Of ‘Appearance Fees’ & Workers Plantain

The ruling New Patriotic Party is digging for itself a grave so deep that after burial, it will take more than one election year to dig out the soil to observe the state of decomposition to determine if the dry bones can rise again.

For Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, the most known face of the party, to exchange oral blows with Gabby Otchere-Darko is a self-inflicting fatality. This is a party whose sins Ghanaians are deciding whether to forgive or forget or both or not at all in 2024!

Can it be that the ‘Eight’ is actually unbreakable and that the situation is, as the Romans used to say in the 17th century, “Those whom Jupiter wishes to destroy, he first deprives of reason”, a saying which Nigeria’s Achebe rendered as, “Whom the gods want to destroy, they first make mad”!

Was COVID-19 in the arsenal of the gods against NPP’s fate? Was the Russian-Ukraine war divined from above as an irrecoverable body blow to the party? And now the battle of the party’s titans! If this exchange between Majority Leader and Gabby is not stopped, I can see it degenerating into a war of words. Worse, I can see it become an Akyem-Asante exchange, resurrecting both ancient and recent tribal brawls.

As for the NDC, the least said about their Vote of Censure, the better. Listening to the tall list of charges preferred against Uncle Ken, the feeling I get is that we are witnessing a charade amounting to much ado about nothing and that the target is really the NPP, making them smell so bad they cannot recover in 2024. Above is my Case Number One.

Case Number Two: Someone who has the ear of the President must advise him to put a brake on the Agric Minister’s latest acrobatics. Every Ghanaian above 50 knows that government sending foodstuff from the farmgate to the Ministry for sale to workers at so-called “cheaper prices” is a tired gimmick by governments clutching at a straw.

One, for how long can the Ministry commandeer vehicles to the farmgates to bring down foodstuff? Two, how many more selling centres can the Ministry create to compete with Makola, Mallam Atta, Kaneshie, Mallam, Kasoa… What about workers in Bolgatanga, Kumasi, Takoradi, Cape Coast, Sunyani etc?

As far back as the 1970s, the transportation variable in Agriculture had been identified, but our civilian and military saviours and Holy Warriors were, and have been, more interested in their 4x4s and personal luxuries than national solutions.

Even with government subsidised transportation, I thought that the best way to prove Dr Akoto’s point about artificially high food prices should rather have been to send the consignments to the market, sell them to the traders and sit back and watch.

My third fight today is with the recently dismissed Minister of State at the Finance Ministry, Adu Boahen. I have read almost everything about his academic and professional acquirements. Every word about him is a superlative: BSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Southern California; MBA from the Harvard Business School; a rare breed that combines Akora (Achimota) Kwabotwe (Mfantsipim).

Seated with the Sheikh whose face remained unseen in the ‘Galamsey Economy’ video, all Adu Boahen needed was the intelligence of a smart SHS 3 student to realise that he was being set up. Nobody above first year in university should fall for this. The Sheikh didn’t sound Arab.

My suspicion is that knowing corruption in Ghana the way we all do, this influence peddling for contracts may be as old as 1992, even older. Question: why is the incidence on the rise now? Is it that Nyantakyi and Adu Boahen are the only two who happen to be the fall guys, unlucky enough to have failed to escape Tiger Eye?

Rather than NPP Chief Communicator demanding why Adu Boahen’s expose video was delayed from 2018, he and the party should be glad. The delay exonerates the Vice- President: it’s been four years and no Arab investor has brought in investment of that quantum.

You may have issues with Tiger Eye’s modus operandi. Nonetheless, I ask myself, can we use the known old method of journalistic investigation to come up with such results?

Entrapment, yes, but we are told that Ken Ofori-Atta was similarly set up, that he did meet the “Sheikh” and was offered a juicy gift but he turned it down.

Conclusion: the groins of a dead womaniser will not be warmed by the most attractive Miss World in g-strings. If you are incorruptible, nothing can tempt you.

The NPP may issue press releases un-end. What the movie, ‘Galamsey Economy’, has done is to resurrect the rumour which surfaced in the first term of Nana Akufo Addo, suggesting that favour seekers bribe Kitchen Cabinet gatekeepers with as much as US$20,000.00 – whose name we now know as “Appearance Fee”.