A Nation In Denial: A Better Ghana That Never Was

By Asare Adei

The Mills-Mahama government that ruled Ghana between 2009 and 2012 scored themselves extremely high marks; but, would an objective observer score them even average? I remember how Fiifi Kwetey, the Deputy Minister for Finance, went round saying to people: 'When I ask, have we removed so many schools from under trees ... you respond, yes we have.' After which he would start singing the government praise, expecting all to sing along. Is it not laughable? Trying to brainwash a whole nation? Indeed, the Mills-Mahama government spent more time thinking how to deceive Ghanaians rather than planning how to develop Ghana. They were more interested in the day-to-day politics of the country than the day-to-day governance of the country. So the regime was bound to fail. And their failures showed in diverse ways, prompting them to do even more propaganda to cover up, as they led the country in circles. They charted a path of denial for the country, trying continually to get us into thinking we were better off under their administration than ever before, when the realities on the ground did not support it. This ebook presents a critical assessment of the performance of the government that scored itself extremely high marks, insisting it had delivered on its promise of offering Ghanaians a better Ghana when in fact there was no better Ghana anywhere under their regime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asare Adei
• Release date: Oct 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301355969

Asare Adei

Asare Adei is a Ghanaian novelist. He is the author of the novels Thumbprint of Dishonour and A Beautiful Daughter. Asare is also the author of the children fiction Try Me Daddy and Mosquitoes of Mininam Island. Asare lives in Accra with his family.

Book preview

A Nation In Denial:

A Better Ghana That Never Was

Published by Asare Adei

Copyright 2012 Asare Adei

Smashwords Edition

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CONTENT PAGE

PREFACE

Chapter One:

Tears For The Late President

No Sick Leave For The President

Dashed Hopes

Chapter Two:

Cantankerous Government

Propaganda-inclined Government

Insensitive Government

Chapter Three:

Cosmetic Jobs

The Woes Of The Ghanaian Jobseeker

Talk, Talk, And More Talk

Chapter Four:

Helpless Under Foreign Invasion

Desktop Policing

No Security Anywhere

Chapter Five:

Critical Homelessness

Missed Housing Opportunities

Too Sluggish To Build

Chapter Six:

The 100th-Day Promise Sham

The Strange Smells

I Can See Some Street Lights, Hooray!

Chapter Seven:

Boasting With A Few Good Roads

The ‘Plans Are Far Advanced’ Excuse

Inertia In The Transport Services Sector

Chapter Eight:

Common Commodity Like Water Still Won’t Flow

Paying More For Less

Lack Of Transparency

Chapter Nine:

Stable Inflation Without Legs

Where Stable Inflation Has Meaning

Cut-throat Interest Rates

Chapter Ten:

The Killer Healthcare Capitation Scheme

Unhealthy Discrimination

Broken-Down Equipment Everywhere

Chapter Eleven:

Numbers Don’t Mean A Thing Anymore

Unprecedented Congestion In Schools

Exclusionary Education, Which Is All Academic

Chapter Twelve:

Corruption Found A New Name In Judgment Debt

Kennedy Verses Woyome

A State So Denfeceless

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PREFACE

Politics may be as dirty as many insist it is, and politicians may all be cryptic and, or egoistic; nonetheless, just as one does not leave their troublesome child to their fate, we cannot afford to leave the difficult politics of running our country in the hands of our politicians unassisted; we ought to do something to inject some accountability into the politics of this country, and therefore into the day-to-day management of our resources. Yes, this is a critique of the NDC government of 2009-2012, and I dare say that many in the NDC will not like it. But, I am not doing this for NPP, or CPP, or NDP, or PPP, or the NDC; I am not doing this to help any political party or annihilate any political party; I am doing this for posterity and for Ghana.

Successive governments must be made to know that there are now authors like myself, in this country, who may be ordinary Ghanaians – and perhaps unknown quantities as I am – but are so concerned about our country that we shall monitor whoever are in government, and be marking their scripts, so that at the end of their tenure in office, we shall deliver a more critical report, in the form of a book like this, on how they fared in government, regardless of their own assessment of their performance. The NDC government of 2009-2012 scored itself exceedingly high marks, but any objective observer would tell you it was just a way of denying the sad realities. The regime should go down in history as one of the worst we ever had, in spite of vast opportunities it had to better the lot of Ghanaians. They promised a Better Ghana but failed to deliver, and resorted to denial to water down their abysmal performance.

Denial, by Sigmund Freud, as captured on Wikipedia, is a defence mechanism, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept, and [so] rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true, despite what may be overwhelming evidence. Three forms of denial are identified. One, the simple denial: where the subject denies the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether. Two, minimization: where the subject admits the fact but denies its seriousness (a combination of denial and rationalization). And three, projection: where the subject admits both the fact and seriousness but denies responsibility by blaming somebody or something else.

Many would agree with me that the Mills-Mahama government of 2009-2012 were caught in all three forms of denial during their tenure in office. Many things went wrong under the watch of that regime which the government refused to admit, rationalized or sought to blame the erstwhile NPP government for. They organized press conferences, claiming they ought to set some records straight, only to further skew the records to cover up their own failings. Somebody must be courageous enough to compile such awful actions of elected government officials and play them back to them so as to point governance in this country in the right direction. That is what I seek to do with this book. Read on and join the campaign, if you may.

Note: while writing this, the Mills-Mahama government was still in power. I intended not to wait until after the December 2012 elections to have this book published. I thought it would be more relevant ahead of the elections. As such I had to consider an appropriate cut-off point for the term of the Mills-Mahama regime to base my submissions on; in other words, I needed to come up with a cut-off point. I settled eventually on October 1, 2012, as my effective cut-off point. That is I assumed that the NDC government of 2009-2012 effectively ended its term of office on October 1, 2012. Of course, you would bear me out that there is little any government can add to its achievements with barely three months for its term to elapse. In any case, our laws employ the cut-off assumption, as we are made to go into elections in December and yet swear in the new government in January the following year.

Besides, it should also be noted that the NDC government of 2009-2012 began with the late President Mills as the president but ended with H.E. John Mahama as the president, following the demise of President Mills. In that regard, one could refer to the regime as the Mills-Mahama regime or government, which I do a lot in this book. You will realize, too, that I have used the ‘Mills-Mahama government’ and the ‘NDC government of 2009-2012’ interchangeably. I did so with no malice intended.

At this point, I will like to show gratitude to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Daily Graphic, myjoyonline.com, citifmonline.com, peacefmonline.com, Metro TV, TV 3, e.tv Ghana, etc, all of which served as sources of reference for this work. I leave you to enjoy your reading ride.

CHAPTER ONE

TEARS FOR THE LATE PRESIDENT

This book was to come out originally as '101 REASONS PRESIDENT MILLS MUST BE VOTED OUT'; but that was because at the time I started writing I did not know the gravity of the condition the late president had. Like many Ghanaians, I was very unhappy about the performance of his government. I thought so much was going wrong under his watch he ought to be put on his toes. In fact, on the fateful day he passed away, I woke up as early as 3 O' clock to continue writing to show my disappointment in his administration. For me, the questionable debt settlements issue alone was bad enough; that we all had to speak up against how our nation was being so poorly managed. Of course, I followed the NPP's press conference on the matter later in the afternoon of that same day on Asempa FM, and thought: I really need to join this discourse.

I felt I had to let the president know it was not only his political opponents who were concerned about the blatant misappropriation of public funds within his government as seen with the payments to Woyome, but also many an ordinary Ghanaian like myself were concerned, too. But then, not long after the NPP's press conference, Kwadwo Asare Baffuor Acheampong, a.ka. KABA, of Asempa FM fame, who covered the conference live, hinted of the president's demise.

The announcement hit me cold, indeed. And later, as the truth about the late president's ill health began to trickle in, I shuddered with remorse, knowing how callous it would have been on my part if this work had come out as it had originally been meant to come out. I felt very sad and broken inside: sad that the good majority of us were not made to know the agony our former president had to endure while still serving this nation; sad that for the sake of political correctness we were not made to know the plight of our own president so we could offer our support and share in his grief. Tears filled my eyes. I could see my daughter fighting back tears, too. My first son was dumbfounded. My wife's words were, ‘I hate this day!’

This was a household that had been critical of the performance of the president. Barely a month into his administration, the water situation in our locality worsened. Astonishingly, our utility bills went up too, without any corresponding improvement in the services we received. Then there was this issue of acute gas (LPG) shortages also which, hitherto, we had never experienced. Actually, whenever we learnt of another gas shortage, or saw the lights go off, or received a huge light bill, and so on and so forth, we would lament, ‘Atta Mills again!’; to the extent that when my four-year-old son was taken to one of the banks on the Spintex road, and their lights happened to go off, the little boy went ‘Oh, Atta Mills’ to our embarrassment.

Yet, knowing now that the late president was battling ill health all the time that he was carrying the burden of the entire nation on his shoulders, I guess we realized that the humble professor had had need for our prayers and support rather than the criticisms we continually heaped on him. It was sad that his advisors played to the gallery and hid the state of health of the departed president from us until his sudden death. It was very unfortunate. The president's death indeed was a big loss to this nation; he would have been a fine, living, ex president.

NO SICK LEAVE FOR THE PRESIDENT

I decided to abandon this work altogether, following the president's untimely death. I went into a sober reflection. Men are all fallible. Leaders are bound to make some mistakes. The late president made his; but, on the other hand, he also did what he could for this country. Once he was gone, it would be unwise to dwell on his shortcomings and ignore his many contributions to the country – after all, it was not as if he could come back from the dead to right any wrongs. So that was it: I was not going to do this piece, I resolved. But then, along the line, it occurred to me that the issues I wanted to discuss were still relevant, even with the passing on of the president. I had to redraft my material and get it published.

The president's death confirmed rumours that he had been ill all along; he could not perform to his optimum best. Former president, Rawlings, disclosed that the late president had had throat cancer, which had affected the eyes and the ears, and as such he could not sustain up to three hours of work a day. Inferring from this, one could say that the late president, J.E.A. Mills, could not even read as one would expect, and his hearing must have been imperfect, too. These shortcomings actually manifested themselves during the swearing-in ceremony of the president, but all of us did not consider the situation to be so critical. Yet, I dare say these setbacks held our dear president back.

This is not to say that the