Hackman Owusu-Agyeman Will Stay Put At COCOBOD, Trust Me

It is quite clear that, finally, we have somebody in charge at the former Ghana Cocoa-Marketing Board (GCMB), presently called COCOBOD, who fully appreciates the imperative need for managerial discipline and fiscal responsibility. This government monopsony or monopoly of a produce-buying agency has always been known to be unacceptably profligate at the executive level. This is what the ongoing saga of Dr. Stephen K. Opuni, the Mahama in-law who reportedly ran the agency like his own private enterprise is about. Now, let us talk about a government of relatives and friends. Actually, if you were to directly ask me, Dear Reader, I would bluntly tell you that from the reliable information that we all have, via media reportage, Dr. Opuni ran COCOBOD like his own piggybank, either wantonly paying himself or getting paid a salary that was several times bigger than the official salary of the substantive President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana.

Then also, the senior staff of the Board or Agency was known to be treated exactly like the erstwhile British colonial expatriates who established the original Gold Coast Cocoa-Marketing Board in 1947. For instance, they were afforded such elitist privileges as having their medical expenses incurred abroad fully defrayed by the Ghanaian taxpayer, as well as sweetheart annual vacation packages, with free roundtrip tickets for travels abroad, which most Ghanaian civil servants with similar academic and professional qualifications were not entitled to or privileged to have. Maybe this is what Mr. Richard Akomea, the Chairman of COCOBOD’s Workers’ Union is referring to, when he so cavalierly and rather irritably says that “Any good thing that is coming to staff, we want to tell [Chairman Hackman Owusu-Agyeman] that we deserve it. We deserve whatever we’re taking; therefore, our due must be given to us. We want to tell government, we also voted to bring them to power, so if [Nana Akufo-Addo] refuses to listen to us, we’ll also tell him our story” (See “Sack Hackman! – COCOBOD Staff to Akufo-Addo” Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 5/2/18).

Well, to make his entitlement case more credible and acceptable, as well, Mr. Akomea may need to clearly and dispassionately explain precisely what he means by the COCOBOD employees’ being deserving of “whatever we’re taking,” and why they ought to be treated any differently and specially than the rest of other equally qualified civil servants in other sectors of the taxpayer-unwritten public corporations, departments and agencies. If they cannot make a better case than merely being allowed to maintain the profligate status quo of the double-dipping Mahama era, then they had better not make things unnecessarily more difficult for themselves, including the possibility of getting retrenched or laid off in the offing.

You see, the removal of Mr. Hackman Owusu-Agyeman, a veteran Food and Agriculture expert, cannot be gratuitously predicated on the fact that he is not pleasing COCOBOD employees by letting them have their way, in terms of occupational privileges and benefits. It has to be predicated on the fact of whether the COCOBOD’s Board Chairman is performing efficiently and/or competently or otherwise. Well, so far, what Mr. Akomea, the COCOBOD Union Leader, has been able to inadvertently prove to us is that Mr. Owusu-Agyeman is a no-nonsense public administrator who would not be ridden roughshod over by the spoilt-rotten staff and employees of COCOBOD. And this is precisely what good governance is about.

Ultimately, if in the process of making life more comfortable for the real Ghanaian cocoa producer or farmer, the COCOBOD Chairman keeps fiscal responsibility on the front burner of his policy and administrative agenda, by wisely overriding misguided status-quo decisions taken by COCOBOD’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Joseph Boahen Aidoo, then, of course, it is the latter whose job performance needs prompt reviewing, with the constructive possibility of having Mr. Boahen-Aidoo sagaciously removed, or redeployed, in order to further strengthen the hand and the clearly laudable efficient job performance of Chairman Owusu-Agyeman.

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