OPINION
Once upon a time in Ohiakrom, there lived a poverty-conscripted man
called Kwasi Manu, a middle-aged man with five children and a wife.
Kwasi Manu’s children would have starved to death but for the
benevolence of a wealthy farmer called Kofi Odoom.
Kwasi Manu was not only poor, but he was also irresponsible to the
extent that he misused money given to him by Kofi Odoom to fend for his
wife and children. Apart from his numerous concubines, he was a regular
visitor to some of the finest palm wine joints in Ohiakrom, where he
sponsored any drinker who had a spare stomach to fill.
He lived as though there was no tomorrow. Appeals from his wife and
children to tone down on his excessive debauchery fell on rocks that
were harder and drier than those on Tongo Hills. Everybody in Ohiakrom
knew that his poverty was self-inflicted due to his careless lifestyle.
One day, his benefactor, Kofi Odoom, who had often praised him for
being responsible to the dismay of many, rebuked him publicly. To the
surprise of the people of Ohiakrom, Kwasi Manu’s wife and children were
outraged and verbally lynched the wealthy farmer. Even when the wealthy
farmer publicly apologised and said he had made that comment while he
had too much wine in his head, the loyal wife of Kwasi Manu would not
forgive him.
They said Mr Odoom should mind his own business and not interfere
with the affairs of their family. “What right does he have to question
the head of our family, knowing that our father is a grown and
independent man?” they asked.
If you’re wondering why I should bore you with this tale which does
not seem to bear any relevance to the above headline, then let me give
you a real life scenario:
On Friday, July 18, 2014, the sun settled on the parliamentarians of
the Republic of Ghana in the chamber of the house. It was past 7pm and
the motion on the floor of the house was item 27 on page 19 of the day’s
Order Paper. The house was approving the second compact of the
Millennium Challenge Account of $498,200,000 from the government of the
United States of America. This time Sheikh IC Quaye was not around to
exclaim: “The money is big ooo.” However, the minority New Patriotic
Party (NPP) members in the house would not miss an opportunity to remind
the majority National Democratic Congress (NDC) that the first tranche
of the money was obtained by the John Agyekum Kufuor-led NPP government.
MP for Nsawam Adoagyiri, Frank Annor Dompreh, who was nearly stopped
from singing the praise of former President Kufuor by majority members
of the house, was very grateful when the speaker ruled that he could
proceed: “Mr Speaker, thank you and may you live long for that wonderful
ruling,” he said before continuing his praise singing.
Outside the floor of parliament, on social media, hell came crushing
onto mother earth as some so-called patriotic Ghanaians hissed and
cursed the US Embassy in Ghana bitterly for what they called a
disrespectful attitude towards the President and people of Ghana. For
those of you who are just awaking from a long sleep, this is how it
started.
As usual, President John Mahama, who is very active on social media, took to Twitter to make yet another promise to Ghanaians:
“As a people, we have had to make sacrifices. I wish to assure you
that results of these sacrifices would begin to show very soon.”
Three minutes after the President tweeted, the US Embassy in Accra
replied: “And what sacrifices are you making? Don’t tell me that pay
cut.”
The US Embassy subsequently apologized to the President and the
people of Ghana, describing the reply as an “errant tweet.” According to
the Embassy, someone had mistakenly mixed a private Twitter handle with
that of the embassy. This kind of explanation sounds logical to every
level-headed person who knows how social media works unless they have
reason to prove that it was intentional. But the apology and explanation
did not go down with many Ghanaians.
Ms. Hanna Tetteh, the Foreign Affairs Minister who went to social
media to ridicule the #OccupyFlagstaffHouse protestors while her
ministry did not have materials to print passports, went livid. “The
tweet was public & was associated with your twitter handle. It was
not a private/personal account,” she replied in a tweet.
The acting CEO of the Ghana Youth Authority, Ras Mubarak, replied the
US Embassy: “What a load of twaddle. No remorse, just arrogance. U shd
be apologizing to JM [John Mahama] & Ghanaians & sackin da
officer.”
I didn’t know how offended some Ghanaians were about the US Embassy’s
tweet until I posted about it on Saturday. I said Ghanaians did not
need the US Embassy’s apology for speaking the truth.
Then came a
torrential rain of insults, from party foot soldiers and those who
claimed to love Ghana and were more patriotic than me. I was labeled a
traitor who had sold his country just because the US Ambassador invited
me to watch the Ghana-USA World Cup match at his residence. What they
forgot to add was that there was enough drinks and food at the
ambassador’s residence to help cure the remnants of my childhood
kwashiorkor.
I agree it is a serious diplomatic blunder for an embassy to publicly
rebuke or criticise the leader of another country. I also think the
“errant tweet” may have come from someone who mistook the Embassy’s
Twitter handle for his private one, hence the sentence, “Don’t tell ME
that pay cut.” On that diplomatic point of view, the apology was in
order.
However, granted that the Embassy intentionally said what was
contained in that tweet, I sincerely think the content of that message
is perfectly true and we don’t deserve any apology.
In these hard times who would not have asked the President that same
question? And if the statement was offensive because it was coming from
the US Embassy, can the aggrieved officials tell me the foreign missions
in Ghana don’t meddle in our affairs? Is it that they are incurably
ignorant about the extent to which these foreign nations twist the hands
of leaders to make decisions that affect us? Or do they consider the
sarcastic question asked our President more harmful than the hand
twisting?
It is true that a tenant cannot meddle in the affairs of a landlord
and not risk being sacked from the house, but the story is different if
the tenant is the one feeding the landlord. In any case, the tweet did
not ask the president when and how he mounts his wife; it questioned him
on something that affects the suffering masses.
Unless we are a bunch of irredeemable hypocrites, we should not be
talking about sovereignty when we lost it in 1966 when we collaborated
with the Super Powers to overthrow Dr Kwame Nkrumah. Our President and
our ministers never fail to remind us that the current economic woes are
a result of the refusal of donors to release money. Will Kojo Manu pay
the piper and allow Yaw Mensah to call the tune?
We have sold our dignity and respect to anyone who has a coin to drop
in our begging bowl. We put ourselves in this situation through our
indescribably corrupt attitudes. A report commissioned by the African
Union in 2002 showed that Africa loses $148 billion every year through
corruption. This figure is five times more than all the aid the
continent receives as aid.
In his critical essay entitled, The Trouble with Nigeria, Chinua
Achebe said, “My frank and honest opinion is that anybody who can say
corruption in Nigeria has not yet become alarming is either a fool, a
crook or else does not live in this country.”
Apart from those who landed from the planet Pluto last night and the
children too young to know what time of the day it is, I think any
Ghanaian who can say corruption is not the main bane of our current
predicament is a either fool or a beneficiary of the create, loot and
share system. The corruption did not start with this government. As
former President Kufuor is often quoted as saying, “Corruption started
from Adam.” It is possible that past governments and leaders were more
corrupt than this current government.
The reason it seems worse is now is the incentives which the
President John Mahama government is providing for corruption to thrive.
And what are these incentives? The lack of political will to punish
corrupt officials and the commitment to retrieve what has been stolen
from the poor citizens are the incentives.
We are too poor to initiate and fund any policy or project in this
country. However, we are rich enough to pay GH¢75 million to Subah Info
solutions for work not done. For those who do not understand the Subah
scandal, this is an easy analogy:
Your father gives money to a barber to cut your hair every month and
claim payment afterwards. After years of taking the money from your
father, you came out to say that you don’t even know this barber let
alone give your hair to him to cut. This intervention notwithstanding,
your father still pays the money to the barber.
I challenge any government official to tell Ghanaians why the
government has not retrieved a pesewa from the Jospong Groups of
Companies, one of those cited in the GYEEDA scandal. This entity was
supposed to repay over GH¢140 million to the state according to the
Ministerial Committee on GYEEDA. President John Mahama told us last year
that he had given the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) and
the Ministry of Justice and Attorney-General up to December 31, 2013 to
secure refunds of all money wrongfully paid to the companies and
initiate legal actions to punish the culprits.
It is evident that the businesses which played the major roles in the
scandal, Joseph Siaw Agyapong’s Jospong Group of Companies and Roland
Agambire’s AGAMS Group of Companies will not be prosecuted, but why
should they get away with our money?
The Ministerial Committee on GYEEDA met with these companies and they
agreed and confessed that they did not provide some of the services for
which they received payments. The differences were calculated and the
companies were asked to repay. So if you have a President who presides
over all these acts of corruption and others such as SADA, why would you
believe him when he talks about sacrifices? And unless I have had my
sanity tampered with, why should I jump to his defence when a foreigner
questions him about his sacrifice?
Our leaders have subjected us to too much insults and ridicule in the
international community, and the only way we can progress from our
quagmire of doom and gloom is to confront the reality, tell them the
bitter truth and find solution to our woes.
If there is any apology the US Embassy and other powerful countries
must render to Ghanaians, then it should be the false praises they sang
about our poor nation and showered undeservedly on our leaders in the
past. President Obama was full of praise for us when he visited us in
2009:
“Here in Ghana, you show us a face of Africa that is too often
overlooked by a world that sees only tragedy or the need for charity.
The people of Ghana have worked hard to put democracy on a firmer
footing, with peaceful transfers of power even in the wake of closely
contested elections. And with improved governance and an emerging civil
society, Ghana's economy has shown impressive rates of growth.”
I often feel insulted when they say this. The reason? We are not
second class humans. Unless those who sing our praise think that we
deserve the kind of miserable lives we live here, they should never rate
us high in our development.
Ghanaians often live with the false sense of our strong democratic
credentials. Apart from the fact that we narrowly escaped deteriorating
into violence in our elections, we don’t deserve any praise. As far as I
am concerned, the only pillar of democracy worth commending in Ghana is
our free and vibrant media.
No election is free and fair when one of the major indicators of victory is the spending power of the political party.
When politicians steal, hoard and distribute to retain their seats
you don’t call that election free and fair. That aside, democracy goes
beyond free and fair elections.
What is the essence of democracy when the citizens cannot live decent
lives in their countries? Or as Mahatma Gandhi puts it: "What does it
matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad
destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy
name of liberty or democracy?"
I consider Libya under Gaddafi more democratic than Ghana’s Fourth
Republic. It is a weird view that I am prepared to defend. And if you
disagree with me, do this simple assignment:
Ask the tens of thousands of young and old head porters and truck
pushers who have no roof over their heads after their daily toils; ask
the thousands of energetic youth who line up the streets of Accra,
Kumasi other cities to roast in the merciless sun and inhale toxic fumes
from vehicles, all in the name of doing business; ask the poor farmer
who does not only lose income from the sweat of his labour due to
inaccessibility to the market, but who also lost his pregnant wife
because there is no health facility or transportation to seek healthcare
elsewhere; ask the Ghanaian university graduates who have consigned
themselves to the fact that it is easier to swim across the Atlantic
Ocean with a 50kg bag of cement across tied around your neck than to
secure a job in Ghana. Go and ask the ordinary Ghanaian whether they
care more about food, water, electricity and healthcare or the one who
rules them?
I will only stand by my President if he is attacked for doing
something of interest to those who elected him. If my President were
attacked for his refusal to sign the Economic Partnership Agreement, I
would be prepared to enlist in an army that would defend him to the
peril of my life. But such policies, which have made us subservient to
powerful economies and crippled our industrialization efforts go through
despite strong resistance from the citizens.
According to our leaders, signing the EPA was a necessity. “If Ghana
fails to sign and, for instance, Cote d’Ivoire sign Ghana would lose
out,” they argued. If that was the case, then why did we have to decide
as a sub-regional bloc? Why can’t Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire agree to stand
together to safeguard their common interest as superpowers in the cocoa
sector? Why couldn’t Nigeria, Cameroon and their neighbours meet to
fight the trans-border threat of Boko Haram but had to wait until they
were invited by the French President to do so in France?
Those spitting fire and brimstone at the US Embassy have lost the
battle on every moral ground. If we have any vestige of pride left,
let’s save it and stop contemplating any demonstration. Let's leave the
US Embassy alone and restore our dignity by doing the right thing.
President Obama or Prime Minister David Cameron cannot go to Saudi
Arabia and tell them to respect gay rights. So why should they tell
African leaders how to run their countries?
Our wise elders say the host often considers the status of a stranger
before deciding whether or not to prepare his soup with one-eyed fowl.
The writer, Manasseh Azure Awuni, is a Senior Broadcast Journalist with Joy 99.7 FM. His email address is azureachebe2@yahoo.com
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