The Independence Of Ghana: A Grand Delusion Of Choice

As we ponder Ghana's achievements on the anniversary of her 58 years of independence, I am irresistibly tempted to suggest that Kwame Nkrumah threw a challenge to the forces that be when he declared in his midnight speech on Independence day: “Today from now on a New African is ready to fight his own battle and show that after all, the Black Man is capable of managing his own affairs.”

The country has since gone through so many trials and tribulations, both politically and economically. I will not attempt to take you on a trip down memory lane but the natural thing for humanity to do though, usually when things don't go so well is to question our choices, the timing of our independence, choice of Governments thereafter, if any, and what have you.

How did a Country that has been blessed with so much natural wealth, including, Gold, Timber, Diamond, Aluminium, Cocoa, Food crops and with a whopping $470 million foreign exchange reserves as far back as 1957, fail so woefully to prosper even after 58 years later. The coloniser even left Ghana an extensive network of railways and roads for exploiting these resources. The puzzle has become even more complicated after oil was found in Ghana. I insist that our choices have been disastrous most of the time.

All things being equal, choosing a Government in 2016 should undoubtedly be one of the easiest and most informed decisions Ghanaians would have to make in our relatively short political history, however, time and again, our decisions have been marred by either money or an unwholesomely blind allegiance to tribe, kith and kin, if not simply misreported.

'All of us face hard choices in our lives' Hilary Clinton wrote in her book entitled Hard Choices. Hilary adds: 'Life is about making such choices and how we handle them shape the people we become'. In my view, our choices make us what we are today and invariably determine whether we prosper or not.

Did Ghanaians really vote themselves out of the prospect of achieving real prosperity for the country in 2008? Did Ghana really cut off her nose to spite her face?

What perhaps Kwame Nkrumah failed to reckon with was that the Independence of Ghana was rather meaningless unless it was backed up by a largely well-educated and well-informed population, not prone to tribal and other forms of indoctrination, and capable of effectively exercising its democratic rights for the benefit of the country, if even to have fettered Nkrumah's growing omnipotence which latter was to become his Achilles heel.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs is a good friend and a former economic adviser to Kofi Anan (whilst Secretary General to the United Nations). He has been involved in offering economic advice and assistance to Governments of over 90% of the Global population. In his book entitled The End of Poverty, the good professor writes without any of the 'erudition' associated with higher learning in economics, that: 'Economic Development works. It can be successful. It tends to build on its self. But it must first get started.'

Jeffrey wrote in 2005, that when countries get their foot onto the ladder of economic development, they are generally able to continue the upward climb, barring any disastrous Government (my take). All good things tend to move together at each rising rung: higher capital stock, greater specialization, more advanced technology, and lower fertility. However, once trapped below the ladder of development, with the first rung too high off the ground, the climb does not even get started.

It is now a generally accepted precept of economic development that the West does not need to invest with the view to making an impoverished economy rich but it simply ought to be sufficient to get us onto a foothold on the ladder of economic development. However, history has shown us that the West is usually only prepared to proffer hand-outs and bailouts which rather like alms given to street beggars, don't develop countries but simply keep them begging, where they are – on the proverbial streets – in destitution. It begs the question whether one should rejoice at Mahama's recent find of $3 billion from the IMF and development partners albeit seemingly likely to be ultimately obtained by deception via a manipulated budget.

An IMF package with its conditionality will not develop Ghana and put the country beyond the pangs of poverty and hunger, unless the Country is ruled by leaders who are able to create other meaningful sources of funds such as the learned Dr Bawumiah is wont to say: Formalize the private sector, provide an enabling environment to speed up the growth of the sector to produce a formidable source of private sector investment that can push the country up the Ladder of development. Otherwise, the country labours in vain.

NPP has proven over the years to have the common sense and the good will to attract a tremendous and buoyant private sector capable of funding the Country's development as against an NDC that overtaxes by way of VAT even on real estate. The recently abandoned 'condom tax' is hard evidence of the mind-set of the people currently in Government. The recent comment by no less a person than Rt Honourable Barton Oduro, in that, businesses, which, complain about the current energy poverty, are incapable of running their affairs, is quite a damning indictment on the NDC's capacity to grow the private sector.

Under their watch, the NPP administration cleaned up an inherited HIPIC state of affairs and spruced it up. They found oil! Corruption was nowhere near to the levels they were in the past and where they currently are today. Yet the Country booted them out in 2008.

It is interesting to note that as of 2002, the Country was described in well-respected sources as follows:

'Ghana is one of the best governed and managed countries in Africa, a stable multiparty democracy with relatively high literacy and very modest levels of corruption compared to other countries of comparable income'.

During their first term in office, the NPP administration presented what was described as an exceptionally designed poverty reduction strategy, which, notwithstanding its efficacy, faced enormous opposition from the relevant donor institutions. Regrettably, the West unscrupulously watered it down to ensure it was funded at a third of its original efficacy.

The African Development Bank recently reported that under the NPP administration, Ghana witnessed the fastest growth in its history, attaining a Middle- Income status by 2006 much earlier than the projected year of 2015 envisaged under the UN Millennium Development Goals and GDP reaching a record 8.4% between 2007 and 2008 even in the teeth of the international financial and economic crisis.

In my view, by the time President Mills took over the Country, Ghana had crossed the Rubicon to economic advancement, the defining point beyond which, barring an incident of disastrous governance, a country can never return to poverty. After Kufuour, it was too early for the country to have flirted with any form of ineptitude in the management of the country. Ghanaians must have avoided the NDC with every pint of their blood. The NDC inherited an Oil producing economy, which oil it had not found in its many years' oversight of our sea shores, a very stable economy etc. It must take a 'Mr Bean-like' management of our Country for us to have reached the Doom, Doom status we have currently attained.

Matter-of-factly, with CPP no longer a real force to reckon with, of the main political traditions, which have steered the affairs of our Country since independence, it is the National Democratic Congress and her predecessors who have had the greatest opportunity in terms of time and resources, to develop the motherland. It is rather sad that they have yet to render an unqualified apology to Ghanaians for the perennial economic and energy conundrums that we appear to be plagued with. Instead of carrying out their responsibilities as mandated by the honour bestowed on them, their motive has rather been to shamelessly plunder and loot the country's rare and valuable resources in an exercise of sheer self-aggrandizement and to perpetuate themselves in power. Lo and Behold, their greatest achievement thus far is to have been able to obtain a 1 billion dollar IMF package with additional 2 billion funding from donor partnerships.

As they say, to whom much is given much is expected, however, with the level of ineptitude and incompetence they have thus far exhibited, you would be pardoned for mistaking NDC ministers for upstarts in the business of Government.

The NDC has either always been motivated by envy as evidenced by the PNDC or by some form of the greed currently evident. The NDC is clearly not fit for purpose as you have heard it said.

It cannot be gainsaid that a good government is needed to take Ghana up the proverbial first rung of the ladder of economic development and to maintain it there but it takes a rather disastrous NDC to bring us where we currently are, below the rung, trying to reach back. The NPP's record of good governance is beyond dispute. It is the only credible alternative for Ghanaians. Ghanaians will have to accept that electing a Government to undertake the business of building the Nation is a serious matter not to be toyed with nor should it be one that should in anyway be informed by tribal preferences but with the cool headedness akin to that of a businessman determined to prosper.

Nevertheless, the United Party, the NPP's forbearer, was meant to be a Union of several parties with different strongholds around the country, including SD Dombo's Northern People's Party. Today, the principal person likely to lead the economic onslaught on the country's plight is no other than the son of Alhaji Bawumiah of the former Northern People's Party, Dr Bawumiah.

Fellow Ghanaians, politicians the world over will try to play the 'race' card if it suits them but it is for the people to sift the wheat from the chaff and make the appropriate decisions and choices for a genuinely better Ghana.