Our creed is greed, indeed!

Everyone – the expert and the lay, the person who knows it all and the man/woman who has nothing in their head – seems to know what is wrong with Ghana. Given a platform, be it a full blown address to a formal large audience at the International Conference Centre, a classroom lecture or a private two-man gossip, everyone will reel off a list of our assets.

They will start with the all too familiar statement: “We are endowed by nature with everything.”
So why are we so poor in a nation with (arguably) the greatest number of Excellence Awards for nearly every sector of the economy? We have achieved as far as ‘Millennium Excellence” Awards.
Ghana has ruled the world twice. In the First Republic, a Ghanaian was the President of the United Nations General Assembly; in our latest Republic, we have given the world its highest (and perhaps the toughest) Secretary-General – who stood up to almighty United States.

Three years ago, we stood aghast at the sheer impressiveness of WASSCE results: even candidates with Aggregate 8 could not gain entry into Medical School, Faculties of Engineering and Architecture. Today, we have scores that distinguish one candidate’s ‘A’ from another’s ‘A’.
Talk of professionals and plain academics! I wrote it before and I repeat that if you took a directory of academics and scientists at our research institutions, you’d be amazed at the number of alphabets adorning the names of our scientists.
And, indeed, our professors are no arm-chair academics. Francis Kofi Ampenyin Allotey is the Ghanaian mathematical physicist known for the "Allotey Formalism" born out of his work on soft X-ray spectroscopy. He and the Frimpong Boatengs and Agyemang Badu Akosas of this world are no mere fluke. They have endowed humankind with products of their brains.

We have the Trebi-Ollenus and Aveh-Kludzes who, in America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA), are heading Departments of Robotics and are commanding spacecraft in orbit.
I will come down to earth. Two or so years ago, the current United Nations Secretary-General rode on a bicycle made of bamboo. He marvelled at its robustness and praised the sheer ingenuity that produced it. That bicycle was made by a Ghanaian.
In this country, nine-year-olds are authoring works of fiction. A 14-year-old has been published four times! A Ghanaian (David Bolton) was as recently as the first decade of the 21st century described as a computer whiz kid. There is also a Ghanaian who has a world-acclaimed device for detecting fake drugs.
In Cook County, Chicago, in the United States of America, the day, February 15, has been set aside in honour of a Ghanaian. His name is Samuel Akainyah. During the 1996 Democratic Convention, Akainyah collected an honor second to no other artist in America. He was selected as the official artist for the convention. The Akainyah Gallery Museum, located in the River North section of downtown Chicago, has been visited by famous patrons including President Barack Obama, Muhammad Ali, Samuel Jackson and Danny Glover, among others.

Somewhere in the world, a Ghanaian bio-engineer, Kwabena Boahene, has invented a chip which, when implanted in the eye, works in place of the retina. It restores sight to the totally blind. First of its kind since God created Adam! In the Pennsylvania University, USA, where he teaches, a science laboratory is named Boahen Laboratory – after him.
In 2004, Ghana’s Oswald Boateng designed new amenity kits for Virgin Atlantic's Upper Class. It has won critical acclaim as “the most stylish first class kits available to travellers on any airline”. The design is said to have increased the airline’s pick rate five-fold.
So what is wrong? Why are we so poor?
The answer was supplied by Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba, the Kenyan Law School Professor, in his address in Accra recently. He said: “Our Creed Is Our Greed”.
In Ghana, if you came into political office and you did not use your position to build (at least) two houses and own a fleet of cars, you were considered a fool!
Ghanaian ministers of state and other makers of policy have traveled to the UK, the US and Germany and they know that over there, their most prominent personalities, including MPs, Ministers, Professors, etc do their daily commuting by public transport. The reason is simple: because they themselves will use these buses, trains, trams and “tubes”, the policy makers ensure that policies and measures are in place (and enforced) to keep the system working for all.

In Ghana, it is unthinkable for a Minister or MP or any “big man” to go by public transport. At any rate, the last time I checked, it’s only the Kufuor buses and the ram-shackled tro-tro vehicles that could be called “public transport”.
Only a year ago, we named and shamed football officials for acts perpetrated in Brazil, and decreed that physical cash be not carried on flights to Black Star players. Less than a year later, we have repeated the very act! Why? Because somebody must “chop”.
Suspecting only GFA officials? I am told people like me have no idea how many other big, medium and small fry allegedly have a percentage in the winning bonuses. The name is greed.