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What Ato Forson Wants to Be Remembered for Contradicts His Past Performance Track Record

Feature Article What Ato Forson Wants to Be Remembered for Contradicts His Past Performance Track Record
TUE, 14 JAN 2025

His stated objective as Finance Minister in the second, nonconsecutive, tenure of President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama sounds very laudable and unarguably forward-looking, as Dr. Cassiel Ato Baah Forson told the Parliamentary Appointments Committee on Monday, January 13, 2025. That is, until the interested auditor-observer flips back the pages to take a critical look at the performance track record of the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Ajumako-Enyan-Esiam Constituency, in the Central Region.

When he appeared before the Parliamentary Appointments Committee, the 45-year-old native of Ajumako-Besease who lists Oxford University as part of his academic résumé and professional credentials, though he does not specify precisely what kind of coursework, degree or diploma he had collected from Britain’s oldest and, perhaps, most prestigious academy, noted that he wanted to be remembered in history as “the minister who successfully reduced the prices of goods and services while stabilizing Ghana’s economy” (See “I Want to Be Ghana’s Finance Minister Who Reduced Prices and Created Jobs - Dr. Ato Forson” Modernghana.com 1/13/25).

The one indelible problem that this professionally trained accountant had on his hands, though, was that as one of the two, or so, Deputy Finance Ministers in the previous Mahama/Amissah-Arthur regime, Mr. Forson, who also holds a freshly minted doctorate in Finance or Economics, or both, I forget exactly which, from the University of Ghana, Legon, was criminally involved in what became known as the Lemon Ambulance Purchasing Scam, that entailed the importation of some vehicular hulks or empty shells, valued at millions of cedis, a remarkable number of which were widely reported by the media to be engineless, although they were falsely being gleefully paraded by operatives of the previous Mahama government as viable replenishment for the decrepit and fast-aging stock of vehicles operated by the Ghana Ambulance Service (GAS).

In all, there were approximately 300 of these unroadworthy vehicles that had been imported from the Federal Republic of Germany. Ironically, it was from the same Federal Republic of Germany that the 300 Brand-New Ambulances would be imported by the succeeding Akufo-Addo Administration at a price reported to be much lower than the Mahama-imported lemons.

We must also promptly put it here on record that it was his conscientious and patriotic and honest decision to draw attention to this most heinous crime of treasonable felony perpetrated against the Ghanaian people by some key operatives of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress that got Mr. Bernard Allotey-Jacobs, the voluntarily retired Central Regional Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, summarily jack-booted from the party by extant General-Secretary Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia, who is presently, by some accounts, the self-promoted and self-imposed National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress.

It is also significant to underscore the fact that for most of the last four years of the two-term Akufo-Addo Administration, Mr. Ato Forson and several of his associates had been facing criminal prosecution for causing financial loss to the State. Characteristically, as with all such cases pertaining to high level official corruption in Ghana, the Ato Forson-engineered and orchestrated lemon ambulance case of patent criminality was never brought to a conclusive judicial settlement or justice. It simply became another charade like the Mahama and the European Airbus Payola Affair. In a more robust and functional democratic political dispensation or culture, our Finance Minister-Designate would have already been serving time in the slammer, as Americans are wont to say.

As Kenya’s Prof. PLO Lumumba, the renowned Director of the Kenya School of Law, aptly and bitterly pointed out not very long ago, it is only in Continental Africa that thoroughgoing political scam-artists like Mr. Ato Forson and his prime benefactor, namely, President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama, would be scandalously offered a promotion by a morally decadent and clueless electorate.

At what almost predictably devolved into a circus-like verbal slugfest, Mr. Forson, who appears to be seriously challenged by such adverbial and prepositional rhetorical forms as “through,” “with” and “necessarily” had a pretty difficult time demonstrating that, indeed, he had competent knowledge of what it really means to develop Ghana economically, as he kept rather obtusely decrying the precipitous decline in the production and the exportation of raw cocoa beans, instead of informing the members of the Parliamentary Appointments Committee precisely how he intended to facilitate the rapid and the radical transformation of the cocoa industry into a multidimensional job-creation avenue.

It was also damn pathetic to hear the Finance Minister-Designate vehemently and self-righteously decry the environmentally deleterious activities of Galamsey, or the illegal small-scale mining industry, in particular the impact that the latter was having on cocoa production, without informing the panel members of the Parliamentary Appointments Committee precisely how he intended to help to significantly arrest this most deadly existential menace, which was widely known to have been criminally, recklessly and unconscionably and blindly promoted by President Mahama for more than a decade now.

On taxation, however, even while he did not specify precisely how he intended to ginger up or maximize already existing revenue-collection handles, as he creatively or inventively termed it, it was, nonetheless, quite clear that given the time and the requisite boost by his associates and the Ghanaian citizenry at large, Mr. Forson could be really up to something progressive and meaningful in the near future.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
January 13, 2025
E-mail: [email protected]

Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD, © 2025

Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD, taught Print Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City, for more than 20 years. He is also a former Book Review Editor of The New York Amsterdam News.. More He holds Bachelor of Arts (Summa Cum Laude) in English, Communications and Africana Studies from The City College of New York of The City University of New York, where he was named a Ford Foundation Undergraduate Fellow and the first recipient of the John J. Reyne Artistic Achievement Award in English Poetry (Creative Writing) in 1988.

The author was part of the "socially revolutionary" team of undergraduate journalists at City College of New York (CCNY) of the City University of New York (CUNY), who won First-Prize certificates for Best Community Reporting from the Columbia University School of Journalism, for three consecutive years, from 1988 to 1990.

Born April 8, 1963, in Ghana; naturalized U.S. citizen; son of Kwame (an educator) and Dorothy (maiden name, Sintim) Okoampa-Ahoofe; children: Abena Aninwaa, Kwame III. Ethnicity: "African." Education: City College of the City University of New York, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1990; Temple University, M.A., 1993, Ph.D., 1998. Politics: Independent. Religion: "Christian—Ecumenist." Hobbies and other interests: Political philosophy.

CAREER: Ghana National Cultural Center, Kumasi, poet, 1979–84; Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, worked as instructor in English; Technical Career Institutes, New York, NY, instructor in English, 1991–94; Indiana State University, Terre Haute, instructor in history, 1994–95; Nassau Community College, Garden City, NY, member of English faculty. Participant in World Bank African "Brain-Gain" pilot project.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, National Council of Teachers of English, African Studies Association, Community College Humanities Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Essay award, Nassau Review, 1999.
Column: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

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