Strong Institutions Not Strongmen

On his first visit to Sub-Saharan Africa as President of the United States of America, President Barack Obama in his remarks to the Ghanaian parliament on 11^th July, 2009 said:

“In my father's life, it was partly tribalism and patronage and nepotism in an independent Kenya that for a long stretch derailed his career, and we know that this kind of corruption is still a daily fact of life…Development depends on good governance. That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long…Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions”

These statements by President Obama, especially the last sentence in the quote above have been quoted severally by several people at several places and in several forms. Listening and reading around, empirical evidence suggests that many social commentators, political scientists and experts in the field of Public Administration agree that Africa and for that matter Ghana lacks strong institutions.

Pregnant in Obama’s statements too are a vivid description of who we are as a people (i.e. Corrupt) though he was euphemistic or if you want, politically correct (the new crab in town) about it. This is not any different from the words of Tony Blair when he said “Africa remains a scar in the conscience of humanity”. Obama was only being diplomatic or politically correct and Blair was blunt as it needed to be. We are a laughing-stock when it comes to the affairs of this world today several years after we agreed that “we are capable of managing our own affairs” (Nkrumah should be turning in his grave by now).

I said today because I am not oblivious of the achievements of our forebears and maybe and just maybe one day one crazy man sitting at the apex of the pyramidal power structure we call “Government” will get annoy with the system so much so that he will decided to do what is right and needs to be done in the manner in which it should be done.

Several years after all these statements, what are we doing as a country to ensure that we have the strong institutions we all desire in this country? If you ask me, I will say virtually nothing. Did I hear someone say some laws like Public Financial Management Bill, Consolidated Local Government Bill, Education and Health bills etc etc are being finalised and some passed by parliament? My simple take is that if laws, in and of themselves, were a panacea to our myriad of problems, then we should not be complaining now. We should be leaving in paradise by now. What laws don’t we have? Is it a law on mosquitoes or bushfires or what? Just name them! Before 2000, we didn’t have a procurement Act, Financial Administration Act, Financial Memorandum, Internal Audit Act etc. All these Acts were passed post 2000 and we prided ourselves illusively of taking the necessary actions to curb corruption.

Apart from us constantly being described as corrupt as referenced above, my experience tells me nothing has changed when it comes to corruption. I am one of those who believe that as we change the governments over the years from 1993 to date, corrupt practices have been on the ascendency because the system is continuously creating more thieves and we keep getting sophisticated at that. Despite the existence of a Procurement Act, it is not the competitiveness or responsiveness or the competence of the bid/bidder that wins contracts; it is who the institution (be it MMDAs or MDAs) wants to win, that wins. I have been in the public sector for more than sixteen (16) years, eight (8) years of which have been in the District Assemblies and it is only once that I have seen a contract go to one whom it was not intended partly because the contract evaluation process was not conducted at the entity level. Even with this, sabotage was suspected and people got transferred because of this “lapse”.

As for the financials, take a glimpse at the Auditor-Generals annual reports and I can tell you that, even that is a tip of the iceberg when it comes to financial malfeasance in the public sector because all we do as auditing in this country is examine documents on records which mostly are “intelligently cooked” and maybe once in a while, whiles auditing, call numbers on the receipts to authentic the record. And don’t be shocked, there are times such calls end up on the cell phones of key officers of the institution. There are even cases where audit findings are traded for cash if they are damning enough and/or clearly criminal. This is the case of weak institutions and how we are failing in this country.

And how did we get to this nadir as a country? I have been thinking also. It has been my contention that over the years, the reforms we have taken in the public sector have failed to touch the fundamental structure of the old Traditional Administration (tall and very bureaucratic) since independence and even if we have, it has not been far enough. All we do is just change nomenclature. Today, you hear human resource management in the public sector but in truth, what is practice there is personnel management. You will hear performance management but in truth, it is performance appraisal. You will hear monitoring and evaluation (very lofty ideals) but in truth it is no more than supervision or just checking. You will hear “stakeholder consultation” but in truth a lecture- Hire a consultant; he puts one or two things together. A meeting is called, they present their stuff; any questions? Yes, what is A for? How would B be applied? etc. Thank you for coming. Bingo, stakeholder consultation has been done! No wonder we fail woefully when it comes to implementation.

Again, we have failed to own most of these reforms and only see them as opportunity for someone to bring in money for us to “chop”. The last time I heard something concrete about reforming the public sector, it was from the chairman of NDPC, Nii Moi Thompson (Dr or is he now Prof?). He was impressive and as always, a delight to listen to but I had my reservations. He was unequivocal on the need to have a modernised public service (Not the “Personal Service” that we have today – my words) and said the forty (40) year development plan has elaborate provisions to ensure that and that is where I shuddered. I only hope that that will be the first elements in the plan to be tackled else even that whole plan will be a farce as in the case of its predecessors. And with our “Acquired Infectious DEPENDENCY Syndrome” (AIDS), I wonder if no donor or so-called development partner comes with money to say do this or that, we will ever see the urgent need to go through with the needed reforms (what I prefer to call a “total overhaul”).

And Obama was right; we have been having too many strongmen in our public institutions for far too long. In most of our institutions, if certain one or two key individuals are not present in the office, then everything grinds to a halt because the system has been so structured. And like the speaker of our Parliament, everybody in and out of the institution is always trying to catch the eye of such a person thereby creating demagogues and demigods. This leads to the breeding of hypocrites and sycophants who will go at arm’s length to stay in the good books of these strongmen thus created.

These strongmen become power drunk and the words of Lord Acton “Power tends to corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” becomes the order of the day. The institution becomes the ultimate victim – no vision or direction, inertia, non-fertilisation of ideas, inept policies, with many of the staff who could not catch the eye of the strongman resigning themselves into apathy (after all they would be paid) and only waiting for their time to come. This is where a more collaborative structure with shared leadership would come in handy rather than this current bureaucratic tall organisational structure with top-down authority and control which has outlived its usefulness.

The need for strong institutions cannot be overemphasised. It takes strong leaders to build strong institutions and not strongmen. And who are these strongmen? The strongmen are the bossy people; those who steer rather than serve; those who believe that because they are up there, they necessarily know more than everybody else in the institution; those who take the public office as their own and all must necessarily work up to his/her interest and not that of the state; those who will not readily accept their faults but quickly justify their ineptitude with words like “I know my work”; those who will set the rules and still be the first to break them; those whom when faced with facts by their subordinates, rather than addressing the facts seek to use their positions to intimidate and harass; those who have thrown morals and ethics to the dogs and virtually sold their souls; those who rule rather than lead; those who dictated rather than guide; those who sideline, frustrate, neglect and extort from their subordinates rather than mentoring them etc. These I think are some of the strongmen and if the institutional frameworks are right and functioning as they should, most of these people would have been automatically weeded out because they cannot fit in. Too many square pegs in round holes.

Today, anybody you talk to would tell you systems are not working. Even the political elite do admit when they are not wearing their party political lenses. There is no day passing without you hearing about a failure in one institution or the other. Only God knows what we are waiting for before we take the needful action. Just at time of concluding this write-up, Centre Democratic Development (CDD) is reported to have released a report which says “70% of Ghanaians say Ghana is moving in the wrong direction”. I agree and prefer to say Ghana is on the wrong footing and will disagree vehemently with those who will say or think it started today or with this government.

To conclude, I will illustrate how we managed to weaken our institutions and brought ourselves into this quagmire with real life examples. Policemen on duty at a checkpoint in the night intercepted some contraband. The owner tried bribing them and they refused the bribe and made one of them to escort the vehicle to their station.

The next morning they came to meet the goods being driven away. When they inquired, they were told that it was for some “bigman”. Then the police friend who narrated this to me concluded that we (3 of them) just lost GH¢3,000.00 like that because that is what they were offered as bribe which they rejected. He did not go further but by his body language, one could tell that the next time he will be the first to encourage them to take the money and let the contraband pass. They have been taught a lesson - doing what is right in your line of duty is not right. And this has become the norm rather than the exception.

There are cases where Audits are done with serious findings. Failing to induce and convince the Auditors to drop some of the findings, the strongmen go a step higher to the bosses of the auditors to “see” another strongman and such findings are dropped. Next time such an auditor goes for an audit exercise, what do you think will happen? Thus in Ghana today, Audit findings have become a bargaining chip for those who have been taught that doing the right thing in your line of duty is “wrong”. Were there systems to check this kind of “call from above”, it is almost certain that systems would work better in the Public Sector.

An institution that is strong would not allow such a thing to happen because the one who ordered the release would be found out and punished accordingly. In other jurisdictions, it is even the officers who ceased the goods who will report but in Ghana try it and see. You will smell paper. With all your good intentions, you will suffer dire consequences. I used to also be tempted to believe that even if Jesus or Mohammed (SAW) comes to sit at the Presidency, he will not be able to solve our problems.

But no, knowing what I know today, we can do it. We only need the right inspiration and signals from the top. It is not for anything that the power structure is Pyramidal – so that when the right message is sent from above, it will easily resonate with the people. Let us forget about the niceties and sweet-talks in diplomatic circles that tell us that we are doing well and wake up from our slumber. That is an age old sales strategy. I rest my case.

Charles A. Akurugu
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