Of Religious Prostitution

The statement "religion is the opium of the masses" is often attributed to Karl Marx, a German philosopher, economist, and political theorist. This quote is from his work titled "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," published in 1844. In this context, Marx was critiquing the role of religion in society, suggesting that it can act as a soothing or numbing force that distracts people from the challenges and injustices of their material conditions. There has never been a time when this opinion shared by Karl Marx has and will manifest in Ghana like it will in the events leading up to the 2024 election. Dr. Bawumia is aware of this and has cunningly been exploiting the religious path to political prosperity. Will the people see through his duplicity?

It is instructive to note that Dr. Bawumia’s introduction to our political scene by Akufo-Addo was under the illusion that, with his experience at the Bank of Ghana, the IMF, and his education at Oxford and Simon Fraser, he had the requisite know-how to turn around the struggling economy under the leadership of the former President, John Mahama, who is himself contesting this election. Bawumia is on record as having described the former president as incompetent. He criticised the administration for overborrowing and heading to the IMF to seek policy credibility. At the time, all of Dr. Bawumia’s public engagements were directed towards the management of the economy.

He set 170 economic questions for the late Paa Kwesi Ammissah Auther, who was the head of the economic management team, to answer. He declared that borrowing to develop a country like ours, endowed with many natural resources, was a lazy man’s approach to development. At another gathering, he declared that the solution to overborrowing (which he called the previous government incompetent for) was to toll all roads.

“We don’t have to borrow to construct roads,” he declared. “All we have to do is toll the various sections, and we will have enough to fix the roads,” he claimed.

At another gathering at Central University College, Dr. Bawumia propounded what I call the exchange rate theory:

“If the fundamentals of your economy are weak, the exchange rates will expose you,” he postulated.

Then there was a time he had to visit the Mallam Atta Market to find out the prices of goods for himself, just to dispute the inflation rates put forward by the Ghana Statistical Service. At the Ferdinand Ayim Memorial Lectures on May 2, 2012, Dr. Bawumia had this to say about inflation:

“Mr. Chairman, how many Ghanaians have seen a single-digit increase in the prices of what they normally buy in the markets and shops over the past year? I can testify that if you try to give your spouse a single-digit increase in chop money, she will not be amused.

What is interesting is the claim that Ghana’s recent single-digit inflation is being driven by food prices.

It is rather curious that in the face of declining growth in crop production and increased demand for food (including the demand for buffer stocks), statistically recorded food price inflation continues to decline.”

At the time Dr. Bawumia was the economic poster boy of the NPP and their pseudo-intellectuals and middle class, the rate of inflation was in the single digits, and by 2016, when he asked Ghanaians to boot Mahama out, it was 15.7%. Today, it is more than double that, and at some point, it was at 54%. Debt-to-GDP, which stood at 57%, is today hovering around 90% and could be over 100% with the budget reading in sight. The exchange rate, which, according to Dr. Bawumia, was crucial in exposing weak economic fundamentals, stood at a dollar to 3.9 Ghana cedi. Today, you will be lucky to buy a dollar at 12 cedi. The economy was rated an average of B- by all the relevant rating agencies, such as Fitch. Our economy, managed by Dr. Bawumia, was at some point rated junk at CCC. This has been necessitated by the fact that Ghana has been unable to pay its debt to creditors, something never seen in our history, and as of today, we have even failed to meet the deadline set by the IMF to renegotiate our external debts to qualify for the second tranche of IMF support funds. This government alone has borrowed over 13 billion dollars from the Eurobond Market alone, over 4 times what Mahama and Mills combined borrowed (3.9 billion dollars) and 12 times more than the 700 million dollars President Kufour borrowed.

With this abysmal economic management, what else will Dr. Bawumia campaign on? After careful thinking, he decided to venture into what they termed “digitalization,” applauding himself for introducing any and every digital innovation in Ghana, including a funny clone of the Ghana Post GPS, which no one uses, and the launch of mobile phone apps. He even claimed he introduced mobile money interoperability that started under the Mahama administration to enable mobile money users to transact across different mobile telecom network platforms and the Ghana Card, which was introduced by President Kufour. Not even the fact that the Mahama administration signed all the contracts leading to the current rollout of the cards could deter Bawumia from taking credit for it.

Unfortunately for Dr. Bawumia, the idea of digitalization was not catching on with many. What is digitalization to the unemployed, hungry young man who pays an e-levy on MoMo transactions and another 10% tax on his bet winnings? What is digitalization to the young woman when she buys a sanitary pad at 20 Cedi and about 10 Cedi out of it is in taxes? Realising how difficult digitalization will be to sell to the people, a very smart Bawumia settled on religion. He started trotting from one church to another during the 31st night, mainly in Kumasi. Then followed attending church events and organising his own events in churches. At one of these events, he declared that “we all (Muslims and Christians) believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour who will return to save us.” This comment has not been well received in many Islamic communities, but for the sake of peaceful coexistence, top clerics have chosen to remain silent on it. Dr. Bawumia is now seen hosting religious leaders for meetings, kneeling for prayers, taking communion at church services, and even declaring himself a former member of the boys' brigade of the Methodist Church. His team is very deliberate about posting pictures of such religious outings to court public admiration and also to distract the people from their challenges, as alluded to by Karl Marx.

What people should be asking is: Why the instant love for other religions? As I outlined in the earlier paragraphs of this piece, Dr. Bawumia was never introduced to us as a champion of religious tolerance. He himself and his wife never told us that their political vision hinges on promoting religious tolerance. What we were told by his wife was that he was an “economic wizkid.”

That is why we respected their silence in our advocacy for the rights of Muslim girls to wear their hijabs at school and at work and for the rights of Muslims in all schools to manifest their religion through prayer and fasting during Ramadan, as guaranteed by our 1992 Constitution.

Considering Dr. Bawumia’s pre-power posturing as an economist and his subsequent monumental failure in power as a so-called advocate of religious coexistence, one wouldn’t be wrong to assert that this religious pretence is insincere and reeks of hypocrisy and double standards. Isn’t it surprising that the supposedly all-knowing Dr. Bawumia, during the recent NPP Presidential Primaries, chose not to address questions posed to him by journalists regarding the performance of the economy?

How will his feigned religious tolerance alleviate our high transport fares and fuel costs? How will his visits to churches resolve the escalating rates of unemployment? How will his meetings with pastors assist the victims of floods in the north, Volta, Ahafo, and Eastern regions in reclaiming their lives? How will his sermons on religious podiums address our soaring indebtedness, rising exchange rates, and inflation that has impacted the price of staples like Kenkey?

The average Ghanaian is discerning, and I am confident that we will collectively consider the future of this country, taking bread-and-butter issues into account, and not fall prey once again to the deceit of a religious opportunist.