NDC Operatives Have Themselves to Blame on “Missing” Choppers

Their credibility was virtually nonexistent long before the key operatives of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) got condignly and democratically booted out of the Flagstaff House. So there is a diddly little that any of their most formidable political opponents could do to further damage a reputation and a credibility level that was already way below Ground Zero (See “Missing Helicopters: Plot to Denigrate NDC – Jinapor” Starrfmonline.com / Modernghana.com 5/24/17). In the latest of their political fits, or tantrums, the NDC operatives are lamely blaming the Akufo-Addo Administration for putting out false information, or fake news, properly speaking, indicating that some three helicopters purchased by the government for use by executives of Ghana Gas Company (Ghana Gas), a subsidiary of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), had gone missing.

It turns out that the three chopper helicopters are in the custody of the Ghana Airforce because, according to Mr. John Jinapor, the former Deputy Power Minister, Ghana Gas does not have the facilities, engineers and pilots to maintain these aircraft on its own premises. If Mr. Jinapor’s account has validity, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that it has not, then it was the right thing to do. The problem that we have here, though, is that the Mahama government kept an abjectly poor record or inventory of state properties, and so the likes of Mr. Jinapor have nobody else to fault but themselves. Indeed, as of this writing, a task force established with the blessing of the President was trawling our highways and byways trying to retrieve either stolen or improperly acquired state-owned vehicular properties, largely Toyota Land Cruisers, the vehicles of choice of our flamboyant and pathologically corrupt Ghanaian politicians.

In the process, a lot of diligent and law-abiding Ghanaian citizens are being unnecessarily, albeit unintentionally, harassed and their ability to prove their ownership of such vehicles, as are found in their possession, vehemently challenged right on the spot when they are stopped by members of this task force. There also clearly appears to have been a poor communication conduit between members of the outgoing Mahama Transition Team and their incoming Akufo-Addo counterparts. But, once again, it all boils down to Team Mahama’s abysmally poor record-keeping skills and habits. Else, issues such as the three Ghana Gas’ helicopters would already have been logged into the handover notes prepared by the Mahama operatives.

Matters have also not been helped by the uncovering of a legion of badly negotiated contracts initialed by the Mahama operatives. We are, for example, told that each of the choppers cost at least $ 50 million. And so the next step for the relevant point men and women of the Akufo-Addo Administration, may be to revisit the contractual agreement bordering on the purchase of these choppers to ensure that nobody took the Ghanaian taxpayer to the cleaners. There is also every reason to believe that issues such as that of the “missing choppers” are bound to keep coming up, as long as the Mahama operatives have shown themselves to be woefully untrustworthy when it comes to keeping meticulous inventory of taxpayer-owned property.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
May 25, 2017
E-mail: [email protected]