Ghana? - Forget It; We Can Never Make It. Period (10)

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'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?' – which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'

-  Mathew 27:46
'A crisis that reoccurs a second time is a crisis that must not occur again. A well-managed plant, I soon learned is a quiet place. A well-managed factory is boring. Nothing exciting happens in it because the crises have been anticipated and have been converted into routine'.

-  Peter Drucker
I wonder what comments Peter Drucker would make of the Ghanaian situation if he were around.

This is a country where crisis keeps on occurring and we move from one crisis to another without any solutions.

We create problems rather than finding solutions.
I wonder what comments Lee Kuan Yew would make if he were to visit Ghana for the second time and assess the Ghana he saw over 40 years ago when he first visited the country.

Corruption is destroying this country. This is a country born into corruption, baptized in corruption, nurtured in corruption, brought up in corruption, educated in corruption and spent all its adult working days in corruption and made to believe that the only way to salvation is to die in corruption. Today, the corruption which had engulfed our leaders during the Kwame Nkrumah era has assumed an unprecedented gargantuan proportion moving from Kalabule and Gyinabu of Acheampong NRC administration to Woyomegate and Akomfemgate under the Mills and Mahama NDC administration. Contracts are packaged and awarded to only those who are prepared to pay bribes.

Our greedy leaders, both appointed and elected, with high propensity and insatiable gluttony for corruption are heavily involved in shady deals robbing the country of needed limited resources for development and growth. Our greedy leaders, both appointed and elected, with high propensity and insatiable gluttony for corruption, are not just involved in outright theft of state resources but are also selling the country to pale faced crooked foreign businessmen.

Our greedy leaders, both appointed and elected, with high propensity and insatiable gluttony for corruption personally move from one office to another of crooked foreign businessmen, many of them without entry permits, resident permits and working permits, collecting envelopes stuffed with $10,000 as a price for selling the country.

It is a fact that our greedy leaders, both elected and appointed, with high propensity and insatiable gluttony for corruption, no longer wait in their offices to receive the bribes consisting of $10,000 stacked in envelopes.

Expensive vehicles and houses in foreign countries are very often thrown into the bargain as the purchase price for selling off the country to these crooked foreign businessmen.

Our greedy leaders, both appointed and elected, with high propensity and insatiable gluttony for corruption, virtually beg for admission and scholarship for their children in foreign universities from crooked foreign businessmen as prices for selling the country's resources cheaply. Our greedy leaders, both elected and appointed, with high propensity and insatiable gluttony for corruption, offer themselves at very cheap prices for their treachery and the crooked foreign businessmen in turn offer cheap prizes. Our leaders, both elected and appointed, with high propensity and insatiable gluttony for corruption, nowadays take the short route to the offices of these crooked foreign businessmen to collect these bribes themselves. They then sell the nation so cheaply to these foreign crooks. The foreign crooks come into the country without the requisite entry and resident permits as well as working permits and establish businesses such as ICT schools and centres, vehicle distribution companies,  retail businesses, enter into the oil and gas industry, involve themselves in galamsey, evade taxes and custom duties, carry out illegal electricity and water connections, involve themselves in businesses reserved for the locals, take over prime areas for massive residential building projects, establish churches where massive collections are made weekly which eventually find the way out of the country.

These crooked foreign businessmen claim dual nationality while they siphon all the cedis they earn out of the country in the form of United States dollars by beating the foreign exchange legal regime. Very often, these crooked foreign businessmen come with little or no working capital to their names. However, the local banks open their doors to them offering them mouthwatering credit facilities and within a short time they become dollar millionaires. Our greedy leaders, both appointed and elected, with high propensity and insatiable gluttony for corruption fly out on holidays arranged for them free of charge paid for by these crooked foreigners. Our greedy leaders, both appointed and elected, with high propensity and insatiable gluttony for corruption, compromise their entrusted positions and sell the nation's birthright to these crooked foreigners mostly made up of Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Syrians, Lebanese, Malaysians and some western businessmen.

The largesse appears massive for the greedy and unpatriotic leaders, both elected and appointed, with high propensity and insatiable gluttony for corruption. However, they are chicken feed to these crooked foreign bribe payers. However, they come at a big cost to the nation.

The illegal Chinese galamsey operators can gun down locals with impunity without the law dealing with them. Taxes and custom duties which could be used for development and growth are lost to the state and channeled into private pockets, the collection of government revenue can be compromised and taxes meant for the consolidated fund swept under the carpet.

The additional  price the nation pays for these heinous crimes is that our environment is degraded and  destroyed, our forest reserves are  depleted, our water bodies are polluted, Ghanaians workers employed by these pale faced foreigners are paid peanuts as starvation wages which amount to hand to chin wages and as part of the bargain treated as dirt with no rights to form unions or access to SSNIT contribution,  our telephone system can be operated at the lowest level of inefficiency to the discomfort of the suffering consumer illegal electricity and water connections suddenly become legal without any punishment to the offenders.

 
Illegal and unaccustomed goods like textiles, counterfeit products including fake drugs and expired consumer products can be allowed through our borders and onto the market. Cocoa and coffee, minerals like gold and diamond can be smuggled across the border with impunity.  I can still recollect the day Anas Arimiyaw Anas famous exposure on customs broke out. All what our late President Mills could do was to explode with righteous indignation and threaten the men and women of the custom institution on TV that the next time such callous atrocities are allowed to occur, there would be massive transfer of staff. In this country transfer is seen as punishment. The worst which happens to corrupt people is just to name them when the right thing to do is to name, shame and jail them. Who can doubt that fact that the impunity at the lower levels keep on occurring with persistent accuracy and timing because those at the top benefit from it and are worse offenders.

It took the courage of a late IGP Bawa Yakubu to admit there could hardly be any police officer who had not taken bribe before, (perhaps with the exception of the fine police officer of blessed memory famously called 'Abban'). Can anybody show me a virgin in maternity hospital?

In all these criminal endeavours, these crooked foreigners are very often aided by locals who find themselves in leadership positions like chiefs, assembly men and women and opinion leaders. These locals are paid pittance either for acting as front men or conduit pipe for these crooked foreign businessmen

There is so much corruption in this country presently because right from the dawn of independence, the epicentre of the corruption industry has always been at the seat of Government. Subsequent governments we have had have all polished up and oiled the corruption machinery they met, researched into it, perfected the way the loot stolen can be hidden while covering their tracks. We have reached a state in the corruption industry where an alleged criminal standing trial for illegal collection and receipt of state funds can hold a press conference, exuding self-confidence and clothed in moral fibre, threatening to name names of his alleged accomplices and everybody who matters in the society keeps quiet instead of daring him to a duel of conscience to name names. We have reached a stage in the corruption industry where the highest officer entrusted with the affairs of the state can announce loudly and clear that the entire flesh belonging to the nation has been eaten away leaving a bone which is even useless to the dog with the toughest teeth and strongest jaws to munch and yet it takes only a lonely Man of God from Obuasi, the Soweto of Ghana, to challenge him to come out with names of the people who ate away the entire flesh.

Indeed, just as any idiot can go to court and such idiot is already  in court, any idiot can ascend to the highest office of the land with so much sycophancy, bootlicking, hen-pecked husband attitude towards affairs of the state and dog in the manger attitude and give it to God syndrome on the part of the citizens.

The sad situation and the reality facing this country today is that we have criminals in government who came to power through criminal ways, we have criminals managing our state institutions and who are all looting the state coffers with impunity. As if that is not enough these greedy bustards are also selling the nation's birthright to crooked foreigners and are diligently and with impunity introducing tribalism into our national life, a canker Dr. Kwame Nkrumah fought to a standstill and won.

Suddenly persons with certain tribal names or deemed to be coming from certain parts of the country or are known not to belong to the ruling party are treated as second class citizens. Certain particular region in the country has been declared no go area by criminal gangs in full glare of the security services. Ghana, forget, we can never make it. Every morning when I hear the song birds singing telling me it is time to wake up, I look at my black skin and look up to the heavens and I exclaim, Oh Allah, why did you bring me here.

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By Kwame Gyasi