FIGHTING CORRUPTION & UNDER-DEVELOPMENT IN GHANA

Leading The Nkrumahist Tradition To Change Ghana And Africa

FIGHTING CORRUPTION & UNDER-DEVELOPMENT IN GHANA:
WE CERTAINLY NEED NEW ELECTORATE AND NEW NKRUMAHIST LEADERSHIP ALTOGETHER!

By: E. Kofi Panford

“A long habit of not thinking of a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the turmoil soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reasoning.” - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

“For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us” - Martin Luther King Jnr., Time To Break Silence

Whatever the characteristics we the citizenry may give to define corruption, and the tags we may attach to its cost to our development, the truth is corruption in Ghana does not belong to any particular creed, race, ethnicity, kindred, colour, sex nor a profession, but it certainly has a political party.

Corruption simply belongs to the NPP and NDC; because our political leadership has mostly been the cause of all our problems and the rest are all effects, especially in a master-says-so society like ours we, the electorate have, incidentally, helped the slave holders of the world and their local lackeys to create for us!

Fact: the problem of corruption, just like President Kuffour rightly intimated in Takoradi, did indeed originate from the 'Biblical Adam'.

But our nation's inability to adequately respond to this weakness of humanity, and its pervasiveness in our society with its telling effect on the citizenry in this 21st Century is as a result of a national leadership in crisis and a 4-year renewable 'social contract' which is still based on naked greed, selfishness, envy, hatred, incompetence, demagoguery and vain glory wearing a veil of ethnocentric divisions, hypocrisy, mediocrity, short-sightedness, self-doubt and electoral bribery on the part of the governors; and tragic ignorance, timidity, patronage, sycophancy and a sense of short-memories and false hopes on the part of the governed.

Just observe the mouth of an NDC Minister of State when speaking to issues bordering on corruption and his or her words are the original 'King James Version 'of that of an NPP Minister of State just a couple of years ago.

In fact, statements by J. H. Mensah about corruption in the Rawlings-led Government on the floor of our Parliament in 2000 certainly became the original texts of 'The Holy Quran' Alban Bagbin relied on in pontificating to the nation about the level of corruption in Kuffour's Government in 2008. But in government, both men and their Parties simply gave us more of the same, as they only came to deepen the stealing, the killing and the destruction of whatever this nation had always hoped for in our noble fight for true freedom and justice since our independence days!

We all held our hands together to usher in the 1992 Constitution with an understanding that we would connect the dots in our pre-colonial past for us to understand our neo-colonial present in order to forge, protect and enhance our imperialist-free future as a people with a vision to become the model for that ultimate freedom of Africa and the black race in a better world for humanity. At least that was the promise of our lost but newly-found 'democracy' in Africa!

But nothing, during the practice of this two decade old democracy, has really changed for the average Ghanaian voter, with whose ever-increasing taxes private hospitality industries are still conjured; expensive foreign school fees are paid for; state assets are given away for a song; mansions are built; SUV's are insured and ex-gratia payments are secured by the First Families and their “self-seeking idiots” and “greedy bastards” (thanks to Kwame Pianim and Jerry Rawlings for that extreme but apt and honest description of their own kinds), to begin to hope for any better days ahead apart from his daily dose of disappointments and his ever-increasing measure of neo-colonial slavery.

Admittedly, the year-after-year audit reports from the office of the Auditor General simply tell our story as a people who seem to show a proven case of 'suicidal insanity' by passionately trying to do the same things the same way with the same NPP/NDC leadership and still expecting different end result, even as the latter keep on fetching the water of our political freedom into the leaking barrel of their brand of economic development model with their neo-colonial baskets of greed and corruption! For in government both the NPP and NDC are pure 'legal plunderers', and in opposition they demonstrate outstanding ability to be raw 'political relativists', even as they keep on broking injurious deals after deals with the slave masters of old in order to make the essence of our political independence truly meaningless to our noble economic, social and cultural aspirations!

It must by now be obvious to all right-thinking Ghanaians that the commitment level of President Atta-Mills towards the fight against corruption in all its forms and wherever its appears - from the corridors of power to the walkways of powerlessness, from the drug courier lists in the security services to the ghost names in the local/civil/public services - cannot be an ounce weightier than that of President Kuffour's on President Rawlings' political leadership scale of who gets what (in terms of rewards or punishments) at what time for his/her patronage of a system which ensures the looting brigade marches on unchallenged.

Indeed, the similarity between the perceived 'concave, capitalist leadership' of the NPP as well as that of the make-believed 'convex socialist leadership' of the NDC is that both ultimately produce bleak images of lack of common purpose, unemployment, poverty, organized crimes, armed conflicts, famine, diseases and general lack of advancements in the nation's political, economic and socio-cultural settings on their focal points of greed and corruption.

And truly, the NPP and NDC seem not to have any greater purpose for this nation beyond their commitments to their own survival and the self-interest of their respective leadership, much as their high-blood pressure of words and anaemia of deeds on corruption and its negative effects on our development often meet the well-known tag of political posturing at best, and criminal deception at worst.

The leadership of both NPP and NDC, dancing to the under-development tunes being played by their masters in Washington, London, Paris, Brussels, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and Riyadh, ultimately privatise our national profits into foreign hands with their garbage and inferior economic partnerships, business agreements and political compacts, and rather socialise our losses as a nation under their palliative care of slavery signposts like PAMSCAD, HIPC, MCA , MDGs and GPRS Initiatives.

And so how do we realise our noble dream of economic, social and cultural transformation - a promise we must fulfil in this 21st Century if we are to survive as a people - under the watch of greedy and selfish political leadership and their parasitic dysfunctional educated elites' club that absolutely seek to mortgage our nation's future just for them to sustain their firm grip on power; leadership that seem to only attach greater seriousness to the increasing standards of their emoluments, salaries, allowances, gratuities and ex gratia than they do attach to the falling standards of education, health, employment, housing and security for the citizenry?

Chairman 'Saint' Rawlings wanted us to believe that Nkrumah's CPP only gave us a national flag and an anthem, and that Nkrumah was a thief just like Kotoka, Afrifa, Busia, Acheampong, Akuffo and Liman, whereas he Rawlings came that “we may have life, and have it more abundantly”!

That notwithstanding, he managed as an eventual sell-out to the EU/IMF/World Bank, to preside over the auctioning of most of the assembly lines and factories Nkrumah's CPP built for this nation to solve our unemployment challenges to foreign interests, and surreptitiously bought a couple of them at ridiculous prices with incredible terms of payment for his family, friends and some religious bodies that decided to turn them into magnificent real estate edifices of holiness here on Earth at the expense of the poor congregation in slums who are likely not be welcomed in Heaven, and he still deludes himself with the support of unsuspecting followers that he is a man of integrity. And I guess that was the time political integrity lost its meaning forever in this nation!

President Kuffour obviously came with his own men with their own greed! And thanks to the apparatchiks of a Party which believes in 'property-owning democracy' - whatever that means - Kuffour and his gang of 'latter-day patriots' literally wanted to own all the residential buildings and every piece of land in Accra and Kumasi which belonged to the state through any means conceivable under the sun, and often projected the feeling that they were born to 'possess our possessions', whereas the good people of this country and generations unborn should go to hell naked even if we do not want to.

Why on Earth would a President truly committed to the cause of his people and his team of '21st Century Patriots' pop Champagne to celebrate our discovery of crude oil and natural gas in commercial quantities, when he knew the entire nation had only 13% stake in such a bad deal which eventually ensured that “our real progress is cumulatively negative and actual advance is indeed relative retrogression”? Answer - because they obviously, had their 'cut' in the remaining 87% meant for their ne0-colonial masters in the US who supervised the overthrow of Nkrumah's nationalist/pan-Africanist CPP Government even if Ghana is the eventual loser!

And it obviously takes such a leadership with seared conscience or a cognitive dissonance to later pitch the good people of the western region against the entire nation by supporting them to appropriate only 10% of the meagre 13% (i.e. 1.3%) of the total oil and gas revenue, as well as oppose/dither on the collateralisation of the oil revenue - a position they treasured most whilst in government - and thus wants to be applauded for plain theft under hypocritical guise of supporting indirect federalism and protecting national interest.

The leadership of NPP, after deliberately mismanaging Ghana Telecom, put up fanciful reasons why Vodafone International had to clandestinely take over GT so that they alone could live that narrow, poverty-of-ambition, 'platinum life' promised by the beatitudes of western corporatocracy to unintelligent and misguided African leadership, much as they characteristically followed the broad Danquah-Dombo-Busia road of unrestrained selfish and predatory opportunism which unarguably sealed the otherwise bright future of millions of Ghanaian and African citizens and generations yet unborn in the ever profitable telecommunication industry as envisioned in Nkrumah's dream.

Indeed, we did not need the Alloteys to use the Law of Gravity or the Energy-Mass Relativity Formula to show to us that our SSNIT pension fund, far from being gambled away in casinos and the hospitality industry by the NPP government, could at least have been invested in Ghana Telecom to lay those golden eggs for our future, especially after the government's self-serving Trillion Cedi Golden Jubilee Celebration of our supposed independence!

This is because, the British Petroleum (BP) with all its challenges, after all, is constantly being propped up with the pension funds of the British people - who also have a huge stake in Vodafone - in order for the UK government to make enough 'surplus capital' to support what they term as 'an ancillary corporate social responsibility programme' like fighting against maternal death and drilling boreholes in Ghana!

Of course, the NPP leadership with the incorrigible support of their media hangers-on and their so-called think-tanks and civil society groups, made the gold deposits in Obuasi irrelevant to the realisation of the Ghana's independence dream; purposefully joined the NDC to run down Ghana Airways and ultimately gave away its assets in the name of liquidation to themselves; bartered acres of our independence avenue lands - such a priceless heirloom - in return for scholarships packages for their children from a religious sect in the US; auctioned a profitable SSB to the French; told some Norwegians to decide if Ghanaians should live or die by given them our water (which they claim is life) to be mismanaged for us; deadened the hopes of our local fishermen, poultry, Shea Butter, cotton and rice farmers at the behest of World Bank/IMF/EU and G-whatever, and still had the audacity to tell us to “Believe in a re-colonised Ghana”!

In fact, the NPP leadership built more mansions on state lands for themselves than the “So Far So Good' model senior high schools in the district capitals they spoke of in their recycled manifestos and in their various national budgets they hurriedly put together to give us a false sense of hope year after year.

And of the all the Presidential Special Initiatives of the NPP-led government for the good people of this nation, only the one which required mere talking in an air-conditioned room for the cameras without deeper thinking and practicality, noticeably stood the test of time just because of corruption!

But this is a trademark the NDC also has in equal if not greater measure! Indeed, President Mills and his team of 'Social Darwinists' under NDC 2 is also reading to the nation Ghana from the same page Rawlings left on the neo-colonial grand piano of corruption and under-development.

The decision of this government to also sell the CPP-government built Abosso Glass and Kumasi GIHOC Shoe Factories to the 'highest bidders' echoes the classical music of Rawlings' auctioning orchestra of economy of scales, which ultimately perpetuates the culture of turning our factories into secured warehouses and this great nation into a mere supermarket for foreign manufacturing firms, whilst a swarm of unemployed Ghanaian youth live in doldrums of hawking for the rest of their lives even as the Mahamas, the Ahwois, the Awunors and the Bagbins - the same old political foxes - get their 'cuts' on each of the nation's future they gratuitously sign away to the heirs of the slavery empire and the tigers in Asia.

Instead of situating a major housing initiative in the broader national agenda of infrastructural development and support for our local businesses to lift the African from his economic malaise, the Mills/Mahama Team without much critical thinking and deeper analysis quickly rushed to the decoys of western-Asian corporatocracy in South Korea to be conscripted into that large army of neo-colonial corrupt watchmen over the general 'developed world's imperial agenda in Africa just for the sidepiece of the economic trumperies such cheap and lazy symbiotic alliances easily offer only the leadership of current African governments and their henchmen.

Under the pretext of balancing its 2011 budget, the NDC government has also sold 1.28% of the country's remaining stake in AngloGold Ashanti leaving the nation with only 1.72% stake in a Company the government used to be the majority share holder (i.e. Ashanti Gold) before its merger with AngloGold in 2004, and both the NDC and NPP insist that is prudent economic management for posterity. Worst still, the NPP/NDC leadership, in consonance with their policy decisions, also insist the supposed stability agreement they entered into with AngloGold not to increase royalties and taxes for 15-year period of exploiting our gold at Obuasi and Iduapriem - a terrible natural resource exploratory agreement which ensures only their family members and crony capitalists get to be westernized in comfort and freedom - was the best thing that ever happened to Ghanaians.

So only the headline definitely gets to be changed but our story of incompetence, short-sightedness, greed, corruption and neo-colonial slavery forever remains the same anytime the NPP and/or the NDC is/are in government. And I bet we certainly need a new kind of political leadership in our nation-state to stop this haemorrhaging of our children's future since it is not a God-given necessity to live this decorated life of slavery in our current political prison of corruption and greed being guarded by the self-serving NPP/NDC leadership!

Indeed, between an NPP-led government which coached the management of Sahara Energy to dupe this nation of millions of dollars at the outset of its administration, and that of the NDC's which established disingenuous ways to allow the same Energy Company to swindle Ghana on a recent fraudulent 48 million dollar oil contract with TOR, we need a new government whose actions are as prudent as that of an ant, as transparent as distilled water and as accountable as that of a domestic parrot;

Between the SCANCEM/GHACEM bribery revelations against the leadership of NPP and NDC that supported the company to monopolise the construction industry in Ghana, and that of the inducement disclosures of Mabey & Johnson against NPP/NDC government officials who assisted this foreign construction company to win undeserved contracts, we need a new government whose commitment to fighting corruption is grounded in its unshakable belief that this nation can and must change the way we worship riches without first allowing the GRA/ IRS/EOCO/BNI to look into the source of all such riches especially among leadership;

Between Muntaka's saga at the Sports Ministry, and Annane's escapade as a Minister of Health we need a new government which will manifestly enforce the laws on corruption before its self-serving law makers are allowed to pass another Trojan horse of a law as a pretext to merely fight for their huge salaries and tax-free ex gratia/gratuity, and its appointed judges are made to entrench greed, embezzlement, indiscipline and irresponsibility, especially among officialdom as a cover up for their own sleazy character in the administration of Justice across the land;

Between the decision of Kwamina Bartels to give to his daughter the Ghana Private Sector Development Funds meant for credible Ghanaian businesses by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and Aseidu Nketia's decision to mould cement blocks in a boardroom for the Bui Power Authority, we need a new government which would fight against these numerous stages of conflict of self-seeking interests in the general war of corruption the NPP and NDC wage against this nation's body, mind and soul each day;

Between an NPP Minister of Health who supervises the administering of a malaria drug which had not gone through the complete lifecycle of its clinical tests for the mass treatment of malaria parasites and outbreaks of CSM and Guinea Worm infestations resulting in the heart-breaking death of hundreds of Ghanaians, and that of an NDC Minister of Health who tragically joins the World Health Organisation to waste our taxpayer's money on an expensive N1H1 National Immunization Programme coupled with the outbreaks of Cholera and Buruli Ulcer that also brought tragic deaths to our people, we need a new government which genuinely pushes for home-grown, integrated, cost-effective healthcare needs of the citizenry instead of merely providing more entrepreneurial opportunities to Western-Asian pharmaceutical conglomerates that specialise in the manufacturing of fake and substandard drugs for third world countries through a conduit of their corrupt local political agents;

Between the haphazard public pay policy for the workers of this nation, and the botched implementation of the SSPP, we need a new government which can and shall simply exorcise all the ghosts in the ghost names on the public sector payroll on weekly basis as well as cut down the extreme waste of tax payer's money among officialdom before we can really give flesh to the rhetoric skeleton that the private sector is indeed the engine of growth in job creation and economic development;

Between NPP/NDC leadership that allow our criminal justice system to cuddle CEPS officials who become Cocoa merchants whilst at post and therefore, decided to guide criminal gangs to smuggle cocoa beans through the Elubo Border to Cote d'Ivoire, and NPP/NDC leadership that become Executive Producers for the award winning corruption movie, “Enemies Of The Nation”, starring actors and actresses from CEPS and their appendages, and directed by Anas Ameyaw Anas at the Tema Port, we need a new government which would make the price of corruption too expensive a commodity for its buyers to ask for their change of human rights when they pick up their receipt in the Nsawam Maximum Security Prisons;

And between the extremes of NPP/NDC leadership that allow illegal miners to destroy our lands and poison our water bodies with cyanides and that which allow Fulani herdsmen to destroy farm produce, kidnap, torture and rape our women, we need a new government which understands why people queue up to vote even under very trying circumstances.

In fact, we need a new government which would make the Ms. Cottons vanish from our national affairs and the Gizelle Yajzis have nothing to do with the decision making processes of this nation;

We need a new government which would let the Hannah Bissiws appreciates the number of years it takes for a Medical Doctor to build a cottage in Ghana, and the one which would also let the Ursula Owusus understand the decades it takes a Lawyer to acquire a single room apartment, especially in areas like Airport Residential through lawful and transparent processes with their legitimate income;

We need a new government which does not have an entitlement mentality but a sacrificial disposition to explain to the Benyiwa-Does the true essence of public service - the dignity of writing your name in gold by dying for the next generation of this country - and to the Adumadzes why political leadership does not, cannot and must not involve the business of accumulating personal wealth at the expense of posterity, when they are engaged as Regional Administrators;

And we certainly need a new government which promotes true democratic local government system and appreciates the decency of fostering lifestyle moderation by MMDCEs and Presiding Members who now also see themselves as political entrepreneurs and thus become stockbrokers of corruption as soon as they bribe their way into office.

But we all too well know that “power concedes nothing without demand. It never did, and it never will.” And so the leadership of the NPP and NDC, like all the collaborators of western slave drivers across Africa, are more than comfortable with their I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-my back, raptorial kind of leadership being offered to the good people of this nation if we the electorate do not rise up and say enough is enough!

We need a new kind of electorate who would actively say to the NPP and NDC that enough of your lies and enough of your hypocrisy; enough of your greed and enough of your dishonesty; enough of your thievery and enough of your top-heavy over-head cost of running our government for foreign interests because the dividends of your leadership do not in any way measure up to its cost!

We need a new kind of electorate who would actively say this time we don't want to live in chaos, filth, stench and misery - from our Capital Accra, to the various Metropolises, Municipals and Districts across the country - which simply tells a story of a people without a shepherd and consciousness for development in a dysfunctional 'democratic' government system even in a midst of plenty talents and nature-endowed resources!

We need a new kind of electorate who would actively insist this time we don't want our media and the art and culture industry - the most powerful tools for social, political and economic revolution – to look after foreign interests; entrench negative enculturation; dramatise ignorance and superstitions cloaked in traditionalism and religion; glorify mediocrity; extol the 'virtues' of alcoholism and instant gratifications, especially among our youth as well as promote western-modelled violent and sex-sells projects and programmes to our children by steering them to only focus on 'tinsel prestige, individual status, and fun and games' all in the name of free speech, religious freedom, media education, talents hunting, entertainment and advertising, whilst political leadership gleefully watch on this powder keg for our own destruction approvingly!

We need a new kind of electorate who would actively insist this time we really want it to be different; this time we want our children to attend the same quality basic schools as the children of our leaders do across the nation, and most importantly, we really want to be in charge of the education of our children by determining what they hear, see, feel, smell and taste within the confines of exploring their God-given talents and through the Afrocentric instructions from their well-motivated teachers in the classrooms for them to be able to meet the challenges of the their generation and beyond in this 21st Century!

We need a new kind of electorate who would actively insist this time we want a true national health insurance system which guarantees the same health facilities and services our leaders enjoy with our taxes and proceeds from the sale of our natural resources when they and their families fall sick!

We need a new kind of electorate who would actively insist this time we need the same quality tertiary educational opportunities and job security as our leaders have for their children whom they often put in expensive foreign educational institutions with our money and still leave for them tons of our stolen wealth to be enjoyed without sweat, right here in Ghana!

We need a new kind of electorate who would actively insist this time we want the same housing schemes that Nkrumah's CPP implemented for the independence generation and even those unborn and of which the leadership of NPP and NDC and their kind of political predecessors have often bought them over as personal properties for a pittance!

We need a new kind of electorate who would actively insist this time we must get a government which would support and celebrate only true imaginative doers who in the midst of constant red-tapping and corruption, strain themselves to positively shape our destiny by improving the material conditions of the Ghanaian populace than that of the NPP/NDC governments that only give gold medals to those who often sit in conferences, seminars and workshops in hotels and church halls and pontificate to us about which western 'democracy', 'good governance' and 'free market economy skills, practices, techniques and strategies' we must unavoidably emulate as the starting point to ironically free ourselves from their own greed, selfishness and immoral connivance with the coloniser!

We need a new kind of electorate who would actively prove their manhood by fighting for a change of the status quo regardless of how long they have been told by the leadership of NPP and NDC to believe they are nobody beyond being used as electioneering tools to secure the latter's undeserved greater share of the Consolidated Fund, even as they only serve as neo-colonial watchmen for foreign interests in this nation that we love!

We need a new kind of electorate who would actively say this time we understand that wishful thinking about economic reconstruction without fighting for political power and true social-cultural revolution is also “sentimental and anaemic” which cannot push over the game the NPP and NDC together with their western-asian masters have been playing us all along, and thus we are going to help in forcing that change to happen!

This time we simply need a new Nkrumahist government which understands why we fought for our political independence, and the urgent need to practically and largely from our own resources fabricate our economic self-sufficiency thereof to help build in one generation a Ghanaian society that is just, safe, caring, united and prosperous; where there is adequate food, shelter and opportunities for every Ghanaian and where democratic and economic governance is devolved to the local level as the model for the eventual political unification and economic emancipation of Africa on one hand, and electorate who would say never again to the NPP/NDC's rhetoric grandstanding on corruption and their playing of clientele role to foreign interests that steal away our pride and our dignity as a people; electorate ever ready to organise, support and vote for a United Nkrumahist Party as a way forward for our hopeful future as a great State in a free United Africa on the other hand!

Long Live A United CPP and PNC!

Long Live The Nkrumahist Tradition!

Long Live The People of Ghana!

Long Live the African Integration Struggle!

And May God Bless Africa!

E. Kofi Panford is a farmer, publisher, communications specialist, community organiser and a Pan-African activist who urges for a fresh faith in Ghana's independence dream of becoming a Star of Hope on the African Continent - which still awaits its true consummation. He is currently the Executive Director of The Pan-African Youth Parley, a not-for-profit international Nkrumahist youth think-tank which unreservedly advocates for, and exemplifies equal opportunities, human rights and proportional responsibilities germane to the African's push for a more dignified life in a better world.

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