Ahwoi is the wrong man for Agriculture Ministry

Hon. Kwesi Ahwoi Minister for Food & Agriculture

When he calls on media operators and practitioners to check their facts before going public with the same (See “Ahwoi Urges Media to Check Their Facts” Ghanaweb.com 6/12/09), Ghana's agriculture minister could not be more agreeable. But when he pontifically stakes the dubious claim that under the so-called AMSEC program, agricultural machinery and implements, as a matter of non-discriminatory ministerial policy, are made commercially available to Ghanaians of all walks of life, including politicians, of course, then one cannot but take issue with Mr. Kwesi Ahwoi.

More so, when one learns to one's utter horror that some of these agricultural implements are humongously subsidized to the whopping tune of at least 50-percent their retail-market value. According to Mr. Ahwoi, marketing these vital agricultural implements without regard to the purchaser's credentials in the field of agriculture, is intended to, curiously, ensure fairness.

Our vehement position here is that this policy is an absolute no-brainer! And our contention is based on several cognitively measured factors. One, the indiscriminate sale of farming implements is inescapably, as well as inevitably, likely to guarantee graft and other forms of corruption, such as politicians using their considerable influence to purchase these implements for greedy friends and relatives bent on establishing a parasitic middleman/-woman liaison between that sector of the agriculture ministry officially charged with such function, and genuine farmers in dire need of such machinery and/or implements.

And, of course, those of us avid students of Ghanaian politics would not be the least bit surprised if we should wake up tomorrow morning to learn, to our utter horror and chagrin that, indeed, such curious policy of indiscriminate sale of agricultural implements had actually been deliberately built into the system, as it were, in order to facilitate precisely the sort of commercial parasitism that we are talking about.

Indeed, this trade policy becomes even more disturbing when one reckons the fact that almost none of the agricultural implements involved is/are manufactured in the country, which means that they are not readily available for either hire-purchase (leasing with the option of eventual purchase) or outright purchase.

Then also, based on our empirical knowledge of Ghanaian political culture, we fully well know that a ministerial purchase request is more likely to meet with preferential treatment, even where the minister concerned may not have any existent or viable profile in the farming sector. Which means that a critical mass of genuine farmers who actually need these implements may not receive them, or may be forced to purchase them indirectly and at considerably higher prices which, in effect, would negatively impact on agricultural productivity.

In any case, were politicians like Messrs. Alban Bagbin and Mahama Ayariga, whose involvement in the scheme has raised germane media eyebrows in recent days, gainfully employed in the agriculture sector, they wouldn't have created the kind of perennial political careers that they have had for at least the past two decades. In brief, it would be quite worthwhile for some heavy-lifting investigative journalists to find out precisely what kind of agricultural enterprise Messrs. Bagbin and Ayariga have been engaged in for as long as these gentlemen have formally operated in Ghanaian political circles.

It goes without saying that it is this kind of nauseatingly cavalier attitude of some Ghanaian politicians towards the agriculture industry that continues to render the country woefully lacking in sufficient food production.

Not very long ago, for instance, it was Mr. Kwamena Bartels, of the now-opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), who was “indiscriminately” allocating choice-arable lands to fellow politicians most of who had not, in any meaningful way whatsoever, demonstrated their talent, or knack, for farming, in order to supposedly accord “respectability” to the farming profession and industry. Back then, the critical question regarding how politicians who never distinguished themselves in the agriculture sector of the Ghanaian economy came to accord “respectability” to this age-old profession of great respectability, did not seem to have half-occurred to Mr. Bartels.

Anyway, I don't know precisely how Mr. Kwesi Ahwoi came to be appointed Ghana's minister of Agriculture; but I hope that his appointment had more to do with the minister's amply demonstrated flair for what it means to be given charge of, perhaps, the most significant cabinet appointment in the country. I am also not quite sure whether President John Evans Atta-Mills fully appreciates the epic significance of the Agriculture Ministry for a country with a fragile food economy like Ghana. I observe the foregoing because the president's recent obsession with commercial oil finds in the country gives the embarrassing impression of President Atta-Mills having yet to take full cognizance of what it means to run a successful economy and a country with such an epic name as Ghana's.

And yes, I hope that Mr. Ahwoi's appointment was not based on the fact that he comes from Ghana's rainforest region of Sefwi/Sehwi. Otherwise, I may have to immediately prevail on Oguaa Kofi to name Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe as Minister of Lands, Minerals and Forestry Resources, or whatever they call the latter these days, being that as an Akyem-Nkronso native and heir to the Baamu division of Abuakwa-Susubiribi, my very genetic make-up epitomizes the job!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 20 books, including “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].