Can we be a little more serious?
There is no doubt that Ghana is in deep financial and economic difficulties. This requires that we all, as Ghanaians, become more serious and play our parts and work hard to improve the condition.
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Despite the fact that the country is in this dire economic situation which calls for the best brains to salvage the situation, some government officials, including a cabinet minister, seem to have lost their thinking caps and have rather resorted to comedy. These are no good days; hence we don’t need empty-headed ministers and officials around the President.
The cabinet minister and the Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Alhaji Collins Dauda, somebody I respect very much was reported to have said in Obuasi that “…the truth is that Ghana is not destroyed. And one cannot blame the President for the hardship in the country because both the Bible and the Qur’an have predicted that at the end time, there will be hardship and that is what we are facing now.”
The interpretation of his assertion is that because the holy books have predicted hardship in the end times, we as Ghanaians should fold our arms and endure the painful economic hardship we are going through.
I’m not sure whether or not Alhaji Dauda has ever thought about the fact that not only Ghanaians use the Bible and Qur’an, and if truly the prophesies or predictions are anything to go by, some countries will not be expecting economic boom. With his position, what kind of positive input can this cabinet minister make to help the President solve the current economic problem?
Aside Dauda’s Obuasi sermon, a deputy minister of Information and Member of Parliament for Nanton, Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed, had blamed the depreciation of the cedi on the “needless Supreme Court petition” by the NPP last year.
Another government official, Abraham Amaliba, a member of the NDC legal team and, arguably, one of the hard-hitting pseudo spokesmen of the government, attributes the fall of the cedi to the putting up of high rise buildings in Accra.
“Look at the mansions near Kufuor’s house...they are coming up, they are now reaching the sky…The cedi is rising, for me, basically because of the high rate of development that we are experiencing now…This high rate of development can be seen in private and public mansions coming up everywhere, and the fact that we have to import all these materials so as to be able to put up these buildings…These developments go a long way to affect the cedi”, he argues.
But the biggest bombshell came when the National Women’s Organiser of the NDC, Anita De Sooso, who doubles as the Deputy National Co-ordinator of the National Disaster Management Organisation, attributed the depreciation of the cedi to dwarfs stealing the currency from the country’s banks
Listen to her: “Do we know where they get the money from? Do we know what they do with it? These dwarfs…the black magic, is what has made the cedi lose value”.
The question which arises is, if President Mahama has such people with very shallow intellect for the solution of national problems, is it any wonder that the President is being pulled left and right and have had to personally respond to some issues which ministers of state should have acted upon?
But what intrigues me most is the kind of comedy we continue to see from the government. The Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr Henry Wampah, announces a fiscal policy, after which the Minister of Finance, Seth Terkper, immediately comes out to fully support, and almost immediately the ‘government’ issues a statement signed by the Minister of Information and Media Relations, Mahama Ayariga, asking the (BoG) for clarifications.
Clarifications of what, the same policy which the ‘government’ through its Finance Minister had already supported? As if that was not enough comedy, another statement comes announcing that the ‘government’ was to hold what some media termed a crunch meeting over the same policy.
It seems to me that President Mahama still lacks proper advice on governance. I’m not sure his advisers really understand what the term ‘government’ really means, hence they keep on embarrassing the President.
The other time, the ‘government’ through the Minister of Youth and Sports set up a committee to investigate the alleged ‘chop-chop’ in GYEEDA.
The minister received the report and the proper thing to have been done was for him to put a covering letter and his own comments and recommendations about the report to the President without any fun fare. But that was never the case.
The Minister of Youth and Sports had to create a whole ceremony on the presentation of the report to the President with all the usual noises.
After the President had received the report, another statement was issued announcing that the ‘government’ had constituted a committee to study the report and advise the President (that is the same the ‘government’).
So the question arises: Who are the ministers working for? Themselves? The right thing, in my view, is that since all the ministers are part of the ‘government’, each of them works in the name and on behalf of ‘it’ and, therefore, ‘it’ (government) cannot submit a report on the investigations it had conducted to the same ‘government’ with a fun fare.
Yes, ministers can submit reports on their activities to the President, and the President would have to study them to make a final decision on the reports, since he and he only has the final say on whatever policy, report or recommendations ministers present. That does not in any way warrant statements from a minister of their intention to submit reports to the ‘government’ and an equal response from the ‘government’ of having received the report from the minister or setting another committee to study the report.
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So when Seth Terkper had already publicly endorsed Wampah’s very confused directives, how can the ‘government’ then call for clarifications and also hold a special meeting on the issue? So on what basis did the Minister of Finance give public endorsement to the BoG directives?
President Mahama, indeed, needs some thoughtful and clear-thinking officials who actually understand governance and the composition and practices of government. What is going on is very embarrassing and we need to put a stop to it.
Around the world, governments are becoming more serious with their activities, programmes and, more importantly, communication. John Mahama still lacks efficient and competent communication personnel; hence the government comedy continues. These comedies must stop, and we as a nation must get a bit more serious. We cannot solve our socio-economic problems with such high level of mediocrity.
PS: We are still waiting, Mr Inspector-General of Police, the children and widow of Adjei Akpor, the 22-year-old man your men killed at Adenta on January 6, 2014. We are still waiting for your response?
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The author is a Journalist and Political Scientist. He is the Head of the Department of Media and Communication Studies, Pentecost University College, Accra. - fasado@hotmail.com