Under Akufo-Addo, Ghana Is Working Again

The “chop-chop” era of the Mills-Mahama-backed Woyome Mega-Heist well appears to have been brought to a definitive end. The recent ringing success chalked by the Department of the Auditor-General in the recovery of at least GHȻ 67 Million-plus, in what has been categorized as Disallowances and Surcharges, ought to position Ghana, finally, on the roadmap to fiscal managerial efficiency, discipline and, in effect, the salutary path of real development (See “Auditor-General Recovers GHȻ 67 Million Through Surcharge(s) in 2018” Graphic.com.gh 1/3/19). This progressive development would likely not have occurred under the thoroughgoing corrupt Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) or any other NDC-sponsored regime, which made the mega-fiscal scam that infamously became known as Judgment Debts the capstone of its economic policy.

Now, what the preceding means is that no longer will Ghanaian citizens in executive positions entrusted with the fiduciary management of the resources of the taxpayer be able to recklessly and wantonly misappropriate or embezzle the people’s money and facilely get away with the same. For the preceding auspicious development, we owe President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at least obliquely, a debt of gratitude, because it was the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice who, presently as substantive President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana, arguably and charismatically created the sort of progressive climate that emboldened the leaders of the Civil Society Organization (CSO) called OccupyGhana, that took Auditor-General Daniel Yao Domelevo to court in order to ensure that the law dealing with fiscal responsibility that had been on the books, as it were, for decades but was lying dormant, for the most part, was activated and rigidly enforced for the good of our beloved nation.

Indeed, recently, during a television talking-heads program, one of the prime movers or conveners of OccupyGhana, as the leaders of the latter group prefer to call themselves, Mr. Ace Anan Ankomah, brought to light the fact that while he had not initially appeared to have been forthcoming vis-à-vis the enforcement of fiscal responsibility in the operations of the civil and public sector, nevertheless, Mr. Domelevo had administratively distinguished himself in several southern African countries by constructively facilitating the rigid enforcement of fiscal efficiency and accountability in those countries. We are, in fact, told that so creditably had Mr. Domelevo acquitted himself that several other countries on the African continent had borrowed a page or two from the yeomanly performance of this scion of Ghanaian parents. We must all be proud of Mr. Domelevo, whether we think he is an administrative godsend or not. Our Akan sages of yore used to say that “You may not like the duiker/antelope, but you ought to be honest enough to commend its graceful gait.”

Ironically, in Ghana, quite recently, some shady operatives inside the Akufo-Addo Administration, who clearly did not seem to have the success of the President at heart, vigorously attempted to force this man with the long and admirable track-record in the enforcement of fiscal responsibility in the public sector out of the job at which he had been “acting” for quite some time, and to which he had apparently been fully appointed on the 11^th-hour, as it were, by a hopelessly defeated President John Dramani Mahama as one of his scorched-earth rearguard tactics of effectively sabotaging the incoming Akufo-Addo Administration. But, in retrospect, of course, it well appears that Mr. Domelevo had his own mind and would absolutely not hew to the strategic shenanigans of the man who once adamantly refused to vacate his lease-expired Vice-President’s bungalow. Well, in the equally strategic attempt by some suave New Patriotic Party factionalists to oust Mr. Domelevo, some of us resident in the Diaspora who happened to be in the media’s eye-of-the-storm, as it were, and who had invested a significant modicum of confidence in this Mahama appointee, who, by the way, had publicly expressed the enlightened and progressive desire to work for the utmost and long-term good and interest of our beloved nation, rather than for the good of any individual leader or politician, decided to promptly go to bat for the man. Now, as it turns out, we did the right thing all along, after all.

My layperson’s understanding of these two operative themes and terms means that by “Disallowance,” the Auditor-General’s Office or Department intended to vigilantly ensure that any taxpayer cedis or pesewas that are deliberately and recklessly spent would be promptly “Surcharged” to those evidently self-serving and criminally unpatriotic public officials who had deviously permitted the same. But even more significantly, the Supreme Court has advised the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Ms. Gloria Akuffo, that is, to ensure the execution of criminal prosecution proceedings against anybody deemed to have nefariously bilked or attempted to bilk the hardworking and honest Ghanaian taxpayer. In his account on the Multimedia-beamed TV talking-heads policy-analysis program, Mr. Ankomah, of OccupyGhana fame, also highlighted the fact that it well appears that Mr. Domelevo had been eagerly waiting for just an opportune moment to repeat the resonant success stories that made him so widely respected as a formidable force to reckon with in the southern Africa region.

Kudos to all the key and progressive players who participated in this clearly unprecedented and seismic feat aimed at the successful enforcement of the fiscal discipline laws of our country. In the past, it has been the military juntas who set out to clean the house. But these largely wet-eared khaki-uniformed boys were never successful, because they were rather too naïve and legally innocence to fully appreciate how the game was effectively played. They wanted to be famous overnight, and then they ended up stealing more than the “corrupt” officials whose apparent lack of patriotism had inspired them to take up arms.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
January 8, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]