Talk Is Not Always Cheap

It has been some days now since the New Patriotic Party's Youth Organiser Sammy Awuku made an impassioned call for a youth insurrection in Ghana following the pathetic showing of his party at the Electoral Commission's open forum on whether the electoral register should be replaced or cleansed.

Much as the vituperations of the young man was not totally surprising, there is something nervously worrying and damaging about it. And that thing is the signalling effect of his comment. That can manifest in several aspects of our society. From where I stand, the greatest is the economic one.

Whether we like it or not the reigning paradigm in global economic activity is demand driven. This means that wherever there is a strong market, investment draws closer. Where there are profitable economic uses for finance, internal or external, fund owners direct their attention and energies.

But what can be the biggest blot to investment attractiveness of Ghana is the potential for instability. Already, Africans bear the brunt of high market premium because of an unfair preception that 'all' of Africa is unstable. And that is where Sammy Awuku's speech is not only reckless, but potentially costly.

Of course, any investor who is developing investment interest in any part of Ghana needs to assess the potential of that call to result in actual violence. In doing so, the strength and depth of our security and conflict prevention institutions will be looked at carefully. Here again the sentiments are already against us.

So why would a young person who has a significant following by virtue of his position and so much to live for denegerate with such language of terror? Here my job in identifying the cause is cut out as the leader of his party Akufo Addo, has persistently and obstinately cemented his image is the chief trouble formenter and a mentor of such characters.

The report on Akufo Addo by the U.S.-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies directly speaks to his insurgent nature. Indeed he is so predictable that even western inteligence authorities find him incapable of becoming a successful leader. Yet he mentors Sammy Awuku! Why would we not have a leadership of terror being exemplified and advertised to the world about our country from them?

What is more sinister about this is the silent collusion of the voices of reason who sit and watch this leadership of incompetence defy all sanity, denigrating our economic attractiveness in its wake.

By now we know that the overwhelming obsession of these seditious lot, which is fueling their costly speech, is for the current government to fail so as to pave way for them to rule. But is leadership not supposed to serve public good instead of public peril?

Until next week, stay loyal and genuinely patriotic to mother Ghana.