Playing Politics With Statistics

Dr Philomena Nyarko

In terms of a discourse which gave so much food for thought and prompting a national conversation over economic matters in recent times, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia's presentation is unsurpassed and might remain so for a long time to come.

Poverty and deprivation continue to bother us as a nation even as those educated with the taxpayer's money and entrusted with manning the state largely show signs of selfishness and how much they can make from the state kitty than managing our scarce resources in the face of our many wants.

Dr. Bawumia brought to the fore very serious issues regarding why we continue to remain where we are, unable to move forward in a way that would encourage those at the helm to do a self-search. He avoided any iota of running down any state institution such as the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) as government propagandists seek to portray.

The gentleman is no magician or a whiz-kid but one who has studied and mastered it without doubt, an area of human endeavour whose relevance to the economic challenges of the country, is not in doubt.

He is as much a source of hope for the masses of this country as his discourse whose significance can be measured from the widespread waves it is making across the political course.

Those with weak tummies but pretend to have the opposite have been exposed by their reaction to the discourse as they hold their aching organs in total confusion.

They are unable to stand the fallout from the emanating debate as they take cover behind the façade of insults and invectiveness.

Pitiable also is the fact that a lady with a doctorate, excited about the little perks of her new office, will post an all-is-well picture of the organization she heads as part of the matters arising from the Bawumia discourse.

She cut the picture of typical NDC propagandists such as the Fiifi Kweteys, Ofosu Kwakyes and others.

When Dr. Bawumiah, like Hon. ET Mensah, sought assistance for the GSS, she stood against it, claiming that all is well with the agency which, she added, has had an impressive injection of funding from both central government and development partners.

As for the erroneous economic figures which attracted the country financial sanctions some years back, the memory is still fresh.

It is amazing that even Ghana as a nation, in spite of all that she receives in terms of support from donor partners, will be hard pressed to paint a rosy picture of all-is-well and therefore impervious to additional support.

With such an impressive provision of funding, we are surprised that the GSS, under the Acting Government Statistician, is still unable to release the census figures.

Hon. Balado Mainoo rightly pointed out that she would have served Ghana better had she used the time she used to deny that the GSS has challenges to release the census figures of one district.

When heads of state agencies allow themselves to be pushed around by the executive and to even lie that they do not have problems, the outcome is disastrous

We wonder how she can cope with the pressure-induced insomnia after such a mendacious showing in the media.