By Kofi Akordor
Ghanaians are passionate about committees and they do not hesitate to form one at the least opportunity. A worker is caught with a company laptop hidden under his armpit outside the company premises. This is a clear case of stealing but company disciplinary procedure demands that the police must not come in, so a committee of inquiry must be constituted to probe the suspected stealing of one laptop.
The committee may take days, weeks or even months to complete its work at the expense of productivity. Big money, probably exceeding the cost of the computer, may be spent feeding and refreshing committee members if the company is well-endowed. The end result may be a warning, suspension or outright dismissal. The company could have been saved time and money if the matter were treated with dispatch.
A security man is found heavily sedated with alcohol while on duty. A committee is hurriedly set up to investigate the matter. The committee, among other things, will find out whether truly the man took excess alcohol, the type and volume of alcohol consumed and finally recommend appropriate disciplinary measures to be taken.
At the corporate level, committees are not about disciplinary matters alone. There are new products to be launched, anniversaries to be celebrated and projects to be inaugurated. In all cases, committees must be set to plan activities in connection with these events.
There was this organisation which was preparing to inaugurate its new office building. There was as usual a planning committee with its subsets. For almost a year members of this committee and its subsets met on regular basis during which they had to abandon their regular work in the office. Crates of soft drinks went down the patchy throats of committee members while fried rice and chicken filled their tummies. A simple event was made complex. On the inauguration day, the programme which took over a year to plan did not take more than 30 minutes. Disappointingly, most of the invited guests including the Guest of Honour did not turn up.
The Ghanaian’s love for committees is in full evidence at the family level too. A relation is dead then there is a big committee with various subcommittees to plan an elaborate burial and funeral rites. These committees meet several times at different locations at the expense of private and public business until the D-day. The same committee and its subcommittees are revived when there is a wedding of a family member with little variation, depending on previous performance.
One institution which cannot be matched when it comes to committees is the Government of Ghana. If corporate institutions and families are passionate about committees, our governments are crazy about them. A government will be failing in its responsibilities if it fails to establish one committee or another at the least opportunity. It could be a one-man committee or a multi-member committee, sometimes with the power of a high court.
Sometimes committees are set up to probe or review the findings or recommendations of other committees. You may say the whole government machinery is surviving on committees.
Committees themselves are not bad. They are necessary in some cases to help the government have a clear picture of a situation, an event, an occurrence, a phenomenon, an accident, or a scandal so as to make it take a decision or an action which final goal is to remove a problem and make things better. In short, under certain circumstances, committees could not be avoided, since without them, no firm and fair decision or action could be taken.
However, the zeal and alacrity with which committees are formed in this country are increasingly making some of us to feel that the committees have become the solution to our problems and not the means to solving those problems.
We all know, or at least those who should know, the problems associated with transportation on the Volta Lake. We know that the Volta Lake Transport Company (VLTC), a subsidiary of the Volta River Authority (VRA), which has been mandated to operate water transportation on the Volta Lake, has woefully failed in its mandate. We also know that the Volta Lake is full of tree stumps which are dangerous to navigation on the lake.
We also know that the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA), which has regulatory control over navigation on the lake, operates mainly in the media, having very little control, if any, over what happens on the vast lake. This has given room to private boat operators to do their own thing on the lake, paying very little attention to safety rules. The only time we hear of its Chief Executive very loud in the media is when there is another disaster on the lake resulting in the loss of precious lives.
All these factors have combined to make transportation on the Volta Lake unsafe and dangerous. So why the rush to set up committees to investigate accidents on the lake anytime there is one, when the causes of the accidents are obviously known to those who should know?
The latest of such accidents occurred on October 19, 2009, in which at least 20 people lost their lives. As usual, the government’s reaction was to set up a probe into the accident. The solution to accidents on the Volta Lake has been pushed into the background until another accident occurs.
On October 21, 2009, personnel of the Ghana National Fire Service watched with frustrated impotence as the multi-storey building belonging to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was totally consumed by fire because the service lacks the necessary equipment to fight fire in high-rise buildings. A committee, as would be expected, went into action and came out with the obvious conclusions.
One, there was an electrical fault which triggered the fire. Two, there was no internal mechanism to detect and stop the fire from spreading. Three, the GNFS is not equipped to handle fire outbreaks in tall buildings. Apart from the need to establish criminality or otherwise, everything else is common knowledge.
The case of mental health in Ghana is widely known and well documented. Dr J.B. Asare, the former Chief Psychiatrist, had spoken about the state of our psychiatric hospitals in the country at every opportunity and written enough about them to stretch from Elubo to Hamile, without any appreciable response.
Dr Akwasi Osei, the man currently in charge of mental health in the country and who operates from the Accra Psychiatry Hospital at Adabraka in Accra, has not relented in his effort to get the Mental Health Bill passed into law. He has not stopped to tell the world about the deplorable and unsecured conditions under which the health workers operate at the medical facility. He has not hidden the truth from those who should care and act about the deprivations the inmates of the psychiatric hospital are going through, especially with regard to poor feeding and lack of medications.
Dr Osei and others continue to remind the government and others who matter that health workers in the psychiatric field are woefully inadequate in relation to the number of Ghanaians who suffer one form of psychiatric ailment or another. We have been told that relatives have abandoned the people they brought to the facility for treatment even though these patients have shown remarkable improvement and only need family support for full recovery. These patients have also added to the congestion being experienced at the hospital.
Dr Osei and others have made it public several times that because of inadequate funding, the hospital could not provide adequate security at the hospital, thus exposing the inmates and workers to danger and abuse. They gave a catalogue of other inadequacies including an ambulance for emergencies, transportation for the staff and incentives to motivate the few nurses still at post.
Governments have come and gone without responding to the lamentations of Dr Osei and those before him. Suddenly, our new government has found a solution. The setting up of a committee to investigate issues raised by a colleague, Anas Aremeyaw-Anas, who booked into the Accra Psychiatric Hospital as a mental patient. Aremeyaw-Anas would not have worried himself with admission procedure at the Pantang Hospital. He would have just walked about naked and mingled with the patients for a few hours and come to appreciate how shabbily we have treated mental health in this country. If the Accra Psychiatric Hospital in the heart of Accra is open, Pantang, which is on the outskirts of Accra, sandwiched between Adenta and Abokobi, is a Wild West: A jungle of abandoned and uncompleted buildings, bad roads and poor facilities. It is a forgotten territory.
What has Aremeyaw-Anas discovered that was not known previously? Nothing! Instead of a wasteful committee that would come back and tell us nothing new, the government should have plunged straight into serious action by picking the problems and solving them one by one.
We could have started by sending more bags of rice and maize to the hospital kitchen. A new ambulance, the cost of which cannot cripple our economy, should have been dispatched to the hospital by now, while immediate measures are taken to provide enough security at preventing marauders and other miscreants from invading the hospital premises.
While these interim measures are being taken, the government must begin to look at the service conditions of mental health workers generally and improve conditions in our psychiatry hospitals country-wide. The long-term solution is for the government to take interest in the Mental Health Bill and make sure it is passed into law within the shortest possible time so that other things will follow.
Committees as in the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Volta Lake disaster and Foreign Affairs building cases do not help matters. They only delay the solution to the real issues which themselves are never addressed. It is like we are being fed on a daily diet of committees, some of whose reports were never given any attention by the authorities which set them up. We could do with less of these committees and concentrate on removing those things which bring about the setting up of those committees.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogpot.com
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Living in primitive times
Living in primitive times
By Kofi Akordor
Many years ago, while I was a student in Ho, there was a football match between Brong Ahafo United, popularly known as the Apostles of Power Soccer, and Volta Juantex at the Ho Sports Stadium. The bus which was to convey the visiting team entered the stadium amid applause from the handful of BA United supporters. Unknown to them, the players were not on the bus. They were rather struggling to scale the high walls of the stadium at another end, the reason being that they had been warned not to use the main gate because what we call ‘juju’ in local parlance, which would cause their defeat, had been planted there.
There were no fast rules then and the only fear was that the players might enter the field of play with broken limbs from the high jumps.
There are similar episodes in football. There have been occasions when visiting and home teams have haggled over who should enter the field first. Others have fought over jerseys when there is a clash of colours. This is because teams are believed to have sent their jerseys to Mallams, shrines, what have you, for purification and fortification before matches and changing that set for another might spell the doom of that team, so they were made to believe.
There is this popular anecdote attributed to Alhaji Karim Grunsah, the Chairman of King Faisal Football Club. In one of his loud lamentations, Alhaji Grunsah was said to have complained to no one in particular that everywhere he went, he was told Abdul Razak, who was then Head Coach of Asante Kotoko Football Club, had already been there. The question Alhaji Grunsah posed was, ‘Is Razak a coach or Mallam?’
The bigger question is, ‘What was Alhaji Grunsah looking for before seeing himself trailing in the shadow of Razak wherever he went?’
In football, there is something called ways and means and some clubs go to the extent of appointing officials whose only responsibility is to chart a ways-and-means path for the success of the club. This means paying large sums of money to soothsayers, clairvoyants and other such people parading in religious garbs operating from the synagogues, temples, mosques or shrines to influence the result of the match in their favour.
There is this sad story of a top Ghanaian club which campaigned in the continental African Cup of Champion Clubs tournament. Instead of concentrating their efforts on training and mapping out the right strategies to defeat their opponents, this team went consulting a ways-and-means guru who told them they would win the match. There was, however, a price to pay — whoever scored the first goal would die. That was an absurdity of the highest order. The team lost the match because no-one was ready to make the supreme sacrifice.
I have so far dwelt on football, where we are at our superstitious best. Football is a game which is developing every day, with scientific dimensions. A lot of us here do not appreciate things this way and want to believe that the gods would play and win football matches for us.
Every culture has its fair share of superstition and supernatural beliefs. However, if yesterday we could not find scientific answers to some events, can we say the situation is the same today? For instance, yesterday we could not comprehend how, at one delivery, a woman could bring forth two or more babies. So in some cultures, these babies were seen as evil and dumped in an evil forest. Today, advancement in medical science has cleared the doubts and given good reasons why a mother could give birth to two or more babies.
Should we still see twins, triplets, quadruplets, etc as evil?
I know that many years ago in some cultures, when motor vehicles were rare, death through motor accidents was a taboo, an abnormal death and victims were not given what could be described as fitting burials and funerals. The bodies were not allowed to enter the towns or villages and there was to be no crying or weeping.
Today, travelling by motor vehicles has become part and parcel of our lives. Ironically, an invention which is supposed to make travelling easier and more comfortable is bringing sorrow to our homes on a daily basis. Who, then, can describe death through a motor accident as a taboo?
It is the same transformational attitude which we need to adopt to address other cultural practices or beliefs which, in today’s context, are obsolete and outmoded. Take widowhood rites, for example. It is true that the loss of a husband was, and still is, a painful experience any wife could endure, especially in those days when the man was the sole breadwinner. It was to soothe the pain and make the widow adapt to her new situation that certain demands were imposed on her, such as confinement and restrictions on her movement.
Today, many wives are economically autonomous and to impose long-term restrictions on their movement means loss of income and a possible dislocation in the family’s economy. Moreover, there are many mothers who are employees in public or private service who cannot afford the luxury of staying away for long periods with the excuse of performing widowhood rites.
Apart from the confinement and restrictions on movement, some aspects of the rites are totally abominable and should not be entertained. Putting pepper in the eyes of women simply because their husbands are dead is, in plain terms, primitive. Why can’t they go smear the pepper in the eyes of the dead man’s father and mother who brought him into this world, in the first place?
I cannot talk for others, but if these widowhood rites have survived up to today, it is because women, out of ignorance or fear of the unknown, have allowed them to remain, because in the main it is women who execute these rites with some primitive enthusiasm.
One cultural practice which is prevalent in many parts of the country is trial by ordeal. This is the invocation of a dead person’s spirit, through clairvoyance or other supernatural means, to establish the cause or source of his or her death. In our cultural belief system, every death is attributable to somebody. So these clairvoyants always end up accusing someone in the community, very often a relative of the deceased’s, as the killer of the deceased.
Sometimes, without any consultation with the gods of the underworld, an accusing finger can be pointed at a member of the community for causing the death of someone and this person can be subjected to various inhuman treatments to force confession out of him/her or purify the person and protect him/her against the spirit of the deceased.
Trial by ordeal is also common when there is a theft in the village and an oracle is consulted. The oracles never mention names but give descriptions which will definitely match somebody in the village. Victims of these trials are subjected to various forms of torture, including beatings and the drinking of questionable concoctions which could even be harmful to their lives.
At the receiving end of these trials by ordeal are women who are accused of witchcraft or blamed for causing the death of their husbands. The Daily Graphic of Thursday, January 14, 2010 carried a pathetic story of a 52-year-old woman, Madam Sunkari Ghanyi, from Sokpeyiri, a village in the Wa West District of the Upper West Region, who had been subjected to inhuman treatment by a soothsayer on the grounds that she was a witch and had a hand in the death of a relative of her husband’s.
The said woman, according to the story, was forced to drink a concoction made of the blood of a fowl mixed with water and sand, as well as the chopped legs of a toad. Madam Ghanyi had been accused of causing the death of a woman who died apparently of complications during the childbirth.
This is the 21st century.
As stated earlier, we are no longer in the dark ages and there are scientific explanations for every phenomenon, if only we care to look for them. There are several medical explanations why a pregnant woman could die during childbirth. By the way, did the deceased woman have access to a medical facility for ante-natal observation during pregnancy? Was the delivery handled by a qualified midwife or a trained traditional birth attendant (TBA)? These are but a few questions.
The health professionals will tell you there are several factors that could make a pregnant woman suffer complications or even death at childbirth. The knowledge of these and taking the necessary precautions could have saved the life of that poor woman and that of many others.
Instead of doing what present-day requirements demand, we have decided to continue with the primitive practices of yesterday by blaming poor women for the death of other poor women. How does society progress with such a crude and primitive mentality? It is unfortunate that Madam Ghanyi did not get any help in the embrace of the law. The people who inflicted that physical and psychological pain on her have been set free by a Wa Magistrate Court.
Today, when a drunk or careless driver drives straight into an oncoming vehicle and kills innocent people, we do not address the problem but blame an innocent man or woman sitting somewhere wondering where his or her next meal will come from. The main culprits – drunkenness and carelessness – are ignored, so more people continue to die through accidents.
It is strange that we blame the failure of a pupil to pass his or her examination on the spiritual machinations of others – dead or alive – when the main causes, laziness, lack of parental support or poor educational facilities, could have been addressed by society.
Africans are generally highly religious to superstitious proportions. This has created the fertile ground for some churches which operate more or less like cults to flourish. The truth is, we were not alone in superstitious beliefs in the past. The difference is that others have since become scientific and are able to explain such natural phenomena as day and night, rainfall and drought, floods, earthquake and even death in more scientific terms.
This has helped them to advance from very primitive states to more modern civilisation and they are still advancing. Looking at ourselves, we cannot pretend to be making progress like others. This is because we still give primitive interpretations to events that have scientific explanations.
We must begin to accept the fact that no success comes without effort. If a football team do not train hard and take the advice of their coach seriously, they do not trot to the turf to win because a Mallam somewhere has told them that they are going to win. They will be humiliated.
If, as a student, you do not study and take your lessons seriously, you do not blame an old aunt or a dead grandmother for your failure. In the same way, if you do not cultivate a healthy lifestyle, observe personal hygiene and follow the advice of your doctor, you do not blame your woes on another person who is also struggling to survive.
If someone is drunk but decides to drive or fail to observe traffic regulations, no other person should be blamed for the resultant accident
We must begin to, like others, be scientific in our thinking and responsible for our actions. We must begin to probe and look for answers or forever remain where we are now, while others are planning how to put Man on Mars.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com.
By Kofi Akordor
Many years ago, while I was a student in Ho, there was a football match between Brong Ahafo United, popularly known as the Apostles of Power Soccer, and Volta Juantex at the Ho Sports Stadium. The bus which was to convey the visiting team entered the stadium amid applause from the handful of BA United supporters. Unknown to them, the players were not on the bus. They were rather struggling to scale the high walls of the stadium at another end, the reason being that they had been warned not to use the main gate because what we call ‘juju’ in local parlance, which would cause their defeat, had been planted there.
There were no fast rules then and the only fear was that the players might enter the field of play with broken limbs from the high jumps.
There are similar episodes in football. There have been occasions when visiting and home teams have haggled over who should enter the field first. Others have fought over jerseys when there is a clash of colours. This is because teams are believed to have sent their jerseys to Mallams, shrines, what have you, for purification and fortification before matches and changing that set for another might spell the doom of that team, so they were made to believe.
There is this popular anecdote attributed to Alhaji Karim Grunsah, the Chairman of King Faisal Football Club. In one of his loud lamentations, Alhaji Grunsah was said to have complained to no one in particular that everywhere he went, he was told Abdul Razak, who was then Head Coach of Asante Kotoko Football Club, had already been there. The question Alhaji Grunsah posed was, ‘Is Razak a coach or Mallam?’
The bigger question is, ‘What was Alhaji Grunsah looking for before seeing himself trailing in the shadow of Razak wherever he went?’
In football, there is something called ways and means and some clubs go to the extent of appointing officials whose only responsibility is to chart a ways-and-means path for the success of the club. This means paying large sums of money to soothsayers, clairvoyants and other such people parading in religious garbs operating from the synagogues, temples, mosques or shrines to influence the result of the match in their favour.
There is this sad story of a top Ghanaian club which campaigned in the continental African Cup of Champion Clubs tournament. Instead of concentrating their efforts on training and mapping out the right strategies to defeat their opponents, this team went consulting a ways-and-means guru who told them they would win the match. There was, however, a price to pay — whoever scored the first goal would die. That was an absurdity of the highest order. The team lost the match because no-one was ready to make the supreme sacrifice.
I have so far dwelt on football, where we are at our superstitious best. Football is a game which is developing every day, with scientific dimensions. A lot of us here do not appreciate things this way and want to believe that the gods would play and win football matches for us.
Every culture has its fair share of superstition and supernatural beliefs. However, if yesterday we could not find scientific answers to some events, can we say the situation is the same today? For instance, yesterday we could not comprehend how, at one delivery, a woman could bring forth two or more babies. So in some cultures, these babies were seen as evil and dumped in an evil forest. Today, advancement in medical science has cleared the doubts and given good reasons why a mother could give birth to two or more babies.
Should we still see twins, triplets, quadruplets, etc as evil?
I know that many years ago in some cultures, when motor vehicles were rare, death through motor accidents was a taboo, an abnormal death and victims were not given what could be described as fitting burials and funerals. The bodies were not allowed to enter the towns or villages and there was to be no crying or weeping.
Today, travelling by motor vehicles has become part and parcel of our lives. Ironically, an invention which is supposed to make travelling easier and more comfortable is bringing sorrow to our homes on a daily basis. Who, then, can describe death through a motor accident as a taboo?
It is the same transformational attitude which we need to adopt to address other cultural practices or beliefs which, in today’s context, are obsolete and outmoded. Take widowhood rites, for example. It is true that the loss of a husband was, and still is, a painful experience any wife could endure, especially in those days when the man was the sole breadwinner. It was to soothe the pain and make the widow adapt to her new situation that certain demands were imposed on her, such as confinement and restrictions on her movement.
Today, many wives are economically autonomous and to impose long-term restrictions on their movement means loss of income and a possible dislocation in the family’s economy. Moreover, there are many mothers who are employees in public or private service who cannot afford the luxury of staying away for long periods with the excuse of performing widowhood rites.
Apart from the confinement and restrictions on movement, some aspects of the rites are totally abominable and should not be entertained. Putting pepper in the eyes of women simply because their husbands are dead is, in plain terms, primitive. Why can’t they go smear the pepper in the eyes of the dead man’s father and mother who brought him into this world, in the first place?
I cannot talk for others, but if these widowhood rites have survived up to today, it is because women, out of ignorance or fear of the unknown, have allowed them to remain, because in the main it is women who execute these rites with some primitive enthusiasm.
One cultural practice which is prevalent in many parts of the country is trial by ordeal. This is the invocation of a dead person’s spirit, through clairvoyance or other supernatural means, to establish the cause or source of his or her death. In our cultural belief system, every death is attributable to somebody. So these clairvoyants always end up accusing someone in the community, very often a relative of the deceased’s, as the killer of the deceased.
Sometimes, without any consultation with the gods of the underworld, an accusing finger can be pointed at a member of the community for causing the death of someone and this person can be subjected to various inhuman treatments to force confession out of him/her or purify the person and protect him/her against the spirit of the deceased.
Trial by ordeal is also common when there is a theft in the village and an oracle is consulted. The oracles never mention names but give descriptions which will definitely match somebody in the village. Victims of these trials are subjected to various forms of torture, including beatings and the drinking of questionable concoctions which could even be harmful to their lives.
At the receiving end of these trials by ordeal are women who are accused of witchcraft or blamed for causing the death of their husbands. The Daily Graphic of Thursday, January 14, 2010 carried a pathetic story of a 52-year-old woman, Madam Sunkari Ghanyi, from Sokpeyiri, a village in the Wa West District of the Upper West Region, who had been subjected to inhuman treatment by a soothsayer on the grounds that she was a witch and had a hand in the death of a relative of her husband’s.
The said woman, according to the story, was forced to drink a concoction made of the blood of a fowl mixed with water and sand, as well as the chopped legs of a toad. Madam Ghanyi had been accused of causing the death of a woman who died apparently of complications during the childbirth.
This is the 21st century.
As stated earlier, we are no longer in the dark ages and there are scientific explanations for every phenomenon, if only we care to look for them. There are several medical explanations why a pregnant woman could die during childbirth. By the way, did the deceased woman have access to a medical facility for ante-natal observation during pregnancy? Was the delivery handled by a qualified midwife or a trained traditional birth attendant (TBA)? These are but a few questions.
The health professionals will tell you there are several factors that could make a pregnant woman suffer complications or even death at childbirth. The knowledge of these and taking the necessary precautions could have saved the life of that poor woman and that of many others.
Instead of doing what present-day requirements demand, we have decided to continue with the primitive practices of yesterday by blaming poor women for the death of other poor women. How does society progress with such a crude and primitive mentality? It is unfortunate that Madam Ghanyi did not get any help in the embrace of the law. The people who inflicted that physical and psychological pain on her have been set free by a Wa Magistrate Court.
Today, when a drunk or careless driver drives straight into an oncoming vehicle and kills innocent people, we do not address the problem but blame an innocent man or woman sitting somewhere wondering where his or her next meal will come from. The main culprits – drunkenness and carelessness – are ignored, so more people continue to die through accidents.
It is strange that we blame the failure of a pupil to pass his or her examination on the spiritual machinations of others – dead or alive – when the main causes, laziness, lack of parental support or poor educational facilities, could have been addressed by society.
Africans are generally highly religious to superstitious proportions. This has created the fertile ground for some churches which operate more or less like cults to flourish. The truth is, we were not alone in superstitious beliefs in the past. The difference is that others have since become scientific and are able to explain such natural phenomena as day and night, rainfall and drought, floods, earthquake and even death in more scientific terms.
This has helped them to advance from very primitive states to more modern civilisation and they are still advancing. Looking at ourselves, we cannot pretend to be making progress like others. This is because we still give primitive interpretations to events that have scientific explanations.
We must begin to accept the fact that no success comes without effort. If a football team do not train hard and take the advice of their coach seriously, they do not trot to the turf to win because a Mallam somewhere has told them that they are going to win. They will be humiliated.
If, as a student, you do not study and take your lessons seriously, you do not blame an old aunt or a dead grandmother for your failure. In the same way, if you do not cultivate a healthy lifestyle, observe personal hygiene and follow the advice of your doctor, you do not blame your woes on another person who is also struggling to survive.
If someone is drunk but decides to drive or fail to observe traffic regulations, no other person should be blamed for the resultant accident
We must begin to, like others, be scientific in our thinking and responsible for our actions. We must begin to probe and look for answers or forever remain where we are now, while others are planning how to put Man on Mars.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Is expansion in numbers our solution?
By Kofi Akordor
Since the return to constitutional rule in 1993, successive governments have had to contend with agitations for the creation of new districts and regions. In few cases, ethnic and tribal arguments have informed these demands. However, generally speaking, it could be admitted that development considerations have been at the centre of most of such agitations.
Mainly, new districts and regions could be created out of existing ones for administrative or strategic convenience. For instance, the Greater Accra Region was carved out of the then Eastern Region, because it became obvious that Accra, being the national capital, would sap the rest of the region of resources if it was not given a separate administrative set-up, as had become the norm in many countries, and allow the rest of the region to stand on its own.
This could be likened to the creation of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in Nigeria, when Abuja became the new Federal Capital of Nigeria. But whatever the reason, at the end of the day, the decision must not remain a mere political or administrative exercise, but one that would satisfy the intended objectives.
As stated earlier, the agitation for new districts and regions stem mainly from development concerns. There are many who believe, whether rightly or wrongly, that their areas would attract more development if they have their own separate districts or regions.
This is a debatable issue but it is easy to realise that most of the older districts have not improved in terms of developments. There may be a few things here and there, such as a district police station, one or two financial institutions opening branches in the district capital, a bungalow or two for the political head of the district and a few other senior public servants and that would be all.
The roads may still remain untarred, accommodation for public servants may not be adequate (that is if there are some at all), health facilities may be poor, educational facilities and other development infrastructure may be so bad that many people would refuse accepting posting to these places.
This is the general picture of most of our district capitals. The fortunes of most of our districts are not better than those of their capitals. Incidentally, it is the desire to have more development projects that many communities demand their own districts. The same can be said for existing regions and their administrative capitals. Some of these regions and their administrative capitals are as old as the Republic of Ghana, but are yet to come near anything that could be described as developed.
It can, therefore, be argued that if it is for administrative convenience, the creation of new districts or regions could make sense, but if it is for development purposes then we must raise more convincing arguments in that direction, since there are very little historical facts to support it.
In a federal system, where states are autonomous and run their own budgets, things may be different. In some federal systems too, the constitution makes it mandatory for every state to have certain facilities for which the federal government must produce funds. Unfortunately, ours is a unitary system and totally reliant on one national budget. So development generally is at the behest of the central government. This is one of the reasons why the quest for political power has taken such a dramatic turn for the worse, with people fighting tooth and nail to get closer to the centre of power in order to grab some development projects for their areas.
The agitation for new districts and regions have become a regular part of our political life and currently on the table is the debate to create or not to create a new region out of the present Northern and Volta regions.
The argument for another region from the Northern Region is that the place is vast and makes administration very difficult. It is very true that the Northern Region is very big — in fact it remains the biggest region in the country in terms of land mass. It is also true that with such a vast land with very little infrastructure, especially good roads, administering the region will be very difficult.
The tribal argument that the portion belonging to a particular tribal group should be demarcated from the rest of the region to create a new region can only appeal to those who are not interested in development but nursing a grandiose idea close to building an empire. That will not be good enough for a unitary state like Ghana.
Those in the northern part of the Volta Region are also making a similar argument of size to justify their own region. The Volta Region is very long but not too big for effective administration. What the region lacks and which is common to almost all the regions of this country is poor infrastructure.
As has been experienced after the creation of new districts, the siting of the administrative capitals themselves become contentious issues sometimes leading to violent confrontations. That is why it is easier said than done. But more importantly, the real issues must be addressed, since the agitation for new districts and regions only divert attention from the real situation on the ground.
I stated earlier that the country as a whole has common problems that are manifested in the conditions in the regions.
Mention can be made of the poor transportation network which makes us take long hours or even days to cover short distances. A railway system which was functional in the pre-colonial and immediate post-independence days but which has collapsed instead of being improved and covering the whole of the country by now. The least said about air transportation the better. The road network is not in any good shape either.
Other infrastructure including health, education, water and sanitation, agriculture and many others are still in very primitive states.
We have a development system which places emphasis on investing a huge part of our national resources in Accra instead of developing the regions and opening them to serious business. In desperation, people have come up with that conviction that creating more districts or regions will solve their problems.
That is far from the truth. What we should bear in mind is that every new district or region created is another administrative burden that must be carried by the taxpayer. Already Accra is sapping the energy of the national economy by paying a huge bureaucracy with very little remaining for real development.
A new district means a new bureaucracy to sustain the new district administrations including all the political office holders and their civil service counterparts. It means paying people for not necessarily doing anything. It means buying and servicing more vehicles for the comfort of a few. It means more official accommodation for a few people to the neglect of the vast majority of the population.
If at the district level so much could be spent to sustain administrative structures and personnel, one could imagine the magnitude of the problem at the regional level when a new one is created. A new region automatically means new districts. So apart from new infrastructure for the regional administration, new infrastructure must be built for the new districts.
Under conditions of good reason and sober-headedness, there would be no conflict over the siting of district and regional capitals if the ultimate objective is to bring development very close to the people. Otherwise, we would only have succeeded in creating bureaucracies of gigantic proportions that would drain our limited resources which otherwise would have been channelled into development projects.
What we must begin to do is to demand more accountability from our political and other public office holders who as of now, appear to be feeding fat on our national resources. Consider how people are becoming desperate to hold political office through fair or foul means and it paints a good picture of what is happening in our public service.
We must also demand that more money is spent on infrastructure in the regions, especially in the rural areas, to make those places more habitable instead of pouring everything into Accra which has become like a bottomless pit, swallowing everything poured into it without showing any signs of abating.
We must demand that the country is opened up with good roads, rail network and air transportation to reduce it in size. The agitation will end if people get what they want wherever they are in any part of the country.
The rate at which ministers, deputy ministers, special advisors and special assistants are springing up in Accra, each with its administrative and financial burden on the poor taxpayer, we will be doing ourselves more harm than good, if we should put our hopes in the creation of more districts and regions.
Ghana is too small to be fragmented into so many pieces. It could even be that the more districts and regions we create, the more divided we become.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Since the return to constitutional rule in 1993, successive governments have had to contend with agitations for the creation of new districts and regions. In few cases, ethnic and tribal arguments have informed these demands. However, generally speaking, it could be admitted that development considerations have been at the centre of most of such agitations.
Mainly, new districts and regions could be created out of existing ones for administrative or strategic convenience. For instance, the Greater Accra Region was carved out of the then Eastern Region, because it became obvious that Accra, being the national capital, would sap the rest of the region of resources if it was not given a separate administrative set-up, as had become the norm in many countries, and allow the rest of the region to stand on its own.
This could be likened to the creation of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in Nigeria, when Abuja became the new Federal Capital of Nigeria. But whatever the reason, at the end of the day, the decision must not remain a mere political or administrative exercise, but one that would satisfy the intended objectives.
As stated earlier, the agitation for new districts and regions stem mainly from development concerns. There are many who believe, whether rightly or wrongly, that their areas would attract more development if they have their own separate districts or regions.
This is a debatable issue but it is easy to realise that most of the older districts have not improved in terms of developments. There may be a few things here and there, such as a district police station, one or two financial institutions opening branches in the district capital, a bungalow or two for the political head of the district and a few other senior public servants and that would be all.
The roads may still remain untarred, accommodation for public servants may not be adequate (that is if there are some at all), health facilities may be poor, educational facilities and other development infrastructure may be so bad that many people would refuse accepting posting to these places.
This is the general picture of most of our district capitals. The fortunes of most of our districts are not better than those of their capitals. Incidentally, it is the desire to have more development projects that many communities demand their own districts. The same can be said for existing regions and their administrative capitals. Some of these regions and their administrative capitals are as old as the Republic of Ghana, but are yet to come near anything that could be described as developed.
It can, therefore, be argued that if it is for administrative convenience, the creation of new districts or regions could make sense, but if it is for development purposes then we must raise more convincing arguments in that direction, since there are very little historical facts to support it.
In a federal system, where states are autonomous and run their own budgets, things may be different. In some federal systems too, the constitution makes it mandatory for every state to have certain facilities for which the federal government must produce funds. Unfortunately, ours is a unitary system and totally reliant on one national budget. So development generally is at the behest of the central government. This is one of the reasons why the quest for political power has taken such a dramatic turn for the worse, with people fighting tooth and nail to get closer to the centre of power in order to grab some development projects for their areas.
The agitation for new districts and regions have become a regular part of our political life and currently on the table is the debate to create or not to create a new region out of the present Northern and Volta regions.
The argument for another region from the Northern Region is that the place is vast and makes administration very difficult. It is very true that the Northern Region is very big — in fact it remains the biggest region in the country in terms of land mass. It is also true that with such a vast land with very little infrastructure, especially good roads, administering the region will be very difficult.
The tribal argument that the portion belonging to a particular tribal group should be demarcated from the rest of the region to create a new region can only appeal to those who are not interested in development but nursing a grandiose idea close to building an empire. That will not be good enough for a unitary state like Ghana.
Those in the northern part of the Volta Region are also making a similar argument of size to justify their own region. The Volta Region is very long but not too big for effective administration. What the region lacks and which is common to almost all the regions of this country is poor infrastructure.
As has been experienced after the creation of new districts, the siting of the administrative capitals themselves become contentious issues sometimes leading to violent confrontations. That is why it is easier said than done. But more importantly, the real issues must be addressed, since the agitation for new districts and regions only divert attention from the real situation on the ground.
I stated earlier that the country as a whole has common problems that are manifested in the conditions in the regions.
Mention can be made of the poor transportation network which makes us take long hours or even days to cover short distances. A railway system which was functional in the pre-colonial and immediate post-independence days but which has collapsed instead of being improved and covering the whole of the country by now. The least said about air transportation the better. The road network is not in any good shape either.
Other infrastructure including health, education, water and sanitation, agriculture and many others are still in very primitive states.
We have a development system which places emphasis on investing a huge part of our national resources in Accra instead of developing the regions and opening them to serious business. In desperation, people have come up with that conviction that creating more districts or regions will solve their problems.
That is far from the truth. What we should bear in mind is that every new district or region created is another administrative burden that must be carried by the taxpayer. Already Accra is sapping the energy of the national economy by paying a huge bureaucracy with very little remaining for real development.
A new district means a new bureaucracy to sustain the new district administrations including all the political office holders and their civil service counterparts. It means paying people for not necessarily doing anything. It means buying and servicing more vehicles for the comfort of a few. It means more official accommodation for a few people to the neglect of the vast majority of the population.
If at the district level so much could be spent to sustain administrative structures and personnel, one could imagine the magnitude of the problem at the regional level when a new one is created. A new region automatically means new districts. So apart from new infrastructure for the regional administration, new infrastructure must be built for the new districts.
Under conditions of good reason and sober-headedness, there would be no conflict over the siting of district and regional capitals if the ultimate objective is to bring development very close to the people. Otherwise, we would only have succeeded in creating bureaucracies of gigantic proportions that would drain our limited resources which otherwise would have been channelled into development projects.
What we must begin to do is to demand more accountability from our political and other public office holders who as of now, appear to be feeding fat on our national resources. Consider how people are becoming desperate to hold political office through fair or foul means and it paints a good picture of what is happening in our public service.
We must also demand that more money is spent on infrastructure in the regions, especially in the rural areas, to make those places more habitable instead of pouring everything into Accra which has become like a bottomless pit, swallowing everything poured into it without showing any signs of abating.
We must demand that the country is opened up with good roads, rail network and air transportation to reduce it in size. The agitation will end if people get what they want wherever they are in any part of the country.
The rate at which ministers, deputy ministers, special advisors and special assistants are springing up in Accra, each with its administrative and financial burden on the poor taxpayer, we will be doing ourselves more harm than good, if we should put our hopes in the creation of more districts and regions.
Ghana is too small to be fragmented into so many pieces. It could even be that the more districts and regions we create, the more divided we become.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
A JOURNEY THROUGH 365 DAYS (JAN 5, 2010)
AS the saying goes, “An unexamined life is not worth living”. Naturally, as we welcome a new year, it is just in order that we reflect over the past, recount with nostalgia our achievements and try to make amends regarding where we faulted over the period.
The year 2009, by all accounts, was quite eventful. It had its historical moments, its fair share of events which we wished would forever remain in our memory and the others we wished never happened.
The year could not be ushered in with the pomp and pageantry usually associated with the welcome party for the New Year. This was because the nation had an unfinished business, which was the spillover of Election 2008 to pick a new person to replace Mr J. A. Kufuor as the President of the Republic.
That business finally came to a dramatic end on Sunday, January 3, 2009, when Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan, the Electoral Commissioner, announced the final results and declared Professor John Evans Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) the winner of the presidential contest.
It was a make-or-break affair. Call it a cliffhanger and you may not be far from right. One of the most keenly contested elections in the country’s political history ended with one of the closest electoral results. Official results indicated that the difference between Prof. Mills and Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), his opponent in the run-off, was 43,000 votes. Both parties contested some figures though, that was not Dr Afari Gyan’s cup of tea. It ended, arguably, as the most acrimonious political campaign witnessed in the Fourth Republic.
On Tuesday, January 7, 2009, a new government of the Fourth Republic was ushered into office when Prof. Mills followed his predecessors by swearing before thousands of Ghanaians at the Independence Square and watched by millions others in their homes, to uphold and defend the good name of Ghana, so may God help him.
Earlier in the morning, Mrs Joyce Bamford-Addo, a retired Justice of the Supreme Court, was elected the first female Speaker of our Parliament. There was already a female Chief Justice in the person of Mrs Theodora Georgina Wood, to be joined later by Mrs Mills-Robertson, who acted for some time as the Inspector General of Police.
Any hope that with the elections being over and a new government being in place, the parties were going to bury the hatchet and allow the nation to move on with its development agenda was short-lived. At the trail of the Transitional Team which was hailed at its formation was a dust of suspicion, hatred, accusations and counter-accusations.
The new government managed to put its team in place after those nominated for ministerial appointments went through the vetting process. It must, however, be placed on record that things were not easy for some of the nominees, especially Mr Fiifi Kwetey, whose approval before the full House was characterised by a walkout by the Minority.
Relations between the NDC and the NPP have always been rough. Officers of the previous NPP government were very loud, claiming that agents of the NDC government were harassing them and seizing their vehicles, some of which were legitimately acquired through the due process.
The NDC officers, on the other hand, were profuse in explaining their actions, claiming that some ministers and other public office holders in the old regime failed to do what was expected of them by handing over state property in their custody. The former Speaker of Parliament was alleged to have stripped his official residence bare when vacating the place.
In spite of the turbulent political atmosphere, the determination of Ghanaians to pursue the democratic path prevailed and Prof. Mills’s government plodded on, taking flacks from all angles, including members of his own party.
One issue which is yet to find a final resting place is the ex gratia payments recommended by the Chinnery-Hesse Report for public office holders covered by Article 71 of the 1992 Constitution. While members of the legislature were alleged to have collected theirs, members of the previous Council of State and former President J.A. Kufuor are still waiting for their turn.
The two main political parties, the NDC and the NPP, dominated the political landscape either at each other’s throat or fighting among themselves.
Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, who contested the presidential primary with Prof. Mills, stirred up a hornet’s nest when he criticised President Mills’s administration in an article carried by the Daily Graphic, the nation’s most popular and biggest selling newspaper. The dust is just settling, but the bubbles will resurface when the party goes to congress to elect its national officers.
Some new terms have appeared on the political scene. You either belong to the Team A warming the bench or the Team B actively playing on the field. Some are also doing something quite different. You are either pissing in from outside or pissing out from inside. Whichever is better depends upon whoever is doing the assessment.
Just as the opposition NPP went into frenzy enjoying the NDC tearing itself apart, one of its own, Dr Arthur Kennedy, also a failure in his party’s presidential primaries, launched a book: Chasing the Elephant into the bush with serious ramifications. The publication drew blood and like sharks, the NPP turned against itself with voracious venom. The fight is still raging and may take the party to its congress to pick the next presidential candidate for the 2012 elections.
Politics apart, the life went on as usual with its joys and tribulations. The first major glow came when the 44th President of the United States of America, Mr Barack Obama and his family, paid a two-day state visit to the country from July 10 to 11, 2009. President Obama’s visit was a political triumph for Ghana, having overlooked Nigeria, the sub-regional superpower and chosen Ghana, citing Ghana’s democratic credentials.
The country enjoyed relative peace, even though Bawku in the Upper East Region and a few other places have remained on the radar of National Security. Bawku in particular has virtually remained a military garrison with police/military teams stationed there. Armed robbery has also remained a national menace until in the latter part of the year when the police stepped up their operations and gunned down many suspects to the chagrin of some human rights activists. But to members of the general public, the police did well to bring the menace under control.
A Presidential Commission to probe the Ghana@50 celebration of Ghana’s Golden Jubilee has presented its report and the President has pledged to apply the recommendations without fear or favour.
The month of October was not good for the country. On October 19, 2009, there was disaster on the Volta Lake, during which over 20 people were feared dead. On Wednesday, October 21, 2009, fire gutted the multi-storey Foreign Affairs Ministry building in Accra. From a committee’s report, the building has to go down because the cost of repairs could equally raise a new one. The Chinese government has already responded positively by promising to give the country a new Foreign Affairs ministerial building.
Incidentally, October brought the smiles back on the faces of Ghanaians, when the Black Satellites won the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in far away Egypt.
November could have passed as disaster-free but for a galamsey operation, which went tragic. More than 20 persons, mostly women, perished when a pit, in which they were mining at Wassa Dompoase in the Western Region collapsed on them on November 12, 2009.
It is rather unfortunate that politics has continued to dominate discussions on television, radio and in the newspapers in the past year. Even though one cannot run away from politics in our private and official lives, we hope this year will be more development-focussed to address the many problems confronting the country.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
The year 2009, by all accounts, was quite eventful. It had its historical moments, its fair share of events which we wished would forever remain in our memory and the others we wished never happened.
The year could not be ushered in with the pomp and pageantry usually associated with the welcome party for the New Year. This was because the nation had an unfinished business, which was the spillover of Election 2008 to pick a new person to replace Mr J. A. Kufuor as the President of the Republic.
That business finally came to a dramatic end on Sunday, January 3, 2009, when Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan, the Electoral Commissioner, announced the final results and declared Professor John Evans Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) the winner of the presidential contest.
It was a make-or-break affair. Call it a cliffhanger and you may not be far from right. One of the most keenly contested elections in the country’s political history ended with one of the closest electoral results. Official results indicated that the difference between Prof. Mills and Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), his opponent in the run-off, was 43,000 votes. Both parties contested some figures though, that was not Dr Afari Gyan’s cup of tea. It ended, arguably, as the most acrimonious political campaign witnessed in the Fourth Republic.
On Tuesday, January 7, 2009, a new government of the Fourth Republic was ushered into office when Prof. Mills followed his predecessors by swearing before thousands of Ghanaians at the Independence Square and watched by millions others in their homes, to uphold and defend the good name of Ghana, so may God help him.
Earlier in the morning, Mrs Joyce Bamford-Addo, a retired Justice of the Supreme Court, was elected the first female Speaker of our Parliament. There was already a female Chief Justice in the person of Mrs Theodora Georgina Wood, to be joined later by Mrs Mills-Robertson, who acted for some time as the Inspector General of Police.
Any hope that with the elections being over and a new government being in place, the parties were going to bury the hatchet and allow the nation to move on with its development agenda was short-lived. At the trail of the Transitional Team which was hailed at its formation was a dust of suspicion, hatred, accusations and counter-accusations.
The new government managed to put its team in place after those nominated for ministerial appointments went through the vetting process. It must, however, be placed on record that things were not easy for some of the nominees, especially Mr Fiifi Kwetey, whose approval before the full House was characterised by a walkout by the Minority.
Relations between the NDC and the NPP have always been rough. Officers of the previous NPP government were very loud, claiming that agents of the NDC government were harassing them and seizing their vehicles, some of which were legitimately acquired through the due process.
The NDC officers, on the other hand, were profuse in explaining their actions, claiming that some ministers and other public office holders in the old regime failed to do what was expected of them by handing over state property in their custody. The former Speaker of Parliament was alleged to have stripped his official residence bare when vacating the place.
In spite of the turbulent political atmosphere, the determination of Ghanaians to pursue the democratic path prevailed and Prof. Mills’s government plodded on, taking flacks from all angles, including members of his own party.
One issue which is yet to find a final resting place is the ex gratia payments recommended by the Chinnery-Hesse Report for public office holders covered by Article 71 of the 1992 Constitution. While members of the legislature were alleged to have collected theirs, members of the previous Council of State and former President J.A. Kufuor are still waiting for their turn.
The two main political parties, the NDC and the NPP, dominated the political landscape either at each other’s throat or fighting among themselves.
Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, who contested the presidential primary with Prof. Mills, stirred up a hornet’s nest when he criticised President Mills’s administration in an article carried by the Daily Graphic, the nation’s most popular and biggest selling newspaper. The dust is just settling, but the bubbles will resurface when the party goes to congress to elect its national officers.
Some new terms have appeared on the political scene. You either belong to the Team A warming the bench or the Team B actively playing on the field. Some are also doing something quite different. You are either pissing in from outside or pissing out from inside. Whichever is better depends upon whoever is doing the assessment.
Just as the opposition NPP went into frenzy enjoying the NDC tearing itself apart, one of its own, Dr Arthur Kennedy, also a failure in his party’s presidential primaries, launched a book: Chasing the Elephant into the bush with serious ramifications. The publication drew blood and like sharks, the NPP turned against itself with voracious venom. The fight is still raging and may take the party to its congress to pick the next presidential candidate for the 2012 elections.
Politics apart, the life went on as usual with its joys and tribulations. The first major glow came when the 44th President of the United States of America, Mr Barack Obama and his family, paid a two-day state visit to the country from July 10 to 11, 2009. President Obama’s visit was a political triumph for Ghana, having overlooked Nigeria, the sub-regional superpower and chosen Ghana, citing Ghana’s democratic credentials.
The country enjoyed relative peace, even though Bawku in the Upper East Region and a few other places have remained on the radar of National Security. Bawku in particular has virtually remained a military garrison with police/military teams stationed there. Armed robbery has also remained a national menace until in the latter part of the year when the police stepped up their operations and gunned down many suspects to the chagrin of some human rights activists. But to members of the general public, the police did well to bring the menace under control.
A Presidential Commission to probe the Ghana@50 celebration of Ghana’s Golden Jubilee has presented its report and the President has pledged to apply the recommendations without fear or favour.
The month of October was not good for the country. On October 19, 2009, there was disaster on the Volta Lake, during which over 20 people were feared dead. On Wednesday, October 21, 2009, fire gutted the multi-storey Foreign Affairs Ministry building in Accra. From a committee’s report, the building has to go down because the cost of repairs could equally raise a new one. The Chinese government has already responded positively by promising to give the country a new Foreign Affairs ministerial building.
Incidentally, October brought the smiles back on the faces of Ghanaians, when the Black Satellites won the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in far away Egypt.
November could have passed as disaster-free but for a galamsey operation, which went tragic. More than 20 persons, mostly women, perished when a pit, in which they were mining at Wassa Dompoase in the Western Region collapsed on them on November 12, 2009.
It is rather unfortunate that politics has continued to dominate discussions on television, radio and in the newspapers in the past year. Even though one cannot run away from politics in our private and official lives, we hope this year will be more development-focussed to address the many problems confronting the country.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
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