Airbus Probe Is Squarely About Probity and Accountability

It is rather ironically absurd that the very leadership of the country’s main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who tout the December 31^st faux-revolution that illegally ousted the democratically elected Hilla “Babini” Limann-led government of the People’s National Party (PNP) in 1981, as the perfect storm for the salutary emergence of “Probity, Accountability, Transparency and Justice,” on the hitherto rankly corrupt Ghanaian political scene, would also now be pooh-poohing the opportune and auspicious launching of a comprehensive probe into the European Airbus Payola Scandal involving operatives of the Mills-Mahama regime between 2011 and 2015 (See “Akufo-Addo’s Airbus Probe a Diversionary Tactic from Vanishing Excavators – Asiedu-Nketia” PrimeNewsGhana.com 2/3/20).

In the European Airbus Scandal, according to judges at the UK’s Serious Fraud Court (SFC), some representatives of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress have been forensically and convincingly established to have received approximately the whopping sum of $ 5 Million (USD) in kickbacks in order to illegally afford the largest European airplane manufacturer undue commercial sales edge over its rivals and competitors around the world. What the preceding information means is that Airbus-made aircraft may have been sold to the Ghana government at prices that were much higher than the going market prices or rates at the time. Now, leaders who really believe in the four Provisional National Defense Council’s principles of responsible governance would rather be lauding the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for so valiantly attempting to pragmatize these anti-corruption principles that self-righteous and pontifical leaders like Chairman Jerry John Rawlings suppose to have made his erstwhile cutthroat political machine the best of its kind to have ever emerged on the Ghanaian political terrain.

Interestingly, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the dynastic General-Secretary of the Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress, would have Ghanaians believe, rather lamely, that in meticulously seeking to have the reprobate NDC operatives involved in Airbus’ Payola Racket to be brought to account, that President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is deviously and mischievously trying to sweep the Galamsey Excavation Scandal, in which over 100 impounded illegal-mining excavators reportedly went missing and were later found to have been illegally used by some NPP operatives appointed by Nana Akufo-Addo to facilitate the drastic stemming of the environmentally pernicious Galamsey tide which, by the way, was singularly and historically created by the Rawlings-led erstwhile junta of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council in the late 1980s and throughout much of the 1990s and well into the 2000s, under the metaphorical carpet.

It is equally significant to note here, at least in passing, that for most of the past three years that President Akufo-Addo’s uphill task against the wanton environmental degradation engendered by Galamsey, or illegal small-scale mining, has been in high dudgeon, Nana Akufo-Addo’s immediate predecessor, to wit, former President John Dramani Mahama, has gone on public record as having vigorously promoted and staunchly advocated for the relentless intensification of the Galamsey Industrial Menace, on the inexcusably irrational and nihilistic grounds that the wanton and, in many cases, irreparable degradation of the country’s waterbodies, forestry resources and other landed resources, as well, is an imperative necessity because the Akufo-Addo Administration has proven itself to be woefully incapable of creating gainful employment for these Galamseyers, especially Galamseyers resident in the northern half of the country.

No such political propaganda ploy could at once be more criminal and scandalous, when one also reckons the fact that under the very progressive and visionary watch of President Akufo-Addo, the general level of unemployment in the country has been remarkably and significantly better, relative to what prevailed under the Mills-Mahama tandem regimes. The latter reference is, of course, to the state or rate of unemployment in the country in the period immediately preceding the apocalyptic era of the Coronavirus Pandemic. The European Airbus’ Payola Racket needs to be relentlessly pursued and doggedly prosecuted because unconscionably smug and reckless Ghanaian leaders like Messrs. Atta-Mills, late; John Dramani Mahama and Johnson Asiedu-Nketia have fed fat and filthy rich on such gross and criminal political misbehavior at the expense of the hardworking blue-collar Ghanaian worker, and the woefully underpaid Ghanaian civil and public servant.

We must also point out that it was the judges and prosecutors of Britain’s Serious Fraud Court, and their counterparts in Paris, France, and Washington DC, right here in the United States, who first indicated that they were eager and willing to constructively engage in civil dialogue and the free offer of judicially incriminating evidence that could very well lead to the condign prosecution of the official players involved in this mega-heist which occurred in five countries with close political ties to Great Britain, namely, Ghana, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and Sri Lanka. You see, for the information of rankly corrupt present-day Ghanaian leaders like Mr. Asiedu-Nketia, Britain ought not to be made to seem to be more caring or concerned about kleptocratic corruption in Ghana than Ghanaian citizens and our leaders. Which is not to say that, that is not precisely the nature of the political and moral relationship between these “create, loot and share” movers-and-shakers of the National Democratic Congress.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
April 1, 2020
E-mail: [email protected]