Ghana under Mills is a failed State

Of course, there are men and women parading the corridors of power, who have taken advantage of the President's tendency to be unaware of things around him to amass wealth and would shout from  roof-top, that the so-called 'Better Ghana' has been delivered.

Party members sitting on Boards of Companies and making huge profits out of trading with the very companies whose policies are supposed to be driven by them, in the course of which they have moved from penury existence to become the rich of society, would swear that they have been touched by the divine powers of the occupant of Government House.

The ordinary folks of the land, men and women who queued to vote, and whose votes were supposed to have taken the then leader of the opposition from his borrowed Kuku Hill Office at Osu to Government House, are at the wrong end of the economic miracle.

Many are Ghanaians out there who never experienced the thrills that Christmas and the New Year festivities were supposed to bestow on the occupants at the centre of the earth. There was and there is still despondency all over the place, as the very harsh economic climate was worsened by the New Year eve hike in petroleum prices.

When George Walker Bush, then President of the United States asked people to read his lips: 'No More Taxes', he was shown the door at the next elections. In Ghana, 'I will reduce petroleum prices drastically,' has been greeted by unprecedented price hikes in petroleum prices.

Action Year ended with no show on development, but a massive dive in people's living conditions. The 30,000 housing units that were touted as the doom of the opposition, in the sense that the housing policy would so transform society that the opposition would become irrelevant to the body politic.

The declaration of a 'Better Ghana' was greeted with massive failure at the Basic School Certificate Examination for three years running, resulting in close to three quarters of a million youngsters with unemployable skills being dumped on the streets.

For 'Better Ghana,' read a BLEAK FUTURE. This country sits on a powder keg that could explode in the faces of those lying through their teeth of creating a bright future for our kids, while lining their pockets and leaving this nation without the resources to train the youth.

Sometimes, I wonder whether the likes of Comfort Ama Benyiwa-Doe, my good friend Kwesi Pratt, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, also known in Begoro as 'Brother Sammy Fofo-o' are still living in Ghana.

When a farmer was said to have paid ¢41m (GH¢4,100) towards providing security at the residence of former President John Agyekum Kufuor's residence in 2001, all hell broke loose.

When it became public knowledge that Chief Kufuor, the adult son of ex-President John Agyekum Kufuor had put a consortium together to acquire the African Regency Hotel, near his father's house, it was contrived to mean a sacrilege to the body politic. There was so much hue and cry that the hotel acquired a new name- 'Hotel Waa Waa'.

Are the main dramatists in opposition to this acquisition and who claimed that the young man could not acquire such a property without the father's influence, not aware that the state under Prof. Mills has virtually wrapped up GH¢58 million (¢580 billion) and handed it over to Alfred Agbesi Woyome, so that he could bankroll the NDC?

When the Kufuor administration sold petrol at Gh¢5.3 (¢53,000) at a time the international price for crude oil had reached an astronomical $147 a barrel, Ama Chavez and her apologists were shedding crocodile tears on radio and television. Has Kwesi Pratt ever bought diesel for GH¢8 or ¢80,000 since the New Year eve?

The paradox of the new petroleum price hike is that a barrel of petrol sells for less than $110 a barrel on the international market. To add to the comedy of the new price mechanism, we were told last year that through the magic of Finance Minister Kwabena Duffuor's hedging, the nation has made so much from the increase in crude oil on the international market.

If the state has made so much money hedging crude oil prices, which subsidy is there to remove anyway to cause prices to so steeply rise? Are we being told what exactly is happening? For me, as a social commentator, I am beginning to smell a rat. This administration is taking every Ghanaian for a ride.

Between hedging, removal of subsidy and the steep rise in petroleum prices lie a certain truth. I bet my last cedi that truth is being hidden from the mass of the people. With election fever in the air, there is so much emphasis on keeping themselves in power that President John Evans Atta Mills and his men and women are playing tricks with the economy of this country.

Already, motor bicycles have popped up in their numbers in party circles, acquired with state funds, so that men and women lying their way to power, could reach the hinterland to hoodwink the unsuspecting potential voter. I am beginning to get the impression that all the NDC as a political party care for, is to be in power through whatever means officials of the party could contrive.

The actual art of governance and bringing relief to the people of this nation, from the evidence so far available, does not appear to carry much weight in the scheme of things, within the ruling party.

The President of the Republic of Ghana declared 2011 an action year. Scissors of various sizes and modes, pick axes and shovels of all types were taken on a whirl-wind tour of the various regions of Ghana.

Has the President bothered to find out what has happened to all those projects he commissioned amid roof-top advertisement of creating a 'Better Ghana'.?'

The other day, I heard ex-President Jerry John Rawlings on radio and television asking the man he mentored to become head of state of this Republic,  to tell him what message he would give Ghanaians on the campaign trail.

President Mills has so far not responded. If the Presidential New Year message is anything to go by, the head of state would not accept that he has been a gigantic failure as leader of this society. Instead, he intends to go about drumming home the tired ritual of a 'Better Ghana' agenda.

In the Akan societies of Ghana, it is universally believed that any person talking of creating wealth must have some evidence of wealth around him. 'Kwatrekwa Se Obe ma wo Ntoma A, Tie Nidin'. This is loosely translated to mean that If a naked person promises you cloth, just take a closer look at him.

There have been a number of administrations which invariably lost their way in the conduct of public affairs in this nation. That is why this society is not moving forward as rapidly as resources of state would dictate.

Take it from me, none is as terrible as the Mills administration. As head of state, the President has failed to inspire most Ghanaians. If you meet Ghanaians drowning their sorrows in alcohol, it is because there is so much despondency.

Ghana under Prof. John Evans Atta Mills is a failed state. And that is a very mild means of describing the hopelessness at the center of the earth. Afrinyhia Pa!

I apologise for delaying my New Year Message. It would be published with all its satirical best on Monday. Do you want to know the recipient of the 'Order of the Vulture', Read Ebo Quansah's New Year message on Monday.

Retraction & Apology
Re: Kwaku Akpadzi Mortey
In the article with the caption:  WHILE BILLIONS ARE DOLED OUT TO WOYOME, Ghanaians Prepare to Spend X'Mas Without hope, in this column of Friday, December 23, 2011, I inadvertently dragged in the name of the Executive Director of the Economic and Organized Crime Office, Mr. Kwaku Akpadzi Mortey in a piece which was about EOCO and not the person heading the Office, and created the impression that the Executive Director might not have conducted himself properly in office.

I regret writing the offending statement. I withdraw the same in its entirety and apologise unreservedly to my Viking colleague