Our Engaging President Needs An 'Enforcer'

President Akufo-Addo's State Of The Nation Address of 21 February 2019, was a masterpiece, both in content and delivery.

He even made the NDC Members of Parliament laugh – which, given their usual attitude, was nothing short of a miracle!

However, I sometimes wondered whether he wasn't presenting a pastiche of promises – and projected outcomes of programmes mined out of the moribund files of the Ministries – and put into the mouth of a presentation-savvy President?

Listen to this, for instance:

QUOTE: Mr. Speaker, the “One-District-One-Factory” policy has taken off, and 79 factories under the scheme are at various stages of operation or construction.” [Surely, these are “weasel words”?

“Another 35 are going through credit appraisal. . . 50 small-scale processing factories will be established by the end of the year, in 50 districts...... These will be owned and managed by organized youth groups. UNQUOTE

Haven't we heard things like this before? What did ex-President John Mahama say when he announced the establishment of the money-sucking but useless Youth Employment Agency (estimated cost to the exchequer C500 million!) and the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (whose “guinea fowls” are, [presumably] still “accelerating” their way back from Burkina Faso to Ghana, with refuelling stops at Bamako and Niamey; cost to the tax-payer in “seed money” alone: 100 million Cedis; and payments to one contractor alone: 30 million US dollars]?

I point these facts out because we have the same civil service machinery in operation that condoned the siphoning of public funds into private pockets by way of these schemes that sounded so beguiling at the time they were presented as programmes of development.

I am afraid that past practices by politicians and their acolytes have so coarsened our psyches that when we hear of promises, we just shrug our shoulders and cynically ask: “Haven't we heard something like that before?”

I suppose it is in the nature of the State of The Nation Address that it becomes something like a continuing party manifesto! For, again, listen to the President:

QUOTE:

Mr Speaker, it is unfortunate that, in 2019, we still have to revisit this topic, but, open defecation cannot be a characteristic of a country that is working to be transformed economically, and to be counted amongst the developed nations of the world.....We have witnessed an increase in the coverage of solid waste management, from 16.6% to 53%, and, over the course of last year, thirty-five thousand, eight hundred and sixty-two (35,862) household toilets werebuilt, as opposed to one thousand, six hundred and ninety-eight (1,698) in 2016. UNQUOTE

Now, there seems to be a bit of confusion, however, regarding the number of toilets built under the “One House-One-Toilet Policy”, for in another passage, we read that “The Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) Programme is being implemented in over four thousand, five hundred (4,500) communities in one hundred and thirty (130) districts to achieve Open Defecation Free (ODF) Communities”.

This subject is so important that I would like the Government to please ask the Auditor-General to set up a small group of “fact-checkers” to visit the “communities” in which these “one household, one toilet” facilities have actually been brought into ruse. Facts to be established are: when was a facility constructed and where; how the households were selected; how much money was spent on each facility; and the currentstate of the facilities. Are there any any errors in the constructions that should be corrected in future projects?

As soon as a trend is established, providing objective facts to show whether the scheme is proceeding as planned, a report should be published, setting the country's mind at rest on what's what has actually been achieved. Such a systemic evaluation of Government programmes could eventually be generalised to encompass all governmental promises of action. For too many WORDS do emanate from every Government. Habitually!

Yet, our Government must not put itself in the well-known position of the proverbial Ghanaian Diasporan, who, having sent a lot of hard-earned money back home to trusted relatives to build him a house, comes back to Ghana only to find that the nice pictures of “his” building sent to him abroad, were pictures of somebody else's building!

There are many other tidings in the State of The Nation Address that excited me but I shall just pick a final, crucial paragraph in the speech. The President said:

QUOTE: ….Our lands and water bodies have been under extreme pressure for some time. Farming lands have been destroyed, and rivers that used to provide safe drinking water and fish turned into toxic water bodies. This is why we placed the ban on all small-scale mining, so we could find ways to deal with the illegal mining, or galamsey, as it is popularly called. The ban on small scale mining has now been lifted, but not on galamsey. Some of our water bodies have shown remarkable signs of rejuvenation. . . But the battle against galamsey is nowhere near being won yet, and I appeal to all citizens to be part of the battle to keep our lands and water bodies safe.” UNQUOTE

Who can gainsay that? All the President now needs, in my opinion, is an “ENFORCER”: someone who can make sure that all those who continue to engage in galamsey – openly or secretly – are caught and prosecuted. If e Enforcer finds that sentences imposed by our courts against the nation-wreckers are too lenient, he should appeal to the courts to have the sentences reviewed upwards,

The Government should also (to send an unmistakable message to the populace that it is not happy to have been obliged to incur the huge expenditure it is continuing to incur) on stopping galamsey and reversing its effects, make long terms of imprisonment mandatory for all galamsey offences.

For, as the elders say in Twi: “Wokum ƆwƆ na woantwa ne tiri a, na wonnkum no!” [If you kill a snake and do not cut off its head, then you haven't really killed it!”]

Meanwhile, kudos, Mr President.

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