ghanaian citizens for their inability to pay for direly needed medical services upfront, in liquid cash, even as the co-architects of this most depraved and genocidal policy of systematic extermination flew first-class on luxury jets and expensive commercial airliners abroad for routine medical checkups and treatment, while most of the country’s hospitals, health centers and clinics operated without the most basic drugs and medical supplies.

It would take the timely and auspicious intervention of the John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to significantly improve and upgrade the general level and quality of healthcare and medical services in the country, with the hitherto historically unprecedented introduction of the low-premium National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), a crucial social-intervention program which the leadership of the National Democratic Congress – most prominent among, the late President John Evans Atta-Mills and the latter’s Arch-Lieutenant, namely, former President John “Gnassingbe” (European Airbus Payola) Dramani Mahama – pooh-poohed as a practical impossibility.

Ironically, albeit unsurprisingly, it would be these same politically callous and strategically cynical and morally unconscionable politicians who would be among the first Ghanaian citizens to secure a National Health Insurance Identity Card in order to readily access the same “practically impossible” Agyekum-Kufuor-created National Healthcare System. Which also may very well explain precisely why for most of the past seven years that he has been duly and fittingly shunted to the gray and dry margins of opposition political culture, Candidate Gnassingbe Dramani Mahama has been desperately preaching the intellectually insulting politics of remediation, by earnestly pleading with reluctant Ghanaian voters to rather unwisely return him to the Agyekum-Kufuor-constructed Jubilee House, so that he could correct his past mistakes.

Somebody more levelheaded ought to remind Candidate Gnassingbe Dramani Mahama – aka Okogufuo Yagbonwura Kwame Gonja – that like all civilized and progressive-thinking people, Ghanaians prefer to think and look forward to having far more talented, visionary and patriotic statesmen and women lead them to the proverbial Promised Land of inviolable Peace and Prosperity, and not the inscrutably backward march to the Naked and Morally Shameless Republic of Dumsor. You see, throughout the arduous and characteristically grueling negotiations process between the forward-looking Akufo-Addo Administration and the Bretton-Woods establishment of the IMF and The World Bank, my two major concerns had been the jealous protection of the Akufo-Addo-implemented Fee-Free Senior High School System and the Agyekum-Kufuor-established low-premium National Health Insurance Scheme, which the previous Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress thoroughly bankrupted and had to be resuscitated with at least $ 2 billion (USD) by the newly elected President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in 2017.

Needless to say, if the National Health Insurance System does not seem to be working as efficiently as it needs to and ought to, it is precisely and undoubtedly because the previous rag-tag Gnassingbe Dramani Mahama regime preferred to thievishly and criminally allow a remarkable number and percentage of cabinet and executive appointees to draw home double salaries than concentrate its efforts on national development projects and ventures that stood to benefit the general Ghanaian citizenry at large. It is this stark difference between the policy initiatives and the national development agendas of the country’s two major political parties, namely, the ruling New Patriotic Party, on the one hand, and the main opposition National Democratic Congress, on the other hand, which all registered and eligible Ghanaian must voters must bear in mind as they head towards the polling booth on December 7, 2024, or thereabouts, to determine which political party’s leadership team deserves another chance to manage the affairs and the development agenda of the sovereign Ghanaian people.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
May 20, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]