Ghana needs leader with flawless vision Prof. Aheto touts at third revolutionary lecture

Ghana needs a dynamic and broad-minded leader who is an upright steward and possesses a flawless vision to pioneer the country’s transformation, Professor John Bright Kobla Aheto has stated.

Prof. Aheto, who is the lead speaker at the third June 4 revolutionary lecture said to achieve good public governance, “the only viable thing to do is to resort to sustainable good governance as a national agenda”.

According to Prof. Aheto, the ingredients needed to achieve good public governance included the independence and integrity of all national administrative institutions and arms of government, holistic, integrated, critical and creative thinking as well as a conscious effort to protect the rights of the citizenry.

Public governance

Delivering the keynote lecture at the R.S. Amegashie Hall of the University of Ghana Business School in Accra last Wednesday, Prof. Aheto, who is a management expert, said the pillars of public governance included integrity, accountability, fairness and equity, transparency and independence.

He described the current democratic dispensation - with multiparty participatory democracy - as a big joke and said the New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress had “completely failed the nation”.

Prof. Aheto said in view of the gross retrogression of our nation, there was a deliberate assault on institutions of state, “the civil service now an order-taking institution, the bench packed to the limit and things falling apart, we are pretending everything is okay”.

“Public governance implies that the leaders, politicians, directors, civil servants and public servants are accountable to the nation and citizenry,” Professor Aheto said.

The lecture, which was on the theme: “Developing a national character for sustainable good governance,” was part of activities marking the 40th anniversary of the June 4 uprising.

Major issues

Prof. Aheto said June 4 was an unstoppable and easily predictable insurrection which was born out of a rare combination of devastating and endemic corruption, bad governance, lack of discipline, impunity by leaders in the face of deep-rooted frustration of the masses and the bankruptcy of political governance.

He said the rule of law, human rights, natural justice, separation of powers, protection of national resources including the water bodies had once more shamefully become the neglected order of the day.