From my rooftop

The Nkrumah vision lives on

2012-02-09T03:53:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”- Steve Biko
Putting the usual speeches aside, the 18th Ordinary Session of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) will be remembered for two main things. First, there was the relocation of the secretariat of the continental body to its new and magnificent headquarters, which we have been told is a gift from China, the emerging economic superpower on the continent.
We may be excited about the new edifice, which cost Chinese taxpayers US$300 million, but to some of us, this is a gift that will come with strings attached. Remember — he who pays the piper calls the tune. We should, therefore, not be surprised if, sooner than later, China begins to call the shots as to which of our abundant resources should go where and at what price. Like the US and the European powers, China will soon determine how Africa should vote on major issues at the UN or elsewhere.
But what will be of greater interest to many Africans on the mother continent and in the Diaspora was the unveiling of a giant bronze statue of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of the Republic of Ghana and founder member of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the AU.
That historic and memorable event was carried out by the President, Prof John Evans Atta Mills, and witnessed by many dignitaries, including Prof Francis Nkrumah, Dr Nkrumah’s first son, and Ms Samia Yaaba Nkrumah, Dr Nkrumah’s daughter who was barely a baby when her father’s government was toppled by the Central Intelligence Agency-inspired coup.
In addition to this is the institution of the Kwame Nkrumah Scientific Awards which were conferred on two prominent scientists for promoting research work in the sciences on the continent.
The first recipients are Professor Oluwale Daniel Makinde of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, who received the Basic Sciences, Technology and Innovation Award, and Prof Marike Labuschagne of the Bloemfontein University, who received the Life and Earth Science Award.
That was not the first time the AU was bestowing honour on Dr Nkrumah, the undisputable lead architect of Africa’s emancipation from colonialism and neo-colonialism, having dedicated to him the AU Day, which is celebrated every May 25 to commemorate the birth of the OAU, now the AU.
However, coming at a time when the AU is going through recognition crisis and struggling to establish its relevance on the international stage, the honour done Nkrumah can only be interpreted as an attempt by the continental leaders to invoke the spirit of Nkrumah, whose vision of seeing Africa a free and prosperous continent fully prepared to assert itself in the comity of nations remains a challenge.
Nkrumah, as a person, had his weaknesses and frailties, and as a politicians he had his detractors. But, by and large, Nkrumah stood tall among his peers and today, many decades after his death, it is becoming increasingly difficult to forget him.
He stood firmly and religiously for the total emancipation of the African continent from all vestiges of colonialism and its more cunning and sinister brother, neo-colonialism. He was also determined to purge the Black race of all forms inferiority complex and restore in Black people their psychological balance which had been devastated by slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism.
On the home front, Nkrumah did not spend time lamenting over inadequate resources or mourning the side effects of colonialism and all the things African leaders use as excuses for their inaction. He hit the ground running, not recklessly, aimlessly or trying to cling on to anything floating. Nkrumah was purposeful in all his endeavours and on all fronts. He pursued a vigorous educational policy which astounded many and was the envy of many other countries on the continent and beyond. He foresaw that the country would require a high calibre of professionals in all spheres of national development and pursued his policy in that direction.
Basic education was free and compulsory; no two ways about that. Secondary education was made accessible to as many people as possible. Beyond secondary education, there were many teacher training colleges, technical and vocational institutes to suit the academic and intellectual capabilities of everybody.
At the tertiary level, Nkrumah was not only targeting bureaucrats to man the administrative class of the Civil Service. The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology had, as its prime objective, the training of scientists and technologists to serve as the bulwark of the country’s industrial and manufacturing sectors.
There was no doubt that Ghana would have been a nuclear power by now had the initiative Nkrumah took in the early 1960s with the institution of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission not been terminated with the collapse of his administration.
The University of Cape Coast was purposely established to train graduate teachers for the numerous secondary schools that were springing up in the country.
His aggressive agricultural policies made it possible for agricultural scientists from Malaysia to come here and take away oil palm seedlings to their country. Today, Malaysia is one of the most powerful industrial and economic powers in south-east Asia whose wealth revolves around palm oil and cocoa, of which Ghana is a prime producer. Ghana’s fortunes, on the other hand, have dwindled to the extent that it has become a net importer of anything conceivable, from tooth picks to wheelbarrows.
Ghana’s industrial landscape was quite phenomenal in the Nkrumah era. One can hardly say the same today and the country, like most others on the continent, has become raw material producers.
On the social and infrastructural front, Nkrumah was determined to make Ghana an example of what a determined and proud people could do if galvanised into action and if they make judicious use of their resources. The Tema Port, the Volta River Project, which includes the hydro-electric dam and the Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO), the Accra-Tema Motorway and the factories that blossomed on the industrial landscape are ample evidence of the man’s vision and mission.
Some of his contemporaries claimed Nkrumah was galloping rather too fast. Maybe it was for a purpose. Nkrumah did not live long to see some his ideas come into fruition. But every true Ghanaian will admit that Ghana, even in the present day, is surviving mostly on the legacies of the Nkrumah era.
Nkrumah knew that Ghana was not going to enjoy its political independence if it was going to share borders with others still in colonial bondage. He, therefore, carried the battle of emancipation beyond Ghana’s borders.
He did not pursue only political freedom but also economic integration to steer the continent clear from its colonial roots. The greatest irony of our times is that Africa, one of the most endowed continents on earth, remains the poorest in terms of development.
Africa is now synonymous with poverty and hunger, illiteracy and ignorance and all the known killer diseases, including malaria, HIV/AIDS, TB and Buruli ulcer. Presiding over these developmental challenges on the continent are some of the most vicious and corrupt leaders the world has ever produced.
What could be described as Nkrumah’s greatest contribution to the emancipation of the Black race was his surge against mental slavery which had stripped Blacks of their self-esteem, self-worth, self-confidence and self-acceptance. If, today, African leaders continue to junket the world looking for external assistance for everything in the midst of abundance, it is because they do not value personal and national pride.
Robert Nesta Marley, arguably one of the greatest philosophers of our time, delivered his message through music: “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our weak mind.”
Mental slavery and its associated inferiority complex continue to cause havoc to the psyche of the African, reducing him to a second-rate citizen, even on his own land.
If in 2012 African leaders chose,“Boosting Intra-African Trade”, for its 18th Ordinary Session of the Summit of Heads of State and Government, it tells a story of how far they are from attaining the goals of continental unity which their predecessors, led by Nkrumah, fought for many decades ago.
Trade among African countries is very scanty, approximated to be between 10 and 12 per cent. That does not augur well for a continent that commands averagely about a third of the world’s natural resources. So while we ship our materials raw to other continents, we turn round to import finished products which came out of our raw materials at high prices. What that means is that all our efforts go to enrich producers on other continents.
Africa is highly marginalised, not because it is under-resourced but because it has a leadership that is very corrupt, myopic, selfish, unimaginative, yet always willing to go begging when everything needed for development is right here.
In 2000, Nkrumah was voted Africa’s Man of the Millennium by listeners to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service. This is a tribute to a man whose ideals and vision are beginning to make a serious impact on the minds of many Africans.
While the numerous awards and monuments erected in memory of Nkrumah in various parts of the world are inspiring and serve as a reminder of a mission unaccomplished, Africa needs a leadership that will be imbued with Nkrumah’s zeal and vision both at the national and continental levels.
What Africa is missing today is a person who will take up the mantle of Nkrumah and pursue his vision of a free and united Africa that will not play subservience to any power nor pander to the whims and caprices of neo-colonial interests. That is the vision which lives on.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Is our penal system reforming deviants?

2012-01-24T11:22:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
LAWS are made to regulate human behaviour. Where it becomes necessary, sanctions are applied as a form of punishment to serve as a deterrent to others who may be tempted to breach the law. Above all we have been told countless times that the penal system is geared more towards reformation and not to destroy or dehumanise.
Of course criminals such as murderers and armed robbers who suffer capital punishment may not have any opportunity of reforms since they are likely to spend the rest of their lives in jail in the absence of death penalty, which though in the statute books had not been applied for a very long time now.
Granted that our penal system is driven by the philosophy of reformation, we need to take a hard look at our court system and determine whether it meets this broad objective of reforming persons who have breached the law and offer them the opportunity to reintegrate into society as better and useful citizens.
Even though the argument could be made that the courts are exercising their judicial authority as prescribed by law, we are still of the belief that the courts or judges still have some discretionary powers which they exercise in certain critical situations.
Without trying to impute wrong-doing on the part of our judges, it is a general concern that some of the sentences imposed on teenagers and young adults are so outrageous that they could only serve as deterrents but not to reform by any stretch of imagination.
An 18-year-old who is jailed for 50 years for serious crime cannot be said to be on the path of reform, since a life that had barely began would have come to its end should he survive and serve the full sentence.
The police would argue that their job is to arrest and prosecute those who violate the law. The courts will also justify their decisions by saying they are only exacting penalties as prescribed by law. It is important that all stakeholders including the lawmakers, the law enforcements and the administrators of justice put their heads together to address some of the issues so that they do not remain a burden of one party alone.
A few cases may illustrate the point. In the first case, a 20-year-old young man was jailed 20 years in December last year for robbing a junior high school student of two mobile phones at knife point.
In a second case which is still in court, two students of Accra Academy were arrested for robbing a boutique in Dzorwulu, an Accra suburb. A third student was handed over to the police by his own father. The three students were aged 17, 18 and 19. We are yet to know the outcome of this case so we shall rest it for now.
The third case which attracted banner headlines, two students of the Keta Business High School aged 19 and 20 years were jailed 30 years each for robbery and five years each for conspiracy by an Aflao Circuit Court.
Emmanuel Nartey, 19, and Hope Dotse, 20, were said to have robbed a young woman of her mobile phone after one of them put his hand in his pocket pretending to be pulling out a gun.
The two boys were lucky because the harsh sentence attracted the sympathetic intervention of two members of parliament – Mr Richard
Lassey Agbenyefia (Keta) and Mr Clement Kofi Humado (Anlo) and a lawyer, Mr Chris Ackumey, who took the case up on an appeal.
The boys were freed by a Ho High Court. There are fundamental issues that need to be addressed. There was no evidence that any of the two students actually pulled out a gun so the charge of robbery becomes weak and a charge of stealing could have been better.
Also both the accused and the victim live in the same community and know themselves very well and for all you know what was being described as robbery could have been some childish pranks usually associated with students.
There is no doubt that the students did not act well but should they suffer the same penalty as those who rob violently? A mild sentence based on a charge of stealing or even a caution and a bond to be of good behaviour could have served the purpose of deterrent and at the same time reform the students for a better life.
We all know that the robbery has become a social menace that should be uprooted by all means. We also know that crime at all levels including juvenile, should be fought with all the means available to the state apparatus but that should not take away our power of discretion.
We know the problems of overcrowding and inadequate facilities confronting our prisons already so the least we could do is to cram these prisons with teenagers and juveniles when there could be an alternative ways of reforming youngsters most of whom have barely started their adult lives.
In the case of the students of Keta Business High School, the question is what would have been their future if the three gentlemen did not appeal their case and win? Would they have served 30 years of their active lives behind bars because of one mobile phone?
It was obvious that the jail sentence was not to reform but to destroy them for life even before they have started their life’s journey.
Very often, young offenders find themselves in prison for long jail terms for possessing marijuana when big time drug barons and their accomplices are walking free on the corridors of authority. The courts will say that is the law at work. Yes, but the law was made for man by man so we can straighten the rough edges if we have come to realise that the law, as it is now, is doing more damage to our national security and development.
The penal system itself needs reform and it is only fair that the institutions sit up to determine how to address deviant behaviour especially among the youth without necessarily cutting short their hopes and aspirations.
A lot of them who waste away in prisons could easily become the professionals that we desperately need for our national development. Sentencing a teenager to a jail term of 10, 15, 20, 30 years and more cannot have anything to do with reformation- at least not in our prisons which lack the facilities to train inmates in various vocations. It is better we make the effort and fail than when we do not make the attempt at all.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

The police service and charity

2012-01-18T12:18:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
The Ghana Police Service, under the Police Service Act 1970 (Act 350), has a clear mandate to maintain law and order. This translates into crime prevention and detection, apprehension and prosecution of offenders and to generally enforce the law to ensure that the security and safety of the citizenry are safeguarded.
Briefly, by their mandate, the police are to protect all and also to ensure that all conform to the laws of the land, a necessity that would guarantee internal stability, security and social harmony.
This is a broad mandate that, as would be expected, can only be executed effectively, if the Ghana Police Service is well resourced both materially and with the requisite personnel.
With a population of approximately 24 million and a police/civilian ratio of 1:1,200, the police service is overwhelmingly outnumbered and could, therefore, do with additional personnel. But this is constrained by a more serious problem – materials and logistics.
The authorities including government officials have always maintained that even though there is the need for additional hands, they can only do so if some major challenges facing the service are removed. These include inadequate office and residential accommodation.
Most of our police stations are housed in rented premises or in buildings constructed in the colonial times when the numbers were small and the mandate of the service very limited. The history of the service itself points to an institution that had as its core mandate, the protection of the interests of the colonial power.
After independence, even though numbers increased and the mandate and scope of the service increased, there was very little in terms of improved infrastructure. Nowhere was this evident more than the residential accommodation for service personnel. The cubicle for a family person with wife/wives and children is so small that the difference between them and those they have consigned into custody is very little.
Office accommodation for the service is very poor. During the Acheampong regime, a brave effort was made to build modern headquarters for all the regional commands. It is sad to say that more than 40 years after that regime came to an end, none of the regional police headquarters have been completed.
That lives us with the question: “Where do we place the Ghana Police Service in our scheme of things?” Efforts to address the situation are always piecemeal and the budgets for infrastructure are so meagre that at the end of the day, the effects are insignificant.
This has forced the administration to rent private premises for office and accommodation or simply leave the service personnel to sort things out on their own. That is where our problem lies. Apart from the inconvenience to service personnel, this type of arrangement greatly compromises the integrity and neutrality of the service in executing its mandate impartially and effectively.
The closest this current administration came to solving this accommodation problem confronting the service and other security agencies was the STX Housing initiative which targeted 30,000 housing units for the security agencies. It seems the death knell has been sounded for that project, unless the government can quickly put together another package with fresh partners to push forward its housing agenda.
Accommodation apart, the service is seriously constrained by lack of basic tools of their profession. Occasionally, we hear pleas from the authorities calling on individuals and corporate bodies to come to the aid of the service, which receive positive responses.
Public response have been varied. They include the donation of things like torches, reflector jackets, Wellington boots, computers, communication gadgets and vehicles for patrol duties. While these gestures are laudable and need commendation, they live in their trail, tendencies that could easily corrupt the service in the discharge of its mandate for obvious reasons.
Remember you cannot bite the hand that feeds you and the police service would be the last to show ingratitude to its benefactors whether as individuals or corporate bodies. Without trying to put the integrity of the service on the line, the police service is the last public institution that should be sustained on charity.
The reasons as stated earlier are obvious. Even a lift from a taxi driver will have its consequences that would not augur well for combating crime or dispensing justice in a fair, firm and impartial manner.
Individuals and corporate bodies can extend their corporate social responsibility to areas such as schools, health facilities, orphanages or even the fire and prison services. But these largesse should not be extended to the police service, otherwise we should not expect them to deliver on their mandate without bending the rules.
Just like week, Global Haulage Company donated 500 pieces of reflector jackets to the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) of the Ghana Police Service. That was a noble gesture by all means that should be commended. But what happens if say, a driver of Global Haulage Company should flout traffic regulations? Anything can happen but please do not tell me the law will take its natural course, because that course has been obscured by a gift of jackets. I say for the second time, you cannot bite the hand that feeds you, and they say, one good turn deserves another.
So what stops people with dubious minds or agenda from rushing to make donations to the police before putting their grand diabolic designs into action? That is why some of us would wish that the state takes full responsibility for equipping certain state institutions, especially where national security and justice delivery are concerned.
Those office accommodation structures started by the Acheampong regime more than four decades ago that have remained monuments of neglect should be reactivated and completed as early as possible. The government should also explore other avenues to raise capital to build residential accommodation for our policemen and women. The idea of the police service receiving material donations from individuals and corporate institutions should be discouraged.
The Ghana Police Service should not be allowed to rely on the public for logistic support since it opens the service to exploitation and abuse. The strength of the nation depends on a well-trained and highly-equipped police service. No amount spent on the service should be considered misplaced. All governments have expressed their determinaton and commitment to provide the service with the requisite logistic support. But the service could sill do with more vehicles, communication equipment and other accroutments of their trade for effective performance.
If we cannot do for others, at least we must ensure the police service operates as an independent and autonomous institution as much as possible. So that when they fail they do not feed us with excuses.
Our national security, our safety and protection as citizens and the sanctity of our laws and regulations cannot be sacrificed on the altar of charity.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

AU stands accused

2012-01-10T12:27:00.001-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
The political upheaval which swept across North Africa at the beginning of last year cannot be forgotten so soon. What started as a young man’s protestations against the harsh economic conditions in his country Tunisia snowballed beyond expectation.
On December 17, 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi, described as a fruit seller, set himself ablaze for what he considered harassment from the city authorities. That set in motion violent protests all over Tunisia, spilling across borders into other parts of North Africa.
The first casualty was President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia who had to beat a hasty retreat and fled to Saudi Arabia. The Jasmine Revolution or the Arab Spring as the protests became known, cleared Hosni Mubarak of Egypt from power.
The last to go was Col Muhammad Gaddafi whose 42 years of dictatorship came to a bloody and humiliating end in October, 2011.
As we reflect over events of last year, we need to factor in the role the African Union (AU) played in the upheavals, the invasion of the continent by foreign troops and the eventual overthrow of those leaders.
At the transformation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) into the AU in 2002, African leaders pledged to emphasise the democratisation of the political process on the continent. They also committed to isolating all forms of dictatorship and nurturing a vibrant democratic culture which would in turn push forward the agenda of economic emancipation.
They opined reasonably that once the liberation struggle, which was spearheaded by the OAU, had come to an end, it had become more important to direct attention to economic development which is a weak spot on the continent, notwithstanding its rich and abundant resources.
Ironically, one of the strongest driving forces behind the formation of the AU was Libya’s Col Gaddafi, one of the longest serving leaders on the continent who came to power in 1969, overthrowing King Idris.
Straight away it became obvious it was going to be a Herculean task for the new AU to live up to its commitment to democratic governance and the rule of law. The AU also took on board veterans such as Paul Biya of Cameroun, Omar Bongo of Gabon, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda none of whom had shown any signs of relinquishing political power through democratic means.
Having inherited this heavy baggage of dictators and having failed to make multiparty democracy a pre-condition for membership of the AU, the new continental body became nothing but a huge farce which could not instil any democratic discipline among its members.
So it became the norm that the dictatorships became monarchies with sons taking over from their fathers. So Faure Gnasingbe took over from his father, Gnasingbe Eyadema; Joseph Kabila took over from his father Laurent Kabila; Ben Ali Bongo took over from his father Omar Bongo.
Before their overthrow, there were clear indications that Col. Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak were preparing the ground for their sons to take over from them. Currently, Senegal is in a turmoil because of rumours that President Abdoulaye Wade is grooming one of his sons to take over from him in future.
Apart from its failure to impress upon members to adhere to democratic principles, the AU looked powerless in the face of numerous electoral frauds which characterised many elections on the continent.
In January, 2008, Kenya, a country with peaceful credentials, exploded into sectarian violence which claimed hundreds of lives over electoral dispute. Our own beloved country, Ghana, came close to the brink of instability in December 2008 over the same electoral challenges with the then ruling New Patriotic Party and the main opposition National Democratic Congress.
Last year, it took French forces to dislodge Laurent Gbagbo from power after disputed polls, while the AU and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) played second fiddle to the French and other foreign powers.
Such was the ineffectiveness of the AU that the events of last year in North Africa could not be described as strange and unexpected. The leading role that was expected of the AU when the Jasmine Revolution was set in motion was absent.
That gave room for NATO and the US who had their own axe to grind with Gaddafi to put their grand agenda into motion. That last person to be treated so shabbily by the AU is Gaddafi, who, despite all his problems, poured a lot of funds into the AU and its predecessor, the OAU, whose liberation fund he poured copious amounts of money into.
If the AU had intervened earlier with much purpose and decisively, who knows, the revolution might not have taken so many lives and destroyed infrastructure which had taken many years to build. But as events proved, the AU allowed foreign powers to play their games on our continent with impunity.
Clearly, the AU is playing very little leadership role on the continent and it is time it began to make itself relevant in the affairs of the continent. On the political front, the AU must be able to define clearly, what constitutes good governance and makes sure all members operate within that framework.
It must be prepared to suspend or even expel countries that fell short of democratic governance. While it may not be able to prescribe specific constitutions for member countries, it should be in a position to supervise and police political affairs in member countries.
The tendency of African presidents amending constitutions to prolong their rule like the recent one in Cameroun and Senegal should call for swift action from the AU. It must also work against the creation of modern-day political monarchies which is gaining root on the continent.
Gaddafi is dead but the AU owe him an apology for betraying him and abandoning him when it mattered most. The same is for Hosni Mubarak, who, instead of enjoying his old age with his children and grandchildren, has to be ferried to court on a stretcher to answer charges of corruption and murder.
If the AU had acted well and purged itself of such dictators and prevented the creation of new ones, the Arab Spring would not have swept over the continent. That is why the AU cannot escape blame for the events of last year and for the continued stay in power of some of the continent’s dictators.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Vain promises, fresh dreams

2012-01-03T11:11:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
IT has become normal — call it a ritual — for individuals, companies and nations to make fresh resolutions as we prepare to enter a new year. In many cases, we fail to reflect soberly on the past to admit our weaknesses or failures before embarking on another journey of day-dreaming.
At the sunset of 2010, we went through that ritual of making resolutions and pledging to succeed where we failed or to do better where there had been successes in 2010.
As we look back and observe 2011 recede into history, it is only fair that we do a thorough examination to see whether we have succeeded in our individual, corporate, institutional and national resolutions before welcoming ourselves into the new year, which is only two days old.
Individually, there are some who might have achieved their targets and even gone beyond them. There were those whose lives had seen a vast improvement or transformation — big jobs, new houses, latest models of vehicles and so on and so forth.
Among these people can be found those in direct politics or those very close to politicians as business agents, flamboyant and business people parading as Men of God who have played on the gullibility and sincere religiousness of the people to acquire wealth, corporate executives and a few hardworking men and women who, through their own efforts, achieved their breakthrough.
There were those, quite a sizeable number, who experienced minimal improvement or, at best, things remained as they were before. Not-so-good-but-not-so-bad is the consolation for such people. These are mostly public servants who managed, through fair or foul means, to remain afloat, just keeping body and soul together.
But the vast majority of the people, as has always been the case, remained on the fringes of society, a better Ghana agenda or not. These include the urban and rural poor who, no matter how hard they try, do not seem to come close to the magnetic field of success.
Our success as a nation can only by measured by the degree to which our government made good its promises or what many of us in the majority can agree upon to be, to a very large extent, a national achievement.
Our government, led by President John Evans Atta Mills, declared 2011 a year of action and promised the nation a projects galore. Ghana had just started the commercial production of crude oil in the Jubilee Fields and the President’s declaration gave many of us hope.
Among the projects promised to be executed in 2011 were the Eastern Corridor Road Project, two state universities for the Brong Ahafo and the Volta regions and the now infamous and, to some extent very stubborn, STX Housing Project.
The year has come to an end without a wheelbarrow being at any of these construction sites, even though the President had gone through the ritualistic process of cutting the sod for all of them.
In the case of the two universities and the Eastern Corridor roads, we know the government has a strong excuse in the delay in accessing the $3 billion Chinese credit facility which, as far as the Mills administration is concerned, is the main source of project finance.
The same cannot be said of the STX Housing Project which, even to the uninitiated, looked very murky right from the beginning. That the government should entrust such a major national housing project in the hands of a few businessmen and women whose selfish profit-making motives were never hidden was very unfortunate, to say the least.
It is now on record that three years into his administration, President Mills has not been able to put a single dwelling place on the ground. He could have even shared the honours if efforts were made to complete those started by the Kufuor administration in various parts of the country.
These are failures that constitute heavy blots on the government of President Mills and it will be to his personal image and to the advantage of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) if he quickly takes advantage of the approval given to the country by the International Monetary Fund to extend its external lending quota to redeem his promise relative to these projects as early as possible.
We are in the 21st century and while other countries are counting their economic successes and advances in science and technology in glowing terms, we here, over the past 10 years or so, have sadly been harping on the capitation grant, school feeding and lately removing schools under trees as major achievements. One would have wished that we too could point at impressive expressways linking our major towns and cities, beating our chests that our schools are among the best, if not the best, in the world. We could also be inviting the rest of the world to visit our tourist sites which are among the best in the world.
As a well-endowed country with many natural resources, we would have expected that, as a people with higher aspirations and limitless horizon, we would be able to harness those resources and turn them into valued-added commodities for the international market for higher returns.
It proves how narrow our vision is as a nation and how simplistic our appreciation of what is defined as development is as a people. No doubt, nobody bothers whether our traffic lights work or not, nor do we care whether Accra, our national capital, and other cities and towns are swallowed by filth or not.
We paid a heavy price in October 2011 when two days of heavy rains brought Accra to its knees. Immediately promises were made to solve the city’s drainage problem and enforce building regulations as captured in our statute books. That might have been voices of desperation that ebbed away with the end of that episode.
The past year saw indiscipline in our national life at its best, and nowhere was that more evidenced than on the roads. The MTTU of the Ghana Police Service has failed miserably to check the activities of commercial drivers who continue to pose as a danger to society by carelessly and recklessly driving anyhow, especially on the shoulders of the roads, including my favourite Spintex Road, without any sanction.
This is one country where obeying the laws and rules makes you look like a fool instead of a proud responsible citizen, thanks to the impotence of those who are entrusted with the enforcement of the rules.
What we lack in positive thinking and action have been adequately compensated for by way of lose and careless talk interspersed with profuse promise-making. Our country should have been far developed and not at this place where giving school uniforms or free food to a fraction of our schoolchildren will be an issue.
As we resolve to improve on our personal lives in the new year, we would wish to see certain major achievements this year. I wish that most of our projects, especially the Eastern Corridor roads, the two new universities and those major uncompleted road projects, moved from the sod-cutting level to real construction and completion stages.
The Kotoka International Airport (KIA) is the only airport that opens the country to the outside world. That means any foreign visitor entering the country other than using the land ports will come by the KIA. I, therefore, plead that the traffic intersection at the Airport Junction be tackled.
For a foreign visitor to be confronted with faulty traffic lights or heavy traffic jam just minutes after arriving in the country and a few metres away from the airport is not only an eyesore but also a national disgrace.
Our leaders have travelled to other world capitals and I do not want to believe that that was how they were welcomed into those countries.
I have always affirmed that our problem is not about lack of money but how we think and how we apply our resources. If we can pay judgement debts running into hundreds of millions of cedis, there is no excuse for neglecting basic things that will make this country healthier and more beautiful to live in.
We also want to see the promise made to improve the drainage system in the national materialise. Our democracy has survived, albeit under heavy doses of insults and acrimonious statements, some close to ethnic and tribal vituperations, and wild promises.
This is an election year and some of us do not expect anything better. Whether we like or not, it will get worse, since politics is no longer a divine call but a big business which has turned near paupers into millionaires overnight.
Whatever the case, we should remember that Cote d’Ivoire will not be the same for the next 50 years, just like Liberia, Sierra Leone, Togo and Nigeria. Our strength lies in the fact that notwithstanding all the insults, we still watch our eyes. Let us, therefore, watch our eyes while we enter the political battle for the Castle (or is it Flag Staff House or Jubilee House?) later in the year.
I wish my numerous readers who have kept this column alive a resourceful and prosperous New Year and very stress less and peaceful elections later in the year. May all our wishes come true.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

The ugly road to NRSC

2011-12-21T07:10:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
IT is always a privilege to be offered an opportunity to serve the public in any capacity deemed fit. It even becomes more exciting and thrilling when you realise that a chance to make a contribution to something you are very passionate about is virtually falling on your lap.
We know road safety has assumed a major national concern for obvious reasons. Road accident figures and the number of human lives lost on a daily basis have drawn attention and concern from many individuals and organisations, including corporate institutions, which have demonstrated this in many ways, including the sponsorship of many road safety educational programmes.
This column has not been silent on this national menace and the near impotence of the major state institutions such as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) of the Ghana Police Service, the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) and the transport unions to make an impact on the fight against recklessness on the roads.
We have also come to realise that commitment and due diligence are expected from the DVLA, which is tasked to ensure that only roadworthy vehicles are permitted on the roads.
The same organisation is to ensure that only persons who have undergone full training and been tested accordingly are licensed to drive vehicles in the country.
The MTTU, on the other hand, is expected to enforce road traffic regulations to the letter to ensure that motorists conduct themselves properly on the roads, as per motor traffic regulations, and also ensure that vehicles plying the roads meet all the standards prescribed by law.
Between these two institutions, there are bound to be lapses, due either to administrative or institutional deficiencies such as poor logistics, which is one of our major problems, or the human factor, such as corrupt practices which all contribute to infringe upon road safety in the country.
This makes the work of the NRSC more difficult, as it must continue to spread and sustain its crusade on road safety in a vigorous and regular manner. In other words, packaging the right information for effective public education using the most appropriate communication channels constitute a major battle against the carnage on the roads.
I believe this might have informed the authorities to wisely decide that the media should be a key partner in the activities of the NRSC, so that apart from the professional inputs of the media in the design and implementation of public education programmes, the voice of the commission will be made louder and clearer on all platforms throughout the country.
Under the circumstances, it can be inferred that the institutional representation of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) on the board of the NRSC cannot be said to be a luxury nor an act of charity but a purposeful national necessity because we do not know of any other effective way reaching the public with education material apart from through the mass media.
Unfortunately, almost three years into the tenure of the current board of the NRSC, whether it is because of the usual bureaucracy and red-tapeism or one of those administrative lapses associated with our public service system, the GJA representative has not been sworn in to perform his statutory role on the board.
Some time in 2009, this writer was informed by the President of the GJA that he (the writer) had been nominated to represent the GJA on the NRSC board, and that to facilitate the nomination he had to submit a curriculum vitae (CV).
This was done, and according to the GJA President, the CV was forwarded to the appropriate quarters through the general secretary of the GJA.
After more than six months of waiting without any response, the GJA Secretariat was informed, during enquiries, that the first letter forwarding my name and accompanying documents might have been misdirected to the wrong place so a fresh one should be forwarded to the Ministry of Transport. That was delivered personally by this writer.
After another long wait, the GJA made another attempt — the third one — to find out what was still obstructing its nominee from representing the association on the NRSC board. Once again, no one could tell where the problem was and so another process had to be initiated. This time, this writer was given an e-mail address to forward his resume. Only God knows what it takes to serve on the NRSC board.
It has been three months since and no response has been received as to whether the latest submission has reached the appropriate quarters or, as was the case in the past, it got lost during transmission.
Even though this is not entirely strange to me, knowing how we approach important national affairs, this experience has left a sour taste in my mouth. What should have taken a few days, or even a week or two, is in the third year and there seems to be no solution in sight.
The executives of the GJA expect me to give periodic briefings on my performance on the NRSC board and each time I tell them I am still waiting for a letter confirming my membership of the board.
A successful road safety campaign hinges on a powerful and sustainable media participation. But, here we are, there has been no GJA representative on the NRSC board since 2009, not because as a professional body we did not try.
One would have thought that it would be somebody’s responsibility to make sure that the NRSC functions at full strength. In other words, all the institutions that were chosen for strategic reasons to be represented on the NRSC board would be seen to be actively participating in the affairs of the commission and collectively achieving the set objectives whose ultimate aim is to ensure sanity on the roads.
Some of us are playing and will continue to play our little roles outside the NRSC in the direction of road safety. But if institutional representation on the NRSC board is not a farce but a serious national proposition, then somebody or some people somewhere have pulled a fast one on the GJA. They have made mockery of the calls on the media to be active partners in the pursuit of the better Ghana agenda, since, in this case, from all indications they have denied the media our legitimate place on the NRSC and in effect reduced our input into road safety matters in the country.
I wish readers a peaceful and accident-free Christmas and a prosperous New Year in a advance.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Our God or their God?

2011-12-13T11:47:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
Sometimes I am tempted to ask whether the God that we worship so much with noise is the same God that created our brothers with white skin. Do not blame me. We are so different; not for the better. Events in history and our circumstances lead me into that temptation.
Imagine a white-skinned man who out of sheer adventure came to our part of the earth. Friendly as we are, we carried this man in a hammock while some of our own people walked barefooted hacking the path through the forest for this white man until we got to the river banks where some of our people were already farming and others were fishing.
Many years later, we told as a fact that the white man who was the burden of our grandfathers was called Mungo Park and that he came from his country to come and discover us and the river we led him to. Many years after independence, we continue to have such silly questions as: “Who discovered the source of River Niger?” in our text books and our learned professors do not find any wrong with that twist of history.
Having planted this seed of inferiority complex in us, our brothers with the white skin embarked one of the greatest damages and humiliations any group of people could suffer. That was the slave trade. That saw the massive haulage of human cargo across the Atlantic to the Americas to work on farm plantations.
The evangelisation which followed stripped us of whatever was left of our natural heritage. We were told we did not know God and the word PAGAN was crafted for our use only. New names were given to us since our local names were satanic and could not be found in the books of our creator. We have since lived in the shadows of others.
So while Arabs, Chinese, Indians, Koreans and Europeans have their religions, we blacks have to fall on that of others before we can see the face of God. Whether we have succeeded or not is a different matter. But if poverty, disease, ignorance and hunger is the prize for worshipping the God they came to preach to us about, then we will say we have had enough.
Slavery and colonialism are things of the past but it seems the scars will not vanish. We continue to nurse the wounds of the past and cannot think our ways forward. As we continue to celebrate our independence, most public projects are at a standstill or have not commenced because we are waiting for a Chinese loan. In other words, without any external intervention, our life is meaningless. Why should it be so?
The great Bob Marley said it; that in the midst of abundance, the fool will still be hungry. Our case is like someone who is standing by a river bank and is still complaining of thirst. And are we not thirsty as a nation even though we have large water bodies that flow watefully into the sea? As you read this, Tema, our industrial city and parts of Accra, the national capita,l are without water because of repair works at Kpong, where the bulk of water supply comes from. Why we should rely on one major supply point of this vital comodity is itself an enigma. So ours is not because we do not have water. We are not capable of bringing the water that is available in abundance to our homes and industries. Bob Marley was right. That is why I want to know whether something went wrong during creation or whether we do not have a direct link to our creator?
Why is it that there is poverty and misery everywhere the black person finds himself? Those of us on the mother continent are not doing well with all the resources at our disposal. Those in the Diaspora, in places like Haiti, are not faring any better.
South Africa is the light on the continent obviously because of its white population. Cote d’Ivoire, until the recent political turmoil, was moving at a fast pace because of a strong French presence. Kenya is also not doing badly because it has a large Asian population which is made of serious business people. That tells a story about ourselves as people with a black skin.
Malaysia and Brazil are major cocoa producers but are not net exporters of cocoa beans. They have moved more than two steps forward by processing a larger part of their cocoa beans for value addition.
Two months ago, we celebrated the production of a million tonnes of raw cocoa beans. Meanwhile, most of the cocoa products in the supermarkets and being peddled by street vendors come from Malaysia or from the factories of the food giants such as Kraft and Nestle. Cocoa products are still a delicacy to a population which continues to hear the wonderful things cocoa has done and is still doing for this country.
Gold digging is now the craze and it appears what we call ‘galamsey’ has come to stay. The people have seen their mineral wealth going to build empires elsewhere and will not sit down again to wallow in poverty. So they will go anywhere there is gold.
We have enough resources to divert attention from gold if we can spare a few moments to think. Look at the vast Volta Lake. Tourism alone can take a lot of our young men and women off the streets if we can put that God-given resource to productive use. Any other country like Switzerland would have utilised this vast lake for money-generation and job-creation. We are still searching for solution to our unemployment and poverty problems with idle talks.
The cocoa industry can employ a lot of people if we can take the excitement from the exportation of raw cocoa beans. The aluminium industry is another major area of massive employment, apart from spearheading the country’s industrial effort.
We do not need to destroy our forests in the name of exporting timber only to turn round to import plastic furniture from outside. There are many things we can do for ourselves if our political discourse will be progressive.
Unfortunately that is not the case now. Our political debates are vile, acrimonious and vindictive. We do not care to boast the use of any means to gain or retain power. Patriots who have the interest of the country at heart cannot talk the way most of our political activists are doing. The objective can only lead to one thing — to loot and plunder.
If it is true that God made man in his own image, we have to shed that beggar image and regain our self-worthiness. We have everything to build a healthy and prosperous nation. Today we are being coerced to embrace homosexuality for aid. Obama and David Cameron will not tell that to the Chinese because they have through their own hard work crossed that barrier and are now they are in the position to call the tune.
We have more than enough to do the same or even better. Let us agree that there is nothing like foreign aid and gird our loins for our own survival. So if I question the formula for creation, I do so because in the midst of abundance, we are still hungry and still begging.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

The fate of our landfills

2011-12-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
The recent floods that hit Accra, the nation’s capital, following hours of torrential downpour woefully exposed Accra’s vulnerability as a result of inadequate waste disposal facilities, if we can seriously say there exists any. It became clear after the heavy rains that most of the accumulated water could not find their way through the drains to finally end probably in the sea, because the drains where they existed have been taken over by waste material of various descriptions.
This, apart from the human factor, which is our poor habit of indiscriminate waste disposal, is also the consequence of lack of modern facilities for solid waste treatment and disposal.
The disposal of solid waste has always been an intractable problem throughout Ghana. In the last few years, this problem has assumed increased prominence especially in urban areas mostly owing to the fact that officialdom, as well as the general public, is gradually awakening to the health and environmental threats that looms ahead if we fail to get our act together and tackle the problem as a matter of urgency.
Ghana, just like other developing countries, has been practising land filling as result of the country’s inability to invest huge sums of capital in modern waste treatment systems and machinery as seen in most developed economies. Landfills in Ghana are primarily open dumps and abandoned old quarry pits without proper leachate or gas recovery systems. These may be located in ecological or hydrologically sensitive areas.
Over the years, Metropolitan, Municipal and District budgetary allocations for operation and maintenance of these landfills have been inadequate. This makes it difficult for operators who are charged with the maintenance of the facilities to meet the standards required for safeguarding public health and environmental quality raising crucial concerns about whether not landfills constitute a blessing or a curse to the people they are meant to serve.
Owing to the rapid rate at which urban population is increasing with a corresponding increase in waste generation, waste management operators in Ghana have had to move from one site to another in rapid succession in the last decade as these disposal sites have very short lifespan. These former dump sites include Apenkwa, Mallam, Oblogo 1 & 2, Kwashiebu, Kokroko, Mallam SCC and Sarbah.
The operation of these landfills have come with very daunting challenges which persist up till today as people who reside close to these fills and the general public have put up fierce resistance in an effort to protect their right to live in healthy and hazard-free environments.
A lot of research conducted on landfills and their implications on public health paint a very gloomy picture for this practice. Landfills are said to contain toxic groundwater contaminants, including nitrate, ammonia, solvents, PCBs, and heavy metals. Once these substances reach groundwater, the contamination can be very damaging, particularly if it reaches drinking water wells.
Many substances can make their way into drinking water. These include, but are by no means limited to, bacteria, dissolved salts, heavy metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, and pesticides. Any number of health problems may therefore result in serious diseases, including leukemia. Contaminated groundwater can also cause contaminated air in surrounding homes, and this too poses a variety of health risks.
Surface water run-off from landfills can also be contaminated and very dangerous. Run-off can make its way into nearby bodies of water or on to private property and depending on the chemicals it contains, it can then cause harmful erosion. In instances of closed landfills that have been improperly capped, direct contact with the toxic waste can occur as well. Another major danger from landfills is that decomposing waste produces methane, an odourless gas. Upon making its way into nearby basements, methane can cause explosions. Even the regular unpleasant odours from landfills can pose problems by causing eye irritation or respiratory ailments.
Residents living in the environs of the Sarbah Landfill site near Weija have on countless occasions threatened to forcefully close down the dump sites which currently serves almost the whole of Accra as a result of experiencing some of the problems mentioned above. A resident who spoke to this reporter sent a distress call to the government to come to the rescue of the people in the area, since in his view the state of the dump sites threatens the very life of the people in the area.
“Whenever it rains, running water from the dump sites runs through many of our homes depositing a lot of garbage in the process and the stench that accompanies it cannot be described,” he explained, adding that “even our livestock and pets die when they drink from the gutters that have been contaminated by the dark-coloured water draining from the site”.
Similar complaints of health risks and threats of forceful closure have come from residents around the Abokobi Landfill site, the only site that serves the eastern part of Accra and even supports the main one at Oblogo. The aggrieved residents have severally complained that the site has exceeded its capacity but is still being used hence the compounded nature of problems being posed by the site.
When reached for his comments on the landfill situation in Ghana currently, the acting head of Zoomlion’s Landfill Unit, Mr Sackey Lyndon, confirmed that the two final disposal sites had virtually reached their maximum limits and urgently require closure. “As a matter of urgency, we must find alternative means of disposing of our waste in the months ahead because the Abokobi dump sites has exceeded its capacity and the site at Oblogo cannot go beyond December,” Mr Sackey said.
From all indications, something urgent needs to be done in respect of the final disposal of our waste as it is increasingly becoming cumbersome to find land at an acceptable location to be used as a final disposal site. Besides, we need to do all we can as a nation that claims a middle income status to discourage land filling considering the gamut of troubles that are associated with the practice. This is definitely where the much talked-about Accra Compost and Recycling Plant fits into the equation.
The last time the President of the republic, Prof. J. E. A. Mills, visited the facility nearly two months ago, refreshing news of the plant coming in to solve the nation’s waste disposal problems was everywhere in the air. The facility was then said to be about 80 per cent complete and was billed to begin operations before the end of the year although not much has been heard thereafter.
As time waits for no man, it is imperative that the government and its private sector partners act quickly to propel the plant into operation in the nearest possible time so that we will not only have a place to send our waste to but also derive substantial value from it.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Road safety

2011-12-01T10:58:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
THE figures are staggering and for a country with barely one million registered vehicles, we need to sit up. According to the records of the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), an average of six people die daily through road accidents. This makes road accidents one of the major causes of death in the country.
Just last Saturday, 26 people died on the spot when two vehicles, a Metro Mass Transit bus and a Benz passenger bus, collided at Pong-Tamale in the Northern Region. Many others were taken to hospital in critical condition so it will not be surprising if the death figure goes up.
A preliminary assessment indicated that the accident was caused by the recklessness of one of the drivers. That is the naked truth of our situation; the fact that most of the road accidents are caused through human error. This has been identified as speeding, wrong overtaking, driving under the influence of alcohol and sheer disregard for traffic regulations.
While it seems we all know the problem, the solution is still eluding us because those who are the targets of all road safety education – the drivers- are not interested.
If you remove the human factor, there are other factors such as broken-down vehicles which are left unattended to, the nature of the roads and the response to emergency situations which all contribute to casualty figures in the event of accidents.
It is agreed that the government has the primary responsibility to protect its citizens and road safety is not an exception. That is why more is expected from agencies such as the Ghana Police Service, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) and the National Road Safety Commission to ensure safety on our roads.
Ideally, one would have wished that the state is able to fully resource and adequately equip these agencies so that they can effectively deliver their mandate. Unfortunately, we are not in good times and so it is only fair that the state opens its doors to private participation in road safety.
Kits such as speed guns to check speeding on the highways and breath analysers to check the alcohol level of drivers are in limited supply if they are available at all. Moreover that police do not have towing vehicles to remove broken-down vehicles from the roads or ambulances to convey injured accident victims to medical facilities for treatment.
It is in the spirit of public-private partnership that the government is collaborating with a new company, Road Safety Management Services Limited (RSMSL). RSMSL is set to do all the things that the Motor Transport and Traffic Unit of the Ghana Police Service and other road safety agencies are supposed to do but are unable to do, for obvious reasons.
This is a wholly-owned Ghanaian company which specialises in road safety management through the use of electronic traffic, security and safety solutions to counter the threats of security and provide around-the-clock surveillance on the road.
Reliance on MTTU personnel to enforce road traffic regulations is not yielding the needed results and it is becoming increasingly clear that if we are to get some semblance of sanity on the roads, we need to move one step ahead. So RSMSL is of the belief that with the application of technology-driven systems in road traffic management, the rate at which road accidents occur on our roads can be reduced to the barest minimum.
On that basis, RSMSL is going to provide a broad array of road safety services on a build-operate-and-transfer basis under a public-private partnership scheme.
These include financing the supply, installation, operation and maintenance of a network of traffic cameras to check excessive speeding on the roads and apprehend offending motorists; financing the building, operation and maintenance of vehicle recovery and towing service on the highways for rapid removal and recovery of accident or broken-down vehicles on the road and financing and building of rest stops on all major roads in collaboration with the relevant metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies.
The idea is to check driver fatigue which is another major contributory factor to accidents, especially those involving haulage trucks. These rest stops will also provide other services including quick meals and refreshment in a very relaxed and friendly environment.
RSMSL will also acquire and operate ambulances to ensure the provision of a consistent and reliable ambulance services at vantage points on the country’s major roads. RSMSL is not only about road safety. It is also an enterprise which promises to offer avenues for employment.
The project is envisaged to provide an initial employment for about 1,000 Ghanaians: those who will man the communication centres along the major roads, the central collation and response centres in the various regional capitals, recovery truck drivers and mates, technicians and other ancillary workers.
On the drawing board, this is no doubt a major enterprise which when planted on the ground could bring a lot of improvement in road safety in the country. The smooth take off of these projects presents the country with opportunities for significant development and transfer of skills in technology applications to road safety and security management and we only hope that the project moves from the dream stage to full implementation.
The carnage on our roads is becoming a nightmare and any effort that would stem the tide must be encouraged and supported by every well-meaning Ghanaian and that is why RSMSL, I believe, needs a fertile soil on which to plant its vision and mission.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Undisciplined men in uniform

2011-11-22T12:18:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
Discipline is the pivot of every military institution, ours not an exception. In truth, our military is held in high esteem because of the tradition of discipline it has been able to inculcate in its members, from the junior ranks to the top officer corps.
There was a time when indiscipline and lawlessness set in. Those were the days of the revolution when some disgruntled soldiers with military might and political power took the law into their own hands. Those days, thankfully, are gone and our soldiers have retraced their steps to their original mandate of protecting the territorial integrity of the country.
However, we may be moving in the wrong alley if certain dangerous traits being exhibited by some soldiers are not nipped in the bud to restore the image of the military.
Incidentally, any time some soldiers want to go to town to put on display their animalistic instincts, they do so against the police, who are under mandate to keep the peace and maintain law and order. Surprisingly, the police suffer military brutality not for personal reasons but for performing their official functions.
I have ever mentioned in this column a dangerous trend that should be curbed with all seriousness and decisively if we are not to undermine the authority of the police and create a leeway for undisciplined soldiers, in the name of group solidarity, to attack policemen on duty.
Readers may recall that on Friday, June 4, 2010 and Saturday, June 5, 2010, a group of soldiers from the Fourth Garrison went on rampage and brutalised more than a dozen policemen at various duty posts in the Kumasi metropolis, leaving three of them unconscious.
The crime of the police was that they had stopped for questioning a man who was riding an unregistered motorbike without a helmet. The rider was later identified as a soldier. We know our laws frown upon riding an unregistered motorbike and it is equally an offence to ride a motorbike without a helmet. So the police could not be faltered for doing what they did.
The soldier, we were told, drove away in anger and threatened to bring more of his colleagues to teach the policemen a bitter lesson. True to his threats, a military vehicle packed with soldiers returned to the duty post of the policemen and brutally assaulted the policemen, tearing their uniforms in the process.
The soldiers, like sharks that have smelled blood, went on the rampage, attacking every policeman/woman on sight. For two days the soldiers turned Kumasi into a huge battlefield and the police their foes and they deployed all sorts of dangerous weapons, including hammers, and left their victims unconscious.
Before the June incident, on May 20, 2010 a group of soldiers had attacked officials of the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) at Suame for arresting their driver who was driving without a valid driving licence and a log book. Then, on May 22, 2010, a soldier went berserk when he was cautioned for driving carelessly and dangerously at Asokwa, a suburb of Kumasi.
These incidents were widely reported in the media but no criminal charges were preferred against those recalcitrant soldiers. The impression given to Ghanaians was that the police and the military were like brothers and so one could misbehave against the other without criminal sanction.
Since the Military High Command and the Police Administration chose to treat those dangerous acts like a family matter, they happened again, this time in Ho when a police corporal went under attack from some soldiers of the 66 Artillery Regiment who were returning from a military exercise.
Incidents like that should not be tolerated in any way and those soldiers who fell foul of the law should not be treated like heroes.
The soldiers are now emboldened, knowing that they could visit town and attack policemen without any criminal sanction. And so they did it again in Tamale last Friday. This time eight soldiers are alleged to have attacked three policemen and a community protection assistant of the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) who were doing their work directing traffic.
Two of the police officials were women. Indeed, these cannot be gallant soldiers of our proud Ghana Armed Forces who have decided to exhibit their fighting skills on poor policewomen.
According to the story, the soldiers were avenging an attack on a colleague a few days earlier. Discipline should be the hallmark of both the police and the military and it is becoming a dangerous disease for our soldiers to be slugging it out with the police in public view.
The Ghana Armed Forces is a reputable institution that must jealously guard its image and reputation. It is an institution of disciplined officers and men who have served with distinction in different parts of the world.
It will, therefore, be unfortunate if such rowdy conduct is tolerated or condoned in the name of making peace. Our Police Service may not be the best but it is what we can call our own and it is imperative that we accord it and its members our fullest respect and support.
Our soldiers cannot operate outside our laws. The laws are explicit and we cannot afford room for concessions. We rather expect soldiers to be partners in law enforcement and the last to break the law. The Tamale incident should be investigated and those found culpable made to face the penalties prescribed by law.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Counting the chicks before they are hatched

2011-11-16T07:38:00.001-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
Sod-cutting ceremonies are great events that are very much anticipated by those directly affected. They are occasions which mark the beginning of the realisation of a much-cherished and long-awaited dream. It may be a chapel project by a religious body, a new classroom block for children who have suffered from the vagaries of weather as a result of learning under trees or unsafe sheds.
The bigger the project and the larger the beneficiary population, the higher the excitement. For instance, sod-cutting for the commencement of a road project for a community will be a great day. It signals bringing to a close years of trekking on bush paths before reaching the marketing centres, or if there was one, it means an improved road which will make the people to travel more comfortably and save vehicle owners the arduous task of changing vehicle parts every now and then.
Sod-cuttings became bigger events when politicians realised that they could fit into their propaganda machinery and sustain the support base of their parties or governments. So, if in the past sod-cuttings were mere rituals to signal the commencement of projects, in recent times especially after the return to constitutional multiparty democracy, the events have assumed a different posture, a strong mechanism to prove how caring, effective, sensitive and alive a government is to the plight of the people.
The ceremonies can be very simple or elaborate, covering every type of project including the simple ones such as village toilets, classrooms, markets, office buildings to big ones like medical complexes, housing estates, roads and now universities.
The stakes become higher and the anticipation bigger if the officiating officer happens to be the President of the Republic.
Ideally, and which is usually the case, a lot of ground work is done before the sod-cutting. There are occasions when actually work was ongoing and the sod-cutting becomes a mere public ceremony. Other times too, there will be visible signs of activity in the form of equipment on site.
Strangely, some of the projects never get started. Others get started with a lot of fanfare but are never completed. Going by the number of sods that have been cut for new projects since our return to constitutional rule in 1993, this country should have moved beyond a new middle income country to a young developed country brimming with beautiful roads, well-developed medical facilities and an educational infrastructure that will be the envy of other countries.
Unfortunately, next to the wild promises politicians make on campaign platforms, sod-cutting has become another tool of deceit to keep the electorate hoodwinked and kept in perpetual hope of a better tomorrow.
It is becoming clear that sod-cuttings as events are losing their vim and instead of giving us hope are making us dejected. The habit of going into frenzy and cutting sods or inaugurating uncompleted projects should end because what our political leaders are missing to realise is that they are not making things better for themselves or for the country.
Many people are prepared to accept the truth than to feel fooled. If you make a campaign promise and the reality on the ground makes it difficult it is better to admit so and suffer a few flacks from your political opponents than lose the confidence of the majority of the population.
In 2008, we saw what has become election gimmicks when former President J. A. Kufuor embarked on a frenzied sod-cutting spree, awarding contracts left and right and inaugurating half-completed projects. It did not work. You may say the die was cast. It was evidently clear that Ghanaians can endure many things but are not impressed by those gimmicks.
A recent instance is the ceremony to announce the start of a project especially major ones like the STX Housing Project and the University of Health and Allied Sciences for the Volta Region and the University of Energy and Renewable Natural Resources in Sunyani in the Brong Ahafo Region.
If it did not work yesterday, there is no reason why it will work today. That is why the Mills Administration should look into the past and know how to manage its affairs today for a better tomorrow.
These are projects that the government, I want to believe, is seriously and genuinely committed to and determined to pursue to their logical conclusion. Unfortunately, we were not ready when the impression was created that everything was ready.
Under the circumstances we have created a credibility gap which is becoming difficult to fill. We may think this is just a political game, but that should not be case. Such things undermine our development agenda, since they have the tendency to disrupt the pace of development projects.
If we want to make it just like those countries that are on a firm path of development, then we must be consistent in the way we handle our development goals. Right now, there are a lot of projects that have been abandoned in various stages of construction. Some of these projects date back to the days of Dr Kwame Nkrumah. An example of that era are the silos that have been abandoned after his overthrow while we still grapple with the problem of storage of farm produce.
Some of us are saddened by the neglect of the housing projects started in the Kufuor Administration while the one promised by this government are yet to get a single foundation laid. So what will be the fate of say, STX, if it should ever be started and not completed before the exit of President Mills? Will it become another wasteful national venture while millions of Ghanaians do not have a place they can call home?
As a nation, we should stop the joke and be serious. A lot of us are not impressed at all at the pace of our development. We have saturated the air with empty talk while problems are begging for solution. Our politics is maturing if even slowly and sooner than later, many Ghanaians will begin to make fair and objective analysis of political issues bordering on our national development and survival devoid of emotions.
The fact that we have switched from one political party to another in 2000 and 2008 is a testimony of the fact that party propagandists may have their say, but the electorate will have their way at the crucial hour. Let us, therefore, slow down the talk and do the walk. Let us not count the chickens before they are hatched. Shall we not then concentrate on what we have achieved rather than promises which may remain nothing but day dreams?

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Tough, soothing words

2011-11-08T11:04:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
President John Evans Atta Mills virtually brought the country together when he publicly declared that the country will not go down on its knees for aid with strings attached. That sent the adrenalin pumping through our veins with excitement.
That was when the British Prime Minister, Mr David Cameron, made a statement linking aid to gay rights. That pronouncement created the platform for the President to make the most emphatic statement on homosexuals and lesbians, a subject that has gained currency in recent times.
The British Prime Minister’s threat did not come as a surprise to some of us. Earlier in June this year, Mr Stephen O’Brien, the UK Minister in charge of Department of International Development, visited the country and issued a warning against anti-gay sentiments and the repercussions of cutting aid. That means the British position is clear on gay rights.
Some of us are not going to spend time talking about gay rights and how the Western world in the name of human rights have become desperate about it, to the extent that a country’s right to assistance is going to be measured according to how it treats homosexuals and lesbians.
Ghanaians would have applauded Cameron if he had ended by saying the British government will tie aid to transparency and accountability in public expenditure especially by politicians who have developed the appetite for squandering state resources and lining their pockets with what belongs to all.
Unfortunately the issue of gays is something that is not dear to the hearts of many Ghanaians. At least that is what it seems publicly, hence the unanimity in the condemnations of Cameron’s threat.
Some of us would wish that President Mills’s declaration that the country will not succumb to aid with strings attached will advance beyond the gay issue and apply to all other foreign assistance that come with lots of strings attached, some subtle, some direct.
Our worry is how we have become so addicted to foreign aid to the extent that without it, our life as a nation is not complete. We live in a global village and there is no way we can pursue any development agenda without one form of foreign assistance or another. And so far as it is the only option we cannot but go that way.
However, looking at our natural resources, it seems we have made too much fetish about foreign aid. Some of the things we call foreign assistance are nothing but peanuts which only make us subservient to other countries without necessarily contributing to our national development.
Many Ghanaians strongly believe that with the right leadership, we can generate enough from our own natural resources to make nonsense of the type of threats we are getting from the UK government.
Most of the countries we go to begging for assistance do not have a fraction of our resources. So the question is what is wrong with us? For a small country like Ghana with a lot of mineral resources, abundant fresh water and now oil and natural gas we should be the last to be blackmailed in the name of development assistance.
We may be clapping today because we have rebuffed David Cameron’s gay rights and development aid. We will be fooling ourselves into believing that the matter will end there. Very soon, the pressure will be coming not only from Britain, but from all the powerful Western countries and by extension, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other funding agencies.
Knowing our peculiar situation, how long are we going to keep the fight and resist the demands of our donors? The best resistance and the most assuring is to develop and sustain the spirit of self-reliance.
In that case, any foreign engagement will be mutual and not that of master/servant as is the case now. It can be done. China has proved it. In relative terms, we have more than China in terms of natural resources and, therefore, have no excuse to fail.
For David Cameron, we will realise if we are serious that he is a saviour who has jostled us from our slumber because sooner than later the pressures will descend on us like an avalanche and will crumble weakly like a dry leaf. Let us begin to think within and accept the fact that no amount of foreign aid will move us away from poverty and underdevelopment.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

The floating millennium city

2011-11-01T12:08:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
We were getting submerged in that cacophony of noise of Accra becoming a millennium city until the rains of Tuesday, October 25, 2011, exposed the hollowness in that boisterous claim. After hours of heavy rainfall which went deep into the night the previous day, Ghanaians woke up on Wednesday to the unfortunate realisation that half of their national capital was floating on dirty, stinking flood waters.
Almost the whole of Accra West became a huge pond with a flotilla of containers, kiosks which served as shops and sleeping places. Floating on the flood waters were various household items including mattresses, trunks, chop-boxes, fridges, television sets and cooking utensils.
It was unbelievable but true that vehicles were overturned and drifting on the waters which also exhumed tonnes of refuse which lay buried under what were supposed to be the city’s drains.
The floods, apart from misery inflicted on individuals and corporate institutions, also seriously exposed the big slum Accra, our national capital, has become. Most of the places which the flood took a heavy toll on were clearly unplanned and lacked the necessary facilities to drain the rainwater.
Think of areas like Odawna, Alajo, Santa Maria, Sowutuom, then you can conjure a picture of containers placed everywhere, houses built in a haphazard manner and drains choked to the full with waste of all descriptions.
We all know the problem. We seem to know the solutions. What we lack is the capacity, the ability, the sincere determination and wherewithal to pursue a vigorous drainage development programme.
To begin with, our city drains are very small and shallow and, therefore, lack the capacity to take large volumes of water. Second, they are not covered and, therefore, are an attraction to careless and filthy people who throw rubbish in them.
Apart from these are the bigger problem of illegal structures that have sprung up everywhere, taking over watercourses, drains and marshy lands. It seems economic survival has overtaken all other survival instincts and, therefore, workshops, stores and markets have taken over every available space without any regard for building plans.
Over the years, our corrupt nature has taken strong possession of us, making it difficult for our state institutions to operate firmly and fairly. That is why unauthorised structures have survived even though we always see; “Stop Work, Produce Permit” boldly written on the walls of these structures.
The permits are never produced and the work never stopped. The city authorities and the Town and Country Planning Department have become impotent to exercise their mandate because of the lure of the envelop which their officials are unable to resist.
Our situation is not made better because of our brand of democracy which gives political twist to every action of the government. Since our departure from military dictatorship to multiparty democracy by virtue of the 1992 Constitutions, all governments have made some amount of effort to enforce building codes to no avail. You only need to bring down one or two buildings constructed at the wrong place or without permit, and the political vampires who want to capitalise on everything to make political gain condemn the action.
We have become so desperate for political power to have access to state resources that we do not know what is the common good to be pursued with common determination. Today, political parties want to remain in power or attain it at all costs and, therefore, find it difficult to enforce laws we have made ourselves to ensure sanity in the system.
Refuse collection and disposal has become a major problem for the country. Things have changed but we are still living in the past. What we termed waste management is actually refuse relocation. We collect from one place and dump it at another place. In other words, we attempt to save some citizens from filth and rather compound the condition of other citizens in another part of the city.
Waste recycling, which is big business elsewhere, is still remote to us and so we watch with helpless abandon while the capital city is being buried under tonnes and tonnes of garbage. From the photographs of the floods published, it was clear that choked gutters and drains played a big role in the floods.
Most major cities have made good use of the rivers flowing through them. Take the Thames in London, the Hudson in New York, the Potomac in Washington DC, the Seine in Paris. These rivers have been effectively used for water transportation, for harbours and for ecological balance.
Our Odaw which passes through Accra is a different story. It is dead and only brings death and destruction to city dwellers who find themselves close to its banks.
The floods are not only causing personal distress to individuals but are also doing damage to our investment ambitions. Graphic Road particularly suffered a lot and it was sad seeing big companies like Toyota Ghana Limited, Japan Motors, Azar Chemicals, Rana Motors and many others virtually submerged and products worth millions of Ghana cedis destroyed. This cannot be an invitation for other companies to come and do business here.
President John Evans Atta Mills responded the way others before him ritualistically did. First, to wade through the muddy, filthy flood waters to declare sympathy for victims and to make big promises to help victims recover from their shock and loss and then make a bigger promise to take all possible measures to prevent a recurrence of the disaster.
This year, we heard from the lips of the President that $500 million is being sourced to embark on major drainage works in Accra. We know, however, that all things being equal, the rains will come again, the floods will come and there will be another big promise to the people of Ghana. Talk, talk and talk, no action. That is a specialty no one can take away from us.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Houses for ex-Presidents

2011-10-27T11:22:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor

I havebeen trying hard to find the justification for or the wisdom which informed the recommendation that former Presidents, among other things, should be lavished with two houses, one in Accra and another at any place of their choice.

Any time I see the squalor and deprivations surrounding us, I wonder whether those who made that recommendation were part of this country and its people or they were some people from somewhere who were entirely oblivious of conditions in this country.

I am equally baffled that former President John Agyekum Kufuor, after seeing the final work of the Mary Chinery-Hesse Committee before it was made public, did not see anything wrong with the recommendations.

Some of us will not be surprised if former President Kufuor made a personal input into the Chinery-Hesse Report because of the religious fervor he has been demanding its implementation to the letter.

The ex gratia of the so-called Article 71 office holders became a very big issue soon after the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government of Professor John Evans Atta Mills came to power because of some of the outrageous recommendations contained in the Chinery-Hesse Report and which we were told was ratified by the then Parliament.

For a former President, the committee recommended that as part of the resettlement plan, he be given two houses, not ordinary ones, one in Accra and the other at a place of his choice. In addition, he should be given six fresh vehicles, one to be armoured, which should be replaced every four years.

Did we elect people who offered themselves for the presidency only for them to become a burden on us for their imperial lifestyles? Did they offer themselves because they thought they had a vision for this country, or they just want to improve their lot it even means collapsing the economy of this country?

The argument was bandied around that the resettlement plan was so designed so that our former presidents will live in dignity after retirement and, second, to ensure that while in office, they do not dip their hands into the national kitty for personal aggrandizement.

That is a hollow argument, anyway. Even though it is not a constitutional requirement, we do not expect someone who is squatting in somebody’s hall and chamber to be our president. Anyone with good ideas for this country should be able to show by personal success that he is capable of delivering in the wider national context.

Former President Kufuor proved it by using his personal house as presidential palace for the eight years that he was in office.We do not see how justifiable it will be to build two new mansions for each former President, because that is the only way to guarantee him/her a dignified retirement.

Very importantly, even in jurisdictions where there are tight controls to check graft among public office holders, officers including presidents do not go home wish such lavish entitlements. We are in Africa and we cannot pretend to be unaware of the fact that our anti-corruption laws have very marginal chances of success.

We cannot also run away from the fact that most of the politicians in this part of the world cannot claim to be making sacrifices since they are in the main, more desperately committed to their stomachs than the national interest.Â Any decision that seems to push these realities into the background will be unfair to the conscience of the people.

The Chinery-Hesse Committee defended its position by claiming the members toured various countries and studied retirement packages for other presidents before coming out with their recommendations. It did not mention the names of the countries visited nor make public the types of packages they had for their retired heads of state.

If their trips took them to African countries, then straightaway they have made a big mistake, since most African leaders do not leave office voluntarily, anyway, and if they are compelled to leave, they are very likely to make such outrageous demands, hiding behind such presidential committees as the one we also did here.

Just as we were beginning to forget the matter, hoping it is now history, the news of our two former presidents rejecting offers of houses made to them at the plush Trassaco Valley hit us with a bang. The two former leaders were not impressed with the offer.While former President Rawlings was not enthused because it was not a permanent abode, Mr Kufuor was not interested because, according to his spokesperson, he was not consulted and did not make any input into the acquisition and allocation.

Why should we get entangled in such a web which should not have been in the first place? Our former presidents, like all other public office holders and public servants, deserve good pension packages.

If those doing the calculations think the present monthly pension for former presidents is not adequate, they can enhance it and subject it to periodic reviews, as is done for other workers.

The issue of houses should be ruled out completely. That is where I agree with PresidentMills that houses should not feature in the retirement packages for former presidents. I, however, disagree with his recommendation that former presidents should be paid rent allowances for their accommodation. That is also a burden that the state cannot carry. Every president of the Republic should be able to retire and go to reside in his or her home.

The state can pay bulk cash on retirement and monthly pension as will be prescribed by the appropriate authorities. Beyond that, State Protocol should be able to cater for other needs, such as foreign travels, allocation of vehicles for personal and official use and all other services a former president deserves.

The agitation we are experiencing on the labour front these days is in part due to the lifestyles of politicians who seem to have stumbled upon some fortune overnight. Many workers are beginning to believe that the men and women who came begging them for their mandate to lead them are not telling them all the truth.

While they are being told every day that there is not much to go round, a lot of the young politicians have developed bloated cheeks in a matter of months. Sometimes it is not easy to hide newly acquired wealth. That is why some of the professionals have become very aggressive in their demands.

The last thing we should do to aggravate the situation is turn what is considered a sacrificial job into a business empire for people. We need to treat our past leaders fair and square, but that should make them like albatrosses hanging on our necks.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk

kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Blackmail

2011-10-18T05:17:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
Imagine the frustration of a young medical officer who, after a hard day’s work, got home only to realise that he could not unwind watching his favourite television programme because electricity was off. Technicians of the energy company are at war with their employees over service conditions and have, therefore, withdrawn their services.
What about the mother who could not prepare the evening meal for the family because the taps would not flow simply because the water company workers were at loggerheads with their managers over better service conditions and would not work.
I once made a wrong calculation and paid dearly for it. I was to attend an interview and misjudged the flow of traffic. Before I could realise it, I was hard up with time and desperately started to flag every taxi passing with the intention to pick ‘dropping’. As it were, all taxis seemed to have different missions that morning and, therefore, ignored my signals. In the end, I lost the opportunity.
We all suffer anytime electricity power goes off, for the sake of those so-called maintenance schedules, load-shedding or because the transformer had suffered a mishap because of lightning or through the activities of thieves.
We know what happens when the tap does not flow for a day or two for whatever reason. Programmes are thrown out of gear and even at the workplace we lack concentration because our minds are on where to get the precious water for household use.
The stench from the toilets at home, the office and other public places keeps reminding us that a very important resource — water — is missing in our lives.
Until we are confronted with such deprivations, nobody bothers to give a split-second thought to workers of the power company or that of water.
As for taxi drivers, we only remember them as illiterate rogues who will not wash in the morning before jumping behind the steering wheel for the day’s work. Wait until you are suddenly taken sick in the night; then you will realize that taxi drivers are gods.
Such is life that no matter how small or insignificant others are, we are inter-dependent and the collapse of one unit, whether deliberate or by accident, disorganises our personal, official, commercial and industrial activities.
We do not spare a moment to think about the policeman (after all the police only take bribes) until a thief or an armed robber raids our homes or a careless driver rams into our vehicle. Then we are on all fours seeking police intervention. Can we imagine the chaos at our traffic intersections where our traffic lights never work without the presence of the police? That is why we should not trivialise the importance of anyone in society.
No matter how hard we may try, we still fall sick or fall victim to accidents. That is why doctors will continue to play a big role in our daily lives. It will, therefore, be suicidal for anybody to underestimate the importance of medical officers. In fact, even the services of the village medicine man are greatly revered and his opinions on health matters are taken with all seriousness.
Ours is a very dirty environment, especially Accra, Kumasi and other big towns, and, coupled with poor nutrition and bad lifestyles, we are always at the mercy of various diseases. So doctors, whether we like it or not, will be our regular companions.
I do not think I will be wrong if I venture to say that the majority of Ghanaians value and appreciate the work of doctors and other health workers and would wish that they get everything they demand. Anytime I visit the hospital and see the condition under which health workers operate, I know that even though it is their choice, they are making a lot of sacrifices that must be appreciated and fully rewarded.
Doctors, like all other workers, have every right to agitate for better service conditions and I believe members of the public will support their cause, knowing the role they are playing in our survival as individuals and as a nation. But, as stated earlier, in all scheme of things, we should not forget that we are in an interdependent world and no matter how we value ourselves, we should not ignore the roles others play in our lives.
Many considerations might have gone into drafting the labour laws of the country which outlawed strikes by certain categories of workers, including doctors and other health workers. Unfortunately, doctors have ignored this law and not even the pleas of President John Evans Atta Mills will turn their hearts.
Whether it takes a few days, weeks, months or even years, they will get their money one day. But lives lost are gone forever, even though, as Dr Emmanuel Adom Winful, the President of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), declared, whether they the doctors worked or not, people would die anyway.
The doctors’ strike will eventually fall on the laps of some politicians who may want to make capital gain out of it, forgetting that the phenomenon has been with us for years.
In the past, strikes (call them industrial battles) were fought for two main reasons. First, to press home demands for better service conditions and two to settle political scores with the government in power.
Remember the Association of Recognised Professional Bodies (ARPB) and its battles against the Acheampong dictatorship. That umbrella body for various professionals, including doctors and lawyers, made it difficult for Acheampong to go ahead with his UNIGOV doctrine which was a form of a one-party state.
The ARPB also played a significant role in the return to civilian rule by the Supreme Military Council under General F.W.K. Akufo. Today, thanks to multi-party democracy, it will not be easy for any union or professional body to do political battle with a government, since membership of all bodies cuts across political parties.
So even though some political parties may want to capitalise on the genuine grievances of workers, at the end of the day, individual members of the same group will begin to advise themselves if they suspect an infiltration for diabolical purposes.
Medical doctors are part of us. They are our fathers, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, friends and old school mates. Therefore, whatever affects them affects all of us. Their joy is our joy, just as their sorrow is our sorrow.
We would, therefore, wish that having registered their protest at the slow pace of their placement on the Single Spine Salary Structure and other matters, they will respect public sentiment and go back to work while the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) and other relevant bodies dialogue with the GMA to thrash out all contentious issues.
Some of us do not know anything about single or any other spine. But even from afar, we can picture a mathematically complex assignment which will require a lot of patience and meticulous calculation. I do not think those who are already on the SSSS are fully satisfied with their lot and so it will be for a long time until things stabilise when the concept is mastered.
Doctors may hold the trump card today because we are all sick people and we are always at the risk of suffering from one form of health hazard or another. So we shall continue to beg the doctors to go back to work. But beyond their genuine grievances and appropriate demands, for them to continue to ignore our pleas could only amount to blackmailing a whole nation.
Dr Winful has boasted that no law or power will compel them to go back to work until they exact their pound of flesh. That is true. But there is one law that no one can run away from. That is Cause and Effect or the Law of Karma. You may call it the Universal Law and that one is a judgement that comes over us by our own doing. In simple terms, it says do unto others what you want others to do to you. I do not think our doctors would want to see their parents, relations and friends suffer undue pain and die eventually.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor,blogspot.com

Koliko Street

2011-10-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

Read by LHA

By Kofi Akordor

THE middle-aged woman chose a strategic place on the dusty road serving as a street in a developing part of the town and pitched a makeshift structure to start her business of frying yam, cocoyam and plantain. The locals call it ‘Koliko’.
It did not take long before members of the community identified her as one of those who satisfied their food needs from the afternoon till late evening. Her shrill voice advertising her business would cut through the din of the area at periodic intervals.
Auntie Dede and her spot became important and permanent features on the landscape of the area. With time, it became normal for residents trying to describe the location of their houses to friends and relatives to use Auntie Dede’s Koliko Spot as reference point. It was a matter of telling them to look out for Auntie Dede’s Koliko Spot and then follow other directions.
Of course those who may be unlucky to follow that direction on a day Auntie Dede was not at post would have themselves to blame. Local tro-tro and taxi drivers could not fail to notice new developments. ?????Passengers would be asked whether they are going to Auntie Koliko, as the place became known, and so the street which now has lights and has been tarred.
So the endeavours of a middle-aged woman to raise money to fend for herself and her family has given a community a name and without any naming ceremony, that street gained permanent place on the map of the city as Koliko Street.
Today, there are many streets, junctions and landmarks in Accra, the capital city, and other major towns in the country that acquired their names in the same pattern as Koliko Street. It just takes somebody’s fancy and then a street, a community or even a whole town is named after a person, a drinking or eating spot.
This situation has become the naming culture in our cities and towns and the local authorities seem impotent in their attempts to ensure sanity in street-naming the country. In Accra in particular, the practice has become so pervasive that most streets, roads and communities have lost their official names.
For example, there was once a street in Accra called Cantonment Road. Somehow, some people with their strong taste and fascination for foreign things and names reasoned that since the activities on the Cantonment Road are similar to those of another street in London, it was only desirable that we name ours after the one in London. That was how Cantonment Road in Osu, became Oxford Street without ceremony.
It has been many years now since that unofficial name change but the city authorities have not made any efforts to clear the air. So, while on the map of Accra, there will be nothing as Oxford Street, on the ground, there is nothing as Cantonment Road.
In some jurisdictions, names of places, especially in cities and major towns do not just spring up. They are thought of and chosen carefully because names have their historical and national significance.
Many people will open their mouths wide and ask whether there is any place in Ghana called Kokoedzor. They will, however, tell you they know or have heard of a place in Accra called Mandela. The original name of Mandela is actually Kokoedzor and those who have land documents prepared for them with regard to that area will attest to this.
Today, many communities in the Accra and Tema metropolises have developed fanciful names that are quite different from their original names. They are too numerous to mention but a few are Middle East and Lebanon near Tema, where the early soldiers who returned from peace-keeping duties in the Middle East acquired plots of land for their housing projects.
We are all too familiar with Rawlings Park, the Boom Junction and HIPIC Junction which are not official names but have become more or less official names of those places. But should we continue giving names to places in our national capital and other major towns like this?
Our city authorities and other agencies such as the Department of Town and Country Planning have a responsibility to ensure that we do not leave the naming process in the hands of a few individuals and groups.
The world is shrinking fast and one of the advantages of this phenomenon, especially with the introduction of the GPRS is to make location identification easier. We will be cut off from this explosion of technological advancement if we continue to name our streets in a haphazard manner.
Auntie Dede only started to fry Koliko to earn a living but she has entered the history books as an ordinary woman who has given a street a name. Welcome to Koliko Street.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Big dreams

2011-10-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
I HAVE been wondering whether God has not been generous enough to give our leaders that magic power for dreaming. I know that every person in the subconscious state is supposed to experience dreams even though a friend told me once that he does not dream while asleep.
Sometimes too we indulge ourselves in daydreaming in our conscious state. This is when our imagination takes into the realm of fantasy as we dream about the most beautiful or the best of things which under normal circumstances are far beyond our reach.
Of course there are a few people who go beyond daydreaming and put certain plans on the ground which finally transform ordinary dreams into a vision which sustains their ambition and propels them towards attaining their ambitions.
I am particularly talking about the type of dreams which challenge people and nations into the future and drive them towards greater heights. I believe this is the type of the dream which spurred the former Soviet Union to put the first human into outer space in the person of Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, a cosmonaut whose Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961.
The Soviet Unionâ€™s arch-Cold War rival, the United States of America, took up the challenge and decided to do what was beyond human capability at the time. In 1963, President John F. Kenney of the US challenged space scientists of his country to go higher and land man on the Moon before the end of the decade.
President Kennedy did not live to witness it, but true to his vision, the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), beat the deadline, by putting the first human beings on the Moon when the Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969 with astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Buzz Aldrin, while the third astronaut, Michael Collins, orbited above.
Individuals, corporate institutions and nations which have made it big, flew on the wings of great men and women who dreamt big and transformed such into visions which led them on the path of success and fame.
The late Chairman Mao Zedong of China challenged his countrymen and women to choose between proving their critics, who claimed they are poor and primitive, right, or defy the odds and prove them wrong.
The Chinese chose the latter option and today, China has become the biggest economic attraction of the world to the amazement of the cynics.Â Other countries on other continents especially south-east Asia, where the group dubbed the Asian Tigers are doing marvelous things.Â
We all know the miracle stories of Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, India and even Vietnam, which just emerged from years of war.Â They have all left Africa alone to carry the tag of Third World because they are in a different world of their own.
Do we have such dreamers in our national leadership? Let me illustrate my disappointment with what happened on the Accra-Aflao road last Saturday. An institution, Central University, was holding its matriculation ceremony on the campus around Dahwenya and for almost the whole day every activity came to a virtual standstill.
Traffic on a road which is supposed to link two countries and beyond became so jammed amid utter confusion that movement in both directions was severely disrupted. Some chose to blame the school for the problem. But are we justified to come to that conclusion?
Apart from Central University, many prime residential, commercial and industrial establishments have sprung up along this major road without any corresponding elevation of the standard of the road. What happened last Saturday, happened the same time last year when the same university was holding its matriculation or graduation ceremony and it will happen again next year.
Traffic on that road will increase tremendously when people move into those residential buildings which include the affordable housing project initiated by the Kufuor government which has stalled. We are waiting the day when nobody could move to work, when we are all trapped in unnecessary traffic then we will begin panic measures which will only compound matters.
The Accra-Aflao road should by now be elevated to international standards. In other words, it should have been an expressway passing through no town. If that had been done, nobody will be wrongly accusing Central University for the calamity travellers went through last weekend and which we will be going through for many years to come.
Just as the Americans set a target to reach the Moon within a decade and actually got there, can we seriously say that we have set ourselves as a nation any target to be somewhere in the next five, 10, 15, 20 or 50 years? For example, do we have any target to move beyond major producers of raw cocoa beans and become a major exporter of processed cocoa?
By now it should have been possible for someone working in Accra to close from work and pick an express train to Tamale, Bolgatanga or Wa and get to his/her destination in a matter of a few hours to spend the weekend with his/her family in those cities and return to Accra Sunday evening or Monday morning to resume work.
Even the old railways inherited from the colonial masters could not be maintained let alone new ones being added. Our road network is so bad that travelling in the country is a nightmare. The few good roads have become death traps because of careless and reckless driving.
We have failed to project into the future, our population growth and our educational needs. The result is what we are witnessing today when even BECE graduates cannot access admission to senior high schools.
We have not been able to draw up long-term programmes to facilitate the processing of our agricultural produce over the years. That is why the agriculture sector has not seen any progressive development all these years.
We can hardly point out with any boldness, any sector of national development that has seen progressive improvement over the years. Everything we do is on ad hoc basis which does not augur well for any meaningful development.
Journeying between Accra our capital city and Tema, the nationâ€™s major port city, a distance of less than 30 kilometres, can on a very bad day, become nerve-wracking. We may have a thousand and one excuses, but others in our league at independence have proved that everything is possible if that missing link, the visionary leadership, is available.
We may be satisfied with and impressed by little mercies and indulge in self-praise at every opportunity for very little and insignificantÂ things. We may spend the greater part of the time talking and insulting ourselves instead of thinking and acting.Â But the rest of the dynamic world will not be waiting for us and will, therefore, not be interested to hear that at 54 and in this 21st century, we still have our children studying under trees, when the world knows that we have more natural wealth than those we down on our knees begging them for assistance.
In the same way, they will not be enthused to hear that feeding a few schoolchildren or giving free school uniforms to a few children constitute a big national achievement. They have long passed those stages with serious-minded, focused and visionary leadership and judicious use of national resources.
What perhaps will interest them is the fact that we have an efficient and reliable transportation system to facilitate good business. They will be happy to hear that we have reliable and uninterrupted power and water supply system that can sustain their industries if they so decide to invest in the country.
They will be happy to hear that bottlenecks and redtapeism have been removed or reduced to the barest minimum in government working machinery to reduce the frustrations investors and even the local people go through in their daily transactions with public officials.
They will want to see a clean capital city where all traffic lights are working and filth and chaos that have engulfed us now are done away with.
They may even applaud us, if not necessarily pleased to hear that we have advanced from producers or raw materials to a giant industrial nation making good use of the abundant resources God has generously given to us.
It is time we also begin to dream big. It is time we transform those big dreams into real achievements to be part of the international world. It is time we stop making mockery of ourselves by getting excited at ordinary things we see as national achievements.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Brother Awuni, don't give up the fight

2011-09-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

By John K. Essel. Kumasi.
Pix Mr Ibrahim Adam (middle) Chairman of Board of Agriculture Development Bank, interacting with some Executive members of the Ghana Society of Agricultural Engineers after the opening ceremony a the Fifth National Conference of the Agricultural Engineering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi in the Ashanti region.
With them include Mr E. Buckson (right) Executive Secretary of Ghana Institute of Engineering, and Mr D. Lamptey, (left) President of Society.
THE two day conference under a theme “Agricultural Engineering for Commercial Food Production and Environmental Sustainability in Ghana, was aimed at finding the solution to improve upon agriculture development in the country.
Speaking at the opening session, Mr Ibrahim Adam, stated that agric engineering have a major role to pray for the designing modern of agricultural equipment and tools to improve upon agricultural production in the country and stressed need to sustain agricultural production by ensure quality production and marketing.
He said the country has expertises and called for closer collaboration with policy makers to ensure the agriculture development in the country.
He said the doors of the Agriculture Development Bank (ADB) are open for any group of people or individuals for the development of the agriculture industry.
Prof W. O. Ellis, Vice Chancellor of (KNUST) said agriculture was the backbone of the country’s economy and therefore stressed the need to adopt modern technology to attract the youth in the agriculture production in the country.
He called for adoption of commercial farms by intensifying research and training to move the development of agriculture forwards.
He said the university has intensified its policies to produce quality products to meet the national demand to enhance national socio-economic development.
Mr D. Lamptey, President of the Society, called for the need for the increase of Agric students as well as Agricultural Engineers to produce simple equipment for the food production in the country.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   By John K. Essel. Kumasi.
Pix Mr Ibrahim Adam (middle) Chairman of Board of Agriculture Development Bank, interacting with some Executive members of the Ghana Society of Agricultural Engineers after the opening ceremony a the Fifth National Conference of the Agricultural Engineering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi in the Ashanti region.
With them include Mr E. Buckson (right) Executive Secretary of Ghana Institute of Engineering, and Mr D. Lamptey, (left) President of Society.
THE two day conference under a theme “Agricultural Engineering for Commercial Food Production and Environmental Sustainability in Ghana, was aimed at finding the solution to improve upon agriculture development in the country.
Speaking at the opening session, Mr Ibrahim Adam, stated that agric engineering have a major role to pray for the designing modern of agricultural equipment and tools to improve upon agricultural production in the country and stressed need to sustain agricultural production by ensure quality production and marketing.
He said the country has expertises and called for closer collaboration with policy makers to ensure the agriculture development in the country.
He said the doors of the Agriculture Development Bank (ADB) are open for any group of people or individuals for the development of the agriculture industry.
Prof W. O. Ellis, Vice Chancellor of (KNUST) said agriculture was the backbone of the country’s economy and therefore stressed the need to adopt modern technology to attract the youth in the agriculture production in the country.
He called for adoption of commercial farms by intensifying research and training to move the development of agriculture forwards.
He said the university has intensified its policies to produce quality products to meet the national demand to enhance national socio-economic development.
Mr D. Lamptey, President of the Society, called for the need for the increase of Agric students as well as Agricultural Engineers to produce simple equipment for the food production in the country.
By Kofi Akordor
While the rest of us stayed in line crawling agonisingly in heavy traffic, a different breed of superior beings drive past very fast on the shoulders of the road which have become their expressways. Pedestrians and other motorists dare not drop their guard, otherwise they will be crushed to death.
Hawkers, shop owners and roadside workshops have always been at the mercy of these rampaging, lawless and arrogant drivers of commercial vehicles who have turned the city roads into a jungle where their animalistic instincts are in full display.
Theirs is a world where law and order does not exist and who have taken the police for granted. Those who could no longer endure the menace, in their attempt to escape the wrath of these arrogant, wicked and dangerous drivers, try to put impediments on their path by blocking portions of the road with old tyres, stones, cement blocks and metal bars. But they are not deterred. They will meander past these obstacles with greater venom and create bigger problems than they usually do.
Precious lives have been lost, among them schoolchildren and street hawkers, the sick and the old. Properties too have been destroyed. Still the menace is there, smoothened by occasional assurances of deterrent action by the law enforcement agencies.
Some of us heaved a heavy sigh of relief when a new Commander of the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) of the Ghana Police Service in the person of a brother and a colleague communication scientist, Assistant Commissioner of Police Awuni Angwubutoge, was named.
Some of us rejoiced because we know our man very well and we know if there is someone who can confront these hooligans with success, it must be Awuni. He is not just outspoken and down-to-earth, he also acts his words.
He is the type whose approach to duty can even be met with hostility from members of his own establishment because of their forthrightness and determination to succeed where others have given up and thrown up their arms in frustrating despair.
He belongs to that class of people who work with zeal and are ready to sacrifice for the work if it even means challenging the status quo.
True to his character, ACP Awuni, on taking over as the Commander of the MTTU, pledged to bring sanity on the roads and put a stop to the free reign of those commercial drivers using the shoulders of the roads as expressways.
Almost a year into his administration, it appears ACP Awuni is against a tough and very steep uphill task. The illegal expressways created by the commercial drivers are as busy as ever and the drivers themselves are operating with greater impunity than before. One of them, according to newspaper reports, even recently had the nerves to attack the MTTU commander himself.
If our city roads are unsafe, travelling on our highways has become more or less like a journey of no return. Relatives and friends who accompany their loved ones to the lorry stations may be waving them a final farewell without knowing it.
The carnage on the roads has assumed alarming proportions and there seems to be no solutions in sight. The statistics is quite revealing and alarming. According to MTTU records, in the first six months of this year alone, 6,449 accident cases involving 9,222 vehicles were recorded. For the period (January-June, 2011), 1,081 lives were lost while 6,209 others got injured. The figure shows a marginal increase over last year’s.
At the heart of road accidents in the country is the human factor. A common observation which has been documented and widely accepted by experts and ordinary people is traffic indiscipline exhibited by many of the drivers on the road.
Most of the drivers, as a result of inadequate training and poor educational backgrounds, know or pay very little attention to traffic regulations. There is also open display of irresponsible behaviour partly due to bad character and other influences such as alcohol and illicit drugs.
These transform into speeding, wrong overtaking and other careless manouvrings which pose danger to all other road users.
It is not that we do not have enough laws to check human behaviour on the roads. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) of the Ministry of Transport begins the process of bringing sanity on our roads and promoting law and order by examining and licensing vehicles as being roadworthy.
It also examines those who apply for driving and give them certification as qualified both mentally and physically to drive vehicles of various specifications.
Any slip on the part of DVLA, whether deliberately or by default, means we are at risk.
The MTTU is to ensure that all vehicles on the roads have certification from the DVLA as being roadworthy. It also ensures that all persons driving vehicles possess valid driving licences.
The MTTU has a bigger responsibility to right the wrongs allowed into the system by the DVLA. This means even though a person may possess a driving licence, it is the duty of the MTTU personnel to satisfy themselves that the so-called driver is actually qualified and driving according to the motor regulations.
They must also make assure that vehicles plying the roads are truly roadworthy and not only possessing road worthy certificates. They must also process for prosecution drivers who infringe the law.
The presence of MTTU personnel is in itself a guarantee of safety on the roads since they become the watchdogs and an inspiration for the rest of us.
This means the physical presence of the MTTU personnel must be seen and felt at all times on all our roads both in the cities, towns and on the highways.
The unit must have vehicles to move personnel round at all times. It must have vehicles patrolling the roads and streets at all times. It must have towing vehicles to clear the roads of breakdown and accident vehicles and ambulances to convey the injured to hospitals when there is an accident.
It should also have hearses for those who could not survive accidents.
How is the MTTU faring in our circumstances? Seriously the MTTU, like other wings of the Ghana Police Service, is hampered by inadequate resources, both in terms of human resource and logistics. Out of a total police strength of 20,000, MTTU personnel account for only 8.89 per cent.
The number is woefully inadequate and leaves the personnel thinly spread on the ground. The problem is further compounded when divisional, district and unit points are left unmanned, because the men have been withdrawn for other more important assignments.
As stated earlier, the MTTU is heavily constrained by inadequate logistics. This is a unit which should be highly mobile but unfortunately lacks all manner of vehicles. Special and important operations are, therefore, abandoned mid-way because the old and weak vehicles break down and cannot successfully execute the day’s assignment.
MTTU personnel who are to police the roads very often have to rely on the generosity of private or commercial drivers, thereby compromising them in the effective discharge of statutory duties. A few days ago, I saw a police vehicle being towed by a private truck. So what happens when a truck breaks down and abandoned in the middle of the road? Any wonder that broken-down vehicles left in the middle of the road continue to be a major cause of accidents on the highways?
Apart from these inadequacies, the MTTU lacks any effective command structure. The MTTU Commander sounds a huge title but operationally has very little to command. Beyond Accra Central, the title loses its meaning because he lacks authority in Greater Accra, let alone the rest of the country.
Operationally, MTTU personnel outside Accra are under the command of the various Regional Commanders. In effect, the national MTTU lacks the operational capacity to operate in the regions outside the Accra Central Business District.
The situation does not provide any opportunity to prepare strategic enforcement plan for the major highways where a high proportion of serious accidents occurs.
One could now appreciate why ACP Awuni’s pledge to bring sanity on the roads seems to be yielding little results.
The MTTU, as a human institution, has its fair share of human frailty, no matter how hard they try. It has its deviants, fifth columnists and those with purely mercenary motives and so on. One should expect miracles even if the unit has its full complement of staff and equipment. But still the difference would have been clear.
This is an institution that so much is expected from yet very little is given. It could be admitted that even with the limited resources, the unit could have performed better. But very often when you are overwhelmingly weighed down by problems, the little goodness in you gets diluted by evil things. It is, therefore, not surprising that of all the units of the Ghana Police Service, it is the MTTU that is castigated most.
While demanding that the few bad ones straighten their ways, shall we also demand that the unit is revamped and well-equipped ? Under the present circumstances, the burden is too much. That is why Brother Awuni and his team are losing the battle against irresponsible and careless driving on the roads and highways.
Just pointing accusing fingers at them will not solve our problem neither will it end the carnage on the roads. If we really value our lives, then we must demand a better equipped MTTU with a well-trained personnel to do the policing to our satisfaction.
All the same, Brother, do not give up. I still want you to use your limited resources to do something about those crazy drivers who are tormenting us on the Spintex Road and elsewhere with their brand of driving skills.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Old bicycles on show in Maputo

2011-09-21T11:27:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
After a rather poor performance in the cycling events at the 2011 All Africa Games in Maputo, the Mozambican capital, our cyclists offered a weird and rather sad and embarrassing excuse. Their bicycles were old, outmoded and worn out.
According to the story, two cyclists actually had punctures in the men’s individual trial and men’s team trial races and some of our cyclists had to fall on some other competing nationals to put their bicycles in good shape for the event.
Do we need to say more? It is not only a national disgrace; the events of Maputo also exposed traits of a national character which does not place value on national pride and where people entrusted with national responsibilities can afford to do anything, knowing well that there are no penalties to pay.
We have a reputation for being ardent patrons of second-hand goods because our governments have accepted that. So, having endorsed it as part of our national culture is itself an acceptance of our failure to cater for our own needs.
But should we go to such a prestigious continental sporting event as the All Africa Games with old and worn-out bicycles? How much would it have cost this dear nation of ours to provide our cyclists with the best of bicycles on the market to showcase their talents on the continental stage and live up to the image of Ghana as the first Black nation south of the Sahara to gain political freedom from colonial domination?
How best can we advertise our country as the land of gold, one of the largest producers of top-grade cocoa beans and lately our emergence as an oil-producing country on the continent than to use the platform offered by sports to make a strong case for our country?
Even before the national teams left for the games, there were complaints of poor training facilities, inadequate resources and near neglect by the government and the sports authorities. These problems followed them to Maputo, and from reports which have not been countered by the authorities, our athletes had to suffer unnecessarily because of our failure to pay an earlier fine of US$74,000.
While some were detained at the airport for several hours, members of our contingent had to do with substandard facilities. It was obvious we were ill-prepared for the games and those charged with the responsibility to take charge of Team Ghana took things for granted, counting on the fact that at the end of the day the determination of the Ghanaian and his survival instincts would push the athletes through.
Sports is longer just an entertainment event. It has become a platform where countries win psychological wars over their opponents. Many countries now use sports to the fullest to create big psychological images for themselves and their people.
It has also become a huge commercial activity where athletes win fame and glory. Young men and women who otherwise would be scavenging for survival are turned into wealthy citizens more useful to themselves and their societies.
It is, therefore, important that we invest more in sports than we are doing now. Even though sports holds a lot of promise for this country, our approach to its development at the grass-root levels leaves much to be desired.
An example is the lack of sporting facilities in the various communities and the neglect of existing ones. A visit to the Kaneshie Sports Complex, now renamed the Azumah Nelson Sports Complex, leaves one wondering if the place deserves to be named after a great sports personality such as the boxing professor, Zoom Zoom Azumah Nelson, a man who brought fame to himself and put Ghana on the boxing map of the world in practical terms.
This is a facility which was built during the Acheampong regime with the purpose of serving as a breeding ground for young talents in various sporting disciplines and as camping venue for national teams.
The question of lack of funds is ruled out. It is simply neglect and lack of national attention. How can we have a ministry responsible for sports and neglect a facility which is supposed to be a national monument to celebrate personal and national achievement right in the heart of our national capital?
A lot of the youth roaming the streets who, out of desperation, have become a danger to society could become breadwinners and even national heroes if a well-defined youth development policy with sports as an integral part is put in place.
To start with, let us give the Azumah Nelson Sports Complex a new face to befit the status of the man it was named after. Let us build more community sports facilities to include tennis and basketball courts, boxing gyms and swimming pools.
I could see the words, “No money” forming on the lips of our big people. You know we do not get money to do the right things in our country. But I bet that every little investment made in sports development means millions of dollars as returns from the stars that will be produced.
Jamaicans and other Caribbean people are not different from us. But the fact that they are able to produce top sprinters in abundance when we are not should be a puzzle we should all try to unravel. The difference, we believe, lies in commitment.
We should know where our strength lies and exploit it. We may not be technologically advanced but we have a huge potential in sports which, with a committed and dedicated approach and investment, can bring us national glory and wealth.
All said and done, we should use every available opportunity to raise high the flag of Ghana, instead of bring dishonour to the motherland by hastily pushing ill-prepared and ill-equipped sports men and women into the international arena to be mocked at and frowned upon.
We thank Team Ghana that, notwithstanding the shabby treatment and the disinterest shown in their preparation, departure and participation in the games, they were still able to chalk up some achievements and brought glory to all of us.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Still in the shadows

2011-09-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
I COULD hear Chelsea being mentioned in the football commentary running on a local radio station. I was not surprised because our local league had long ago lost most of the indigenous names such as Venomous Vipers and Mysterious Dwarfs, both of Cape Coast‚ Eleven Wise and Hassacas, both of Sekondi, and many others, only to be replaced by fanciful names of English and other European clubs.
That was why I was not surprised to hear Chelsea being mentioned by the commentator. Apart from Chelsea, there is also Arsenal in our local league. There used to be a Man U and we do not know what to expect in future.
I only somehow got surprised when I realized that the commentary was not on a local match but an English Premier League match between London-side Chelsea and another team. Then I asked, “Are we back in those days when, during major bulletins, local radio stations hooked on to BBC to listen to the news according to the colonial masters?”
In an era of technological advancement, the individual has a wide range of choices to make in what radio station and television channel to tune in to, whether local or foreign. Therefore, some of us will not find it out place for those who are obsessed with foreign things, including foreign football leagues, to follow their favourite clubs wherever they played.
Our radio stations also have every right to broadcast what they believe will be of interest to their audience. Therefore, no one could begrudge them if they choose to broadcast sporting events in foreign lands. Moreover, Ghanaians, being a sports-loving people, deserve their pleasure from what a commentary on the English Premier League will give them.
In fact, all other considerations would have been ignored but for the fact that what may appear as a nation’s obsession for a sporting event amounts to following a dangerous trend which has left us second to all others.
Some time ago, I raised issue over how the spirit of our local league system is being diluted by a new phenomenon -- naming local teams after foreign teams for whatever reason. We have or had Ajax, Feyernood, Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal and many others.
Some may chose to brush this development aside by asking, after all, what is in a name? Yes, if there is nothing in a name, why should Ghanaians be anxious to name their teams after teams? What do they expect to achieve by doing that?
Already, we are having problems marketing our local league to our people for several reasons. As we lose interest in our local league, we have virtually shifted focus onto foreign leagues, especially the English Premier League and the UEFA competitions.
We may just be talking football but we have unconsciously fallen into that inferiority complex trap which makes us believe that we can only attain recognition if we associate ourselves with foreign things deemed superior.
Still on football, we prefer to describe our national stadium in Accra as Ghana’s Wembley, which is the name of one of the stadia in London.
There is a street at Osu, a suburb of Accra, called Cantonments Road. Without any official change of name, the street has assumed a new name -- Oxford Street -- again named after a place in London in the United Kingdom.
I wonder whether an average Englishman will bother his head over a country called Ghana, let alone a street in its capital. While we care to know and admire everything about them, the average European and American only knows that there is a place called Africa which is home to all the problems on the Earth, including diseases, poverty, famine, illiteracy and ignorance.
We have done everything to appear or sound like Europeans or Americans by bleaching our skins and forcing on ourselves some strange nasal accents in our delivery of the English language.
While desperately trying to portray ourselves as Europeans or Americans that we will never be, we have woefully failed to pick some of their best attributes, such as environmental cleanliness and sanitation and personal hygiene.
Our beaches are refuse dumps or public toilets where people defecate openly. Elsewhere, beach fronts are prime locations where only the nouveau riche could afford plots and build residential accommodation. The beaches are money-spinning zones, churning out billions of dollars in foreign exchange because of their attraction to tourists. Proper utilization of our beaches alone has the potential to bring us out of poverty.
If we are ashamed of our natural identity and want to be like other people, then we should begin by identifying with the wonderful things that endear those people to us. We must love the environment and protect our coastline and keep it neat; we must protect our water bodies and beautiful landscapes nature has given us; we must begin to love ourselves and all the good things God has given us, and instead of seeing goodness in others, we must begin to see goodness in ourselves. We must aspire to greater heights, instead of living in the shadows of others.
If the English Premier League is interesting and attractive to us, it is because it is well-organised and has never been at the whims and caprices of individuals or groups. The answer to our poor league system does not lie in abandoning it and embracing that of others. It lies in building ours on strong and firm rules and regulations that will pass the test of time.
It is this mentality of inferiority complex that has undermined our national development efforts because we have failed to release the latent energies in us for our own good. We have failed to identify and exploit our strengths and capabilities that will propel us from hopelessness and mediocrity to a strong, virile and proud people who would not play second fiddle to others.
If we think we do not deserve beautiful things and that anything beautiful must have originated from outside or bore semblance to something from outside, then we must as well give up all pretences of being a free and independent people.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

A million tonnes of cocoa, what next?

2011-09-06T13:43:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
Nearly two weeks ago, the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) announced the pleasant news that the country has attained its long-cherished target of producing one million metric tonnes of cocoa.
The announcement was in the form of a brief press statement released by the COCOBOD. But that did not downplay the importance and significance of the message.
This is not an achievement that came the easy way. It took years of careful and meticulous planning and other interventions on the part of the government, COCOBOD, the Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs), the agro-chemical manufacturers and distributors and, of course, the hardworking cocoa farmers throughout the country.
The record production did not come by accident. Many years ago, in an effort to arrest the decline in cocoa production and make the cocoa industry effective and efficient, the government of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) embarked upon the cocoa sector reforms in 1984/85.
In 1999, the government approved a cocoa sector development strategy to guide the development of the cocoa industry. As part of that reform, private sector competition in the external marketing of the commodity was introduced with the LBCs controlling about 30 per cent of the export share.
Production targets were expected to progress steadily from the 335,000 tonnes at the time to 500,000 tonnes by 2004/5 to 700,000 tonnes in 2009/10 and hitting the 1,000,000 tonnes mark by 2010. On August 18, 2011, COCOBOD attained a record purchase of 1,004,194 metric tonnes to make it a dream come true.
There was cause to celebrate. More cocoa for the export market means more foreign exchange in the national kitty to be dispensed on the numerous development challenges confronting the country. We may still be behind Ivory Coast as the second largest producer in the world but the achievement also means that we are capable of making projections and attaining those projections provided we work hard towards them.
The question, however, is: Should we continue to rejoice in the fact that we are a major producer of raw cocoa beans without adding value to the commodity? By some strange irony, although cocoa is largely produced in the developing countries including Ghana, it is mostly consumed in the developed countries.
In effect, the major buyers in the consuming countries are also the processors and the great chocolate manufacturers. So while cocoa products such as chocolate and cocoa beverages are basic food elements in the developed world, they still are delicacies in Ghana and in other major producing countries in Africa where only a few families could afford them.
Others are making the effort to depart from exporters of raw cocoa beans. Brazil and Malaysia, for example, are major producers but are not necessarily major exporters because of the large size of their processing industry which absorbs their productions.
The cocoa industry can provide wealth not only to the about 80,000 cocoa farmers, the LBCs, the agro-chemical producers and distributors but millions of other Ghanaians if only the industry will expand from the rudimentary production of raw beans to processed products.
The establishment of more cocoa processing plants in the regions, especially the cocoa-growing areas, will not only add value to the crop but open job avenues to children of cocoa farmers who are jobless even after graduating from tertiary institutions.
Cocoa production is not the only sector where we have failed to do value addition but always take pride the in the raw materials. Our mineral wealth continues to be exported in their pure form which fetches very little on the international market.
An integrated aluminium industry for example, is one sector where Ghana seems to be one of the few countries which have the resources from the ore stage to the aluminium ingots that could be processed into very easily marketable products.
If our job market is very restricted and unable to absorb the youth, it is because we have failed largely to expand our industrial base using the abundant natural resources nature has endowed us with.
With abundant oil and gas resources, it means an integrated aluminium industry is feasible. It also means we have great prospects in an integrated petrochemical industry having regard to the fact that we have large reserves of salt which constitute a huge component of that industry.
The same can be said of the timber industry where we are a net exporter of timber logs but at the same time a bulk importer of processed wood products. The volume of mangoes, oranges and tomatoes that go waste during the harvest season is an indication that there is a vast potential for food processing if we are serious.
The wealth of our resources is vast and almost inexhaustible and our economy will be greatly enhanced if we go beyond celebrating the production of raw materials and begin to expand our processing capacity.
Until we attain that level whereby our children will enjoy cocoa beverages on regular basis and until a bar of chocolate is no longer seen as a luxury, we might as well shelve the celebration for now.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

GCDC rekindles hope for local entrepreneurs

2011-08-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
There was ample evidence of the entrepreneurial acumen of Ghanaian industrialists many years ago. Those were the days many indigenous Ghanaians were able to set up manufacturing companies whose products offered stiff competition to those of the multinationals manufactured locally and those imported from outside.
Industrial giants such as Tata Brewery Limited owned by Mr J.K. Siaw, the International Tobacco Ghana Limited (ITG) owned by Mr B. A. Mensah and Kowus Motors, owned by Mr E.K. Owusu, and Boakye Mattress owned by Mr E.O. Boakye to name but a few readily come to mind.
It was obvious that Ghanaian entrepreneurs were gradually building their capacities and filling the gap where foreign multinationals were unable to satisfy local demand and in some cases turning out products with superior qualities to emphasise the country’s independence and industrial prowess until two violent military interventions sent local industry and entrepreneurship into gloomy darkness.
In 1979, after the military mutiny by junior ranks of the Ghana Armed Forces which some chose to describe as a revolution, a lot of local entrepreneurs lost their businesses and other properties and this aborted any dream that others were nursing to join in the effort to expand the industrial horizon of the country.
Strangely, some of the industries seized and confiscated from indigenous entrepreneurs by the state found place in the bosom of multinationals who were objects of attack during the coups of June 4, 1979 and December 31, 1981.
Of particular interest is the case of Tata Brewery Limited, once one of the biggest breweries in the West African Sub-region, which after many tortuous routes finally became part of Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited, itself a minute part of the Diageo Family, one of the largest multinationals in the world.
With such a heavy blow dealt from within to the local industry, it was not surprising that even those who had the financial and instinctive ability to go into industry recoiled and the few brave ones decided to go into trading in imported items.
The state itself lost control over the industries established under the Nkrumah regime to give the country a starting leverage in the manufacturing sector and either sold them or allowed them to rot just like that.
If today, after half a century of political independence, we have to import everything including toothpicks, it is because at one stage in our political history, we decided to treat local entrepreneurship with scorn and disdain and even made it dangerous for those who wanted to brave the weather and start something on their own.
The 1992 Constitution which restored the country to democratic governance grants us a lot of freedoms including the right to establish business. But we are still not out of the era of political vindictiveness where people are not seen for their worth but more for what political lineage they are suspected to be supported.
Most of our politicians in spite of the loud talks of supporting the private sector as the engine of growth, are still prepared to front for a foreign company than to assist a local person to establish, nurture and expand a local industry.
In the last few years, against all odds, some Ghanaians are crawling out of hibernation and beginning to show the resilience and fortitude of the past to venture into industry and other major commercial ventures.
It is in this vein that the boldness and efforts of a wholly Ghanaian-owned company, the Great Consolidated Diamond Company Limited (GCDL), to own and revamp the Akwatia diamonds needs to be commended. Coming from the stable of Zoomlion, the company that has visibly made an impact on refuse waste collection in Ghana and other African countries, there is no doubt that GCDL will not be lacking in inspirational and managerial direction and competence.
Most of the mineral concessions have gone to foreign companies with the argument that we lack the technological and financial capacity and capability to operate mines.
Unfortunately most of our mining communities, especially Obuasi, once reputed to be one of the richest goldmines in the world, do not reflect the reality of their natural wealth. So, while as a country we paint a picture of mineral wealth to the world, our national coffers do not emphasise this.
Moreover, while our mineral wealth have made others rich we only suffer the consequences of mining, including environmental degradation and health hazards associated with the sector.
The emergence of GCDL may be the beginning of taking full control of our mineral resources and whose financial returns will reflect in the lives of Ghanaians. No one is against foreign investment in our economy, be it industrial or commercial. But where the relationship had always been that of master-servant with Ghanaians being the servants, it cannot be described as the best.
We challenge this and all other governments to go beyond the rhetoric and give practical support to entrepreneurs and private enterprises that have exhibited the readiness to face the challenge and ventured into major industries.
We must encourage local entrepreneurs to do what Hyundai, Daewoo, Samsung and LG have done in South Korea or TATA is doing in India. Maybe we should have been where they are today, if we had not destroyed and mortgaged our industries and haunted our entrepreneurs out of the country to die as paupers in other countries.
Even though history may be a guide, there is no need crying over spilt milk. If yesterday, we lost Kowus Motors, Tata Brewery, International Tobacco and others to foreign interests who are reaping where our hardworking entrepreneurs have planted, today we must encourage and support the likes of Zoomlion and its new baby, the GCDL, and others that may follow not only with words but with deeds to attain, in the words of the late General I.K. Acheampong, “the commanding heights of the economy”.
If we have learnt from the bitter experiences of the past, then the re-emergence of local entrepreneurial efforts should also be a re-awakening and a realisation that society thrives on its resources, both material and human, and no amount of foreign or external assistance will drive this nation forward if we ignore and even try to destroy local ingenuity, industry and resourcefulness. We wish the people of Akwatia and its environs the best in this new effort to bring back life to the people.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Decent language, clean campaigning please

2011-08-25T14:02:00.000-07:00

Almost to the last person, it has been generally acknowledged that the political atmosphere of the country has been polluted with insults and other violent words that place our democracy under severe threat.
While there is a common agreement that most of our political commentators have become aggressive and reckless in their choice of words, there is a rift as to how to end the practice. Our President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, has on many occasions condemned the culture of political insults, which has become pervasive in the last few years and is assuming alarming proportions each passing day.
Unfortunately, the President has fallen short of displaying his abhorrence for the practice by not making any public pronouncement on verbal excesses from his government officials and party activists.
This apparently might have emboldened those on the other side to put on full display their skills in abusive language, citing the President’s silence on similar infractions from his camp as the motivation for doing what they are being accused of doing.
As a nation, we cannot continue to allow people who claim to be fighting for our national interest to engage themselves in verbal assaults while the real issues are sidelined. The beauty of democracy is that it creates the platform for political parties to trade in alternative policies and programmes which will ultimately give good health to national development.
Unfortunately, in our case, the emphasis is shifting from this noble objective with political parties trying to undo each other in the exchange of insults. This trend does not only harbour the potential of triggering violence but also has the tendency to undermine the confidence people have in the democratic institutions enshrined in the 1992 Constitution.
Already some people are questioning the integrity of the media to play any meaningful and active role in fostering good democratic practice in the country because of the way media freedom and freedom of expression have been abused, particularly on radio and television.
Some people who foresee danger ahead are even suggesting the extreme that media freedoms should be curtailed if it means sanity can only prevail under restrictive laws such as the Criminal Libel Law which was repealed in 2001 by the Kufuor Administration.
Incidentally, all media institutions, including the National Media Commission (NMC), which has constitutional mandate to streamline media practice, do not have sanctioning powers. The others such as the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), the Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG) and the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) could at best only condemn while leaving the rest to the conscience of those involved.
Fortunately, it appears we are getting close to the realization that our democracy can only mature and advance our national aspirations if we play the game by the rules. Last week, some of the political leaders spoken to by the Daily Graphic admitted that the culture of insults was doing a lot of harm to our democracy and threatening to destabilise national cohesion, peace and security. They have all agreed that the best solution to the problem is to isolate and publicly denounce party activists who will breach protocol by using abusive words against political opponents during discussion programmes in the media, especially radio and television.
To cement this resolve, the parties have committed themselves to decent conduct and electioneering campaign in the run-up to the 2012 elections. Under the aegis of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the National Democratic Congress, (NDC), the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the People’s National Convention (PNC), the Convention People’s Party (CPP), the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), the EGLE Party and the United Renaissance Party (URP) have set out a code of conduct which will govern their conduct of political activities in the country.
In a communique issued at the end of a workshop organised by the IEA, the parties have asked their leadership to use responsible language and condemn those who use abusive language against political opponents.
The communique enjoined all the parties to demonstrate their commitment towards enforcing and implementing the code of conduct by educating their membership and supporters on its provisions.
One needs to commend the political parties and their leaders for the initiative and hope they will be able to stick to their own set rules in the coming days when the political atmosphere will be charged the more with the approach of the 2012 election. The communique also called on the media to play its role to ensure a decent atmosphere for political discourse and this is where the danger lies. So far, the media, whether deliberately or out of ignorance, have failed to play their role as independent and neutral moderators in public discussions and have offered the platform for invective and other uncivilised behaviour to manifest on the public stage.
We are missing a lot that could be gained from a good democratic practice as a nation because of the hostile atmosphere needlessly created through the abuse of media freedom and it is the expectation of every Ghanaian that the media, especially those who are privileged to be hosting programmes on radio and television, would support the determination of the political parties to distance themselves from insults by ceasing to be the conduits for bad news.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Crawling out of the dungeons of slavery

2011-08-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
One of the most fascinating things about last week’s media encounter with the Minister for Tourism was the revelation by the Minister, Ms Akua Sena Dansua that the Cabinet had given APPROVAL (caps mine) for local dishes to be served at official functions. This, according to the minister, is to give local and international recognition to Ghanaian dishes. What a pity! I do not know whether to clap or weep at this announcement, coming 54 years after we raised our national flag at the Old Polo Grounds and lowered the Union Jack to signify our statehood and sang our own “Lift high the flag of Ghana” in nationalistic tones as we celebrated independence. Why should it take us so long to see the need to patronise what is our own and not only that but also making others savour our dishes just as we have relished those of others? That brings us to what our independence is really about not only for us as a country but as a people seeing how we crazily adore foreign things, including the food we eat. We have wondered why even under extreme hot temperatures, the standard for the educated and enlightened remains the three-piece suit and the tie virtually strangling us to death? We kept blaming our woes on slavery and colonialism for the evil they had done to our psyche and social cohesion, yet we do not make any conscious effort to overcome that colonial mentality which does not make us see anything good about ourselves. Everything is good about things that come from outside. Recently our men in cassock and clerical collars joined others to voice their abhorrence for homosexuality and lesbianism which appear being forced on us by superior human beings from the West. Most of the critics declared with one voice that these twin evils were not only unreligious but are against our cultural norms and moral values as a people. The question again is, since when have we realised that as a people made in a special image of God, we have certain cultural and values that must be protected in their sanctity and acceptance and practice? These values did not germinate overnight. They were part and parcel of our existence as a people. Many years ago, we relinquished our authority over ourselves and accepted these values that we are making much noise about today as satanic, barbaric and primitive and abandoned them for something more saintly and elevating from the colonialists from the West. Today, the same people who some time ago brought the Bible and told us everything about us was heathen are the same people who are not only trying to convince us, but are actually cajoling us to accept homosexuality and lesbianism as normal and so should be tolerated. They are telling us that as God’s creatures, we have the freedom to do anything, including co-habiting with the same sex or entering into intimate relations with same sex. There are even veiled threats that there is a harsh penalty to pay if we continue to resist homosexuals and lesbians. Knowing our propensity for begging, our political leaders are severely constrained to raise their voices against the growing phenomenon which threatens the social fabric of our country. The clergy who have mustered some courage to attack the menace are quoting copious verses from the Bible support their argument against the growing menace. What is our moral ground to quote from the same Bible brought to us many centuries ago by a people who have virtually embraced homosexuality and lesbianism regardless of what the Bible says? Now it is not only ordinary Christians who are gays but pastors and bishops of accredited churches. Are we quoting from the Bible they brought to us or another one created by us? If it is the same Bible, then we cannot pretend to know it better than those who wrote it and brought it to us and used it to make us unhinged us about our very existence and created a whole new identification for us. Maybe the homosexual doctrine is telling us something we lost several centuries ago — that after all, God made us in His image as blacks with our distinct moral, cultural and religious values and embraced something that separated us from our spiritual roots. If today, those who brought us the Bible can warn us (remember the British Under-Secretary’s warning two weeks ago), then it stands to reason that with time other things condemned in the Bible will become virtues while other vices may become virtues as well. In recent times, we have seen in this country what so-called men of God are capable of doing, things our cultural norms and religious values, which are embedded in the law of Kama or retribution will not tolerate. If in the past, some of these criminal activities and practices were being suppressed and kept away from us the ordinary people, today they are being brought into light and we should be wiser by these revelations and begin to look within. If we think by abandoning everything about us we are making a better impression about ourselves, we are making a terrible mistake. Serving local dishes at official functions should not have been by Cabinet approval. It should have come as natural as others have accepted theirs and made people like us to accept them as the best. This applies to other things including our dressing, which is a gift from God to suit our climatic conditions. If we as a nation can rise up and condemn homosexuality and lesbianism as an affront to our cultural and moral values, then with the same voice we should rise against all forms of foreign domination that have made us second-rate citizens in our own land. We can maintain the sanctity of our cultural and religious values if we can tell the rest of the world that we are a distinct people and cannot remain in the shadows of others just us the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and the Arabs have done.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Lamentations of David Cameron

2011-08-09T13:41:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, while on an African tour last month had the opportunity to address very important personalities at Nigeria’s Lagos Business School. He used the occasion to say what has become a refrain of many Western leaders by warning African countries to be careful about the Chinese invasion of Africa.
Ever since China’s dominance on the world stage became a phenomenal reality, leaders of the big powers in the West have not spared the continent the warning against the Chinese scourge because of its communist ideology and disregard for human rights.
Western propaganda against China started many years ago and got to its peak during the Cold War when it pitched camp with the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). They even came close to sabotaging the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games which ended up showcasing the might of China.
One of the greatest crimes committed by Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first President, was his association with China and countries of Eastern Europe under the Soviet orbit. The story was that Nkrumah was about introducing communism into the country on the lines of China’s communist system.
The establishment of the Ghana Young Pioneers Movement as it were, by Nkrumah to instil discipline, nationalism and patriotism in the youth and other socialist movements such as the Ghana Federation of Women and the Farmers Council greatly lent credence to the anti-Nkrumah propaganda.
When the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) finally toppled Nkrumah using local collaborators, there was celebration of a good riddance of a bad lot. Many years later, China defied all odds to blossom into a world economic and industrial power that no country including the Western democracies could ignore.
China’s rise to world economic power did not happen by accident. It was a deliberate policy to attract foreign investment capital coupled with determination by a hardworking population. But should China’s growing influence be a worry to the West?
Unlike the West which set preconditions for aid, using democracy, human rights, rule of law and others as an excuse, China has nothing to bargain for, but to go into direct business with its African counterparts. Instead of pretending to be crying for Africa, the West will do well to worry over their dwindling influence on a continent they have controlled and pillaged for centuries.
Looking back, many African countries have suffered more from the long association with the Western colonialists than could be imagined. The Chinese are not in Africa for pleasure and no one should expect them to come and sprinkle money around without returns. But their approach to development projects is quite different and more mutually beneficial and should be exploited by African countries.
In Ghana, the Chinese are helping with the construction of the Bui Hydroelectric Dam. They are very much present in the transport sector, since most of the vehicles being used by the Metro Mass Transport come from China.
Hopefully, the Eastern Corridor road project and other major projects will see the light of day, after the Chinese loan package is approved by parliament.
In any case, the West cannot claim to love Africa more than the Chinese, since for every dollar given as aid, three dollars are taken away from Africa, leaving the continent in perpetual debt. Moreover the West has never been interested in infrastructural development on the continent, preferring to support those projects that would boost the continent as producers of raw materials.
A former Nigerian Finance Minister, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, speaking for Africa said, “China knows what it means to be poor and has evolved a successful wealth creation formula that it is willing to share with African countries”. It is up to individual African countries to negotiate and enter into agreements with their national interests being paramount.
Incidentally, the Western countries which are crying their head over Africa’s association with China, are desperately relocating most of their industries in China. Africa cannot afford to remain victims of Cold War propaganda about its relations with China.
African countries, however, have a big lesson to learn from China. That over-reliance on external assistance does not help. African countries must begin to chart a path of independence and self-reliance while collaborating with others.
African countries have more resources than China and if there are any lessons to be learnt, it is that China refused to accept its fate as a poor and primitive country that cannot make it without succumbing to capitalist interests.
As for David Cameron and his like who think China’s link with Africa is a “new scramble for Africa”, they should spare us that agony. They say man under water fears no cold. We have suffered enough from colonialism to worry about what the Chinese will do to us. So far, the Chinese strategy of give-and-take has worked for all the parties and Africa can position itself properly to make the best out of the China alliance.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Betrayal of the national cause

2011-08-03T08:46:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
THE President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, was not a happy person when his effort to retool the Ghana Air Force was mired in muddy waters of partisan politics. He got the opportunity to express his displeasure when he toured the flood areas in the Fanteakwa and Atiwa districts in the Eastern Region. He used the disaster situation in the two districts and other parts of the region to draw attention to the need for everyone, especially political leaders, to be circumspect and objective when discussing matters that were purely of national interest and separate them from what were for mere political gratification. In defence of the decision to purchase five aircraft to re-equip the Ghana Air Force, the President wondered why almost all important national issues were given political twists and colouration, saying the five aircrafts were not meant for the comfort of the presidency. Apart from their military use, experience had shown that in times of disaster such as what we are experiencing in most parts of the country now, military aircraft, especially helicopters, come handy to evacuate the injured and stranded and also ferry relief items to victims of national disasters. This is the reality that should inform all our discussions on the subject of equipping all our national institutions. In a similar vein, President Mills will by now begin to appreciate the frustrations and may be the humiliation former President John Agyekum Kufuor went through when he sent a similar application to the House in 2008 and put forward the same arguments that the aircraft earmarked for the Ghana Armed Forces were not for the aggrandisement of the presidency nor the political leadership but in the supreme national interest. There are many in the NPP who have still not forgiven former President Kufuor for introducing that package for the Air Force during those crucial moments close to an election which promised to be close and tough. Some were even more cynical, claiming former President Kufuor did that deliberately to destroy the chances of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the 2008 elections. As a nation, we should decide whether we desire a military establishment with an Air Force or not. If we agree to have an Air Force, we should inform ourselves that the Air Force does not operate with wheelbarrows. It is a unit that executes its military operations mostly from the air and, therefore, necessarily must have military aircraft to execute that mandate. The argument yesterday that there was hunger and poverty in the country and that many schools were without good infrastructure are very relevant today. The most important thing is that every country can march on all fronts at the same time provided it is able to harness its resources and manage them well. We can debate cost and choice of aircraft dispassionately and objectively devoid of partisan motives. If we decide not to have an established military, that will be a different matter. In that case, we should be prepared to mobilise our Asafo companies to defend the country against external aggression whenever it becomes necessary. Until we make that choice, we should be able to equip our Armed Forces to the best of our ability and with enough firepower so that they can provide us with the protection we need as a sovereign nation. Throughout our history as an independent nation, almost every government has suffered condemnation, one way or another, for its plans, programmes and projects. The person who was vilified the most and became the biggest victim of this phenomenon, as many would agree, was Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first President and the man whose vision and ideas became an inspiration to not only countries on the mother continent but also all Black communities globally. Interestingly, almost everything initiated by President Nkrumah was condemned by a section of the population just to make him unpopular. Even the Accra-Tema Motorway, the Tema Harbour, the Volta Dam at Akosombo and the now Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) were described as grandiose, misplaced and not in the national interest at the time. Today, I am wondering if any person with an objective mind can confidently describe any of these national projects as grandiose and not in the interest of the nation. So soon we have come to realise how inadequate the facilities we thought were over abundant yesterday have become today. One of the crimes General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong was accused of committing was the decision to purchase an aircraft for the Ghana Air Force which became the presidential jet. General Acheampong never travelled on that aircraft, partly for his phobia for flying. Incidentally, the person who amplified the accusation of Acheampong for profligacy was Flt Lt. J.J. Rawlings, who made good use of the aircraft from its prime until it became known as the Flying Coffin due to old age. It was this flying coffin that was to be replaced by the Kufuor regime when he ran into problems with the then opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). As fate would have it, the NDC, now in government, also took a package intended for retooling the Armed Forces to Parliament when the New Patriotic Party (NPP) felt it was an opportune time to return fire. Some of us expected that that chain would be broken, since we know it is not in the national interest. But no! The NPP wants to exact its pound of flesh, if even at great cost to the nation. As to cost and due diligence, some of us would not want go there, since we do not have the competence. But by all means let Parliament do its part by scrutinizing documents before it to ensure that the country is not short-changed in the transaction. But that should not take away the necessity of ordering the aircraft for the Air Force. By now we should be able to determine what we want as a nation and pursue those goals in a non-partisan manner and stop the unnecessary politicisation of serious matters. When the NDC administration first introduced the Value Added Tax (VAT), it was vehemently opposed by elements in the NPP parading under the umbrella of the Alliance for Change (AFC). Precious blood was shed and a few people paid the supreme price for what they thought to be a justifiable cause. The souls of those who died in the Kume Preko demonstrations will be turning in their graves upon the realization that the leadership of those demonstrations which turned violent and cost their lives, including Nana Akufo-Addo, Dr Yves Wereko-Brobby and Dr Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe, later were part of a government which increased the percentage of the VAT. We did similar things upon the introduction of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) which has proved to be the backbone of the educational sector today. They are dead and gone, leaving behind their friends and relatives in misery, while their leaders have lived long enough to taste the sweetness of political power for eight years and are preparing feverishly for another round if Ghanaians so permit. The NDC, while in opposition, also walked out of Parliament when the debate on the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which was its own baby when the party was in government, got to its crucial stage. Now back in government, the NDC is doing everything to streamline the operations of the NHIS. Maybe things would have been better for the scheme, and for that matter Ghanaians, if the party had allowed its input to enrich the debate. Our lives as a people cannot be allowed to go on this way. In a democratic environment, there is bound to be disagreements. In fact, disagreements and dissent generally are some of the strong pillars on which rest the fundamentals of democracy. These disagreements, therefore, if genuinely informed by the quest for accountability and concern for the general good of the people, will be articulated in a manner as will enrich debates on national issues, at the end of which the ultimate objective of making this country a better place will triumph. We may score cheap political points today, but if disagreements are not based on objective analysis of things but bear the fruits of mischief, malice and self-interest, it will always bring us to the situation where, instead of moving forward, we will constantly retrace our footsteps. If the NPP will admit that they made a mistake during the introduction of the VAT and the NDC will admit mixing serious national issues with narrow political interests during former President Kufuor’s attempt to purchase aircraft for the Air Force, this country will be learning useful lessons that will propel it to move on in the right direction. There are numerous examples but the few mentioned will illustrate the phenomenon which is not healthy for our political and overall national life. The politics of tit for tat is negative, must be condemned and not countenanced by all serious-minded people. If we continue to pursue that path, we will only succeed in betraying the national cause for the sake of narrow and sectional interests. Political parties are national institutions that are supposed to make the national interest the core agenda. If we depart from this goal and adorn party garbs at the least opportunity, we will do more harm to the democracy we claim to cherish so much and in effect destabilise the national development agenda. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com

True meaning of national service

2011-07-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
IN a small remote community in the Atwima Mponua District of the Ashanti Region, a young man has initiated a journey that promises to leave his footprints in the sands of history. Without necessarily making a deliberate and conscious attempt to make history, Mr Wisdom Deku Apedo, who is doing national service at Barimayena in the district, is brightening his small corner and illuminating the way for children who, through no fault of theirs, have found themselves in a part of the country many see as forbidden territory.
Mr Apedo is not destined to suffer the same fate as others whose good deeds only come to light and are acknowledged long after they are gone. The 24-year-old service person has already won commendation from the Ashanti Regional Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS) for the transformation he is bringing to the small community where he is doing national service.
More significant are the kind words the Barimayena Unit Committee Chairman, Mr Stephen Agyapong, and the Chief of Barimayena, Nana Kofi Mensah, have for Mr Apedo for his self-less devotion to the progress of the small community.
Mr Apedo, an HND (Marketing) graduate from the Cape Coast Polytechnic, by some design or fate, found himself posted first to the Ashanti Region for his national. I believe he was excited that being a Marketing graduate, he was going to be assigned to a commercial firm where he would put his marketing skills to practice.
He might have got his first jolt when he was posted to the Atwima Mponua District where his initial expectations fizzled out. He was in a bigger shock when his final destination was Barimayena, which the chief of the place himself described as remote and not attractive to all the trained teachers posted there.
According to the Ashanti Regional Director of the NSS, Mr Kwesi Quainoo, Mr Apedo was tempted to follow others to abandon the people of Barimayena for obvious reasons. Mr Apedo said apart from the remoteness of the place, there was a serious handicap in the form of a language barrier. He is from Battor in the Volta Region and speaks Ewe, while his hosts are Asante Twi-speaking people.
Whatever made him to change his mind, only Mr Apedo will narrate it one day in a more vivid manner, but he told a reporter of the Daily Graphic that he saw his posting as a challenge to build the capacity of the pupils and the people of the community.
The most important thing is that good judgement prevailed and Mr Apedo decided to pitch camp at Barimayena and he is already enjoying doing real national service. He can see his efforts bearing fruits right before his eyes.
Mr Apedo’s story became public when officials of the Ashanti Regional Directorate of the NSS, led by Mr Quainoo, visited the district to acquaint themselves with the challenges facing national service persons posted to some of its remotest parts.
They heard the account of Nana Mensah himself, who said the local school which started with only 25 kindergarten pupils had seen tremendous growth and improvement since Mr Apedo’s arrival in the community. He said the school had now grown to Primary Two, bringing current enrolment to 83.
More startling was the revelation by the chief that through Mr Apedo’s personal initiative, the community had been able to raise GH¢1,700 to build additional classrooms and expressed the hope that very soon the school would expand intake to Primary Six to have the full complement of a primary school.
Mr Apedo’s case is edifying and worthy of mention because over the years the philosophy of the NSS has been diluted, making mockery of the vision of the founders and making it look as if the scheme is a big shade under which people will take rest while thinking of what to do next.
Some people even think that it is an extension of the political apparatus where they could exercise their pastime as party activists, collecting their allowances without rendering service to the people the way Mr Apedo and others are doing.
In the latter part of last year, a group of young men and women belonging to the Tertiary Education Institutions Network (TEIN), the students wing of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), subjected Mr Vincent Kuagbenu, the Executive Secretary of the NSS, to bouts of embarrassing heckling when he tried to address them in Winneba.
Mr Kuagbenu’s crime was that he had not pandered to the wishes of the young graduates by posting them to their preferred places to do national service.
Most of them complained that Mr Kuagbenu had posted them to remote parts of the country, instead of allowing them to enjoy the spoils of victory in the general election by posting them to juicy places.
These were youthful members of the party who are aspiring to become future leaders who thought certain parts of the country are too remote to deserve their skills and talents; people who, in the not-too-distant future, will mount platforms and tell Ghanaians to vote for them because they know their problems, care for them and are even prepared to die for them if only they (Ghanaians) will give them their votes.
What many of those who made those ugly noises that day did not know was that many years ago, between 1982 and 1984, many young men and, to a smaller extent, young women, broke their backs carrying cocoa which was getting rotten on the farms to the ports. Others turned themselves into human cranes to load cocoa onto ships at the Tema Port.
If those young people want to know the real story, the origins of the party called the NDC, they will come to realise why former President Jerry John Rawlings is still the toast of many: He was seen as a symbol of humility, dedication, selflessness and devotion to the national cause.
With such characteristics, he was able to convince students to abandon the lecture halls for the bush, the villages and the remotest parts of the country to do national service.
Those shouting youth should find out why national service became two years instead of one year and why even Sixth Formers joined the scheme. It was to clear the backlog of students who piled up when the universities were closed down for one full academic year.
Those days, the students did not have the luxury to indulge in noise-making but went into the bush to replant burnt cocoa farms. That was how the National Farmers Day started when, after a long and severe drought, the first harvests were made and the government felt there was cause to celebrate and reward the farmers who had brought food production to normalcy.
Some of the students went chasing cocoa smugglers on dangerous grounds. Some lost limbs; some even paid the supreme price in the service of mother Ghana. Some could not make it back to their universities and other institutions.
It was the efforts of those unsung heroes which culminated in the formation of the NDC. If, therefore, any young member of the NDC sees service in certain parts of this country as punishment, then that person, instead of exhibiting that with ugly noises in public, should rather bow his/her head in big shame.
The national service concept was not mooted to give employment to young graduates in the banks, hotels and cosy offices in Accra, Kumasi and other urban centres. If somewhere along the line the concept was abused and prostituted, it was not because the managers were doing the right thing.
It is imperative that before young graduates blossom into mature officers, they should render service without calculating the returns. In that case, they will be in a better position to appreciate the real problems confronting this country. They will know the beauty of this country and its people. When the time comes for them to assume leadership roles, they will know that Accra is only a minute fraction of the land mass called Ghana.
Many of the shortfalls the country is experiencing in the educational and health sectors in particular, especially with regard to posting to the rural areas, could be effectively addressed if the NSS operated true to the philosophy behind it. In that case, no service person will be in Accra or the regional capitals.
If today there are still poverty, disease and squalor in the rural areas; if today most of the rural schools are in dilapidated structures and without trained teachers, it is because most often our leaders behave like those TEIN members who are quick to disengage themselves from the reality on the ground through ignorance or criminal negligence.
It is time the youth wings of all the political parties were made to appreciate the problems of this country. It is time they were made to understand that no part of this country is a wasteland. It is time we considered service in the rural areas as a prerequisite for appointment to national offices.
The people of Barimayena are reaping the fruits of true national service, just as people such as Mr Apedo are proving to those who were heckling Mr Kuagbenu for the simple reason that he did not allow them to stay in Accra or Kumasi for their national service that there is great honour and self-satisfaction in serving the people with devotion and commitment.
Mr Apedo may finish his service and move on to pursue his ambitions elsewhere but the people of Barimayena will not forget his contribution any time the issue of education is brought up. Who knows — many decades to come some ministers and Members of Parliament will come out from that small village, thanks to national service rendered by one person when others saw the place as hell and abandoned the people to their fate.
Changing the fortunes of a people whose situation looks hopeless is what true national service means. This is a challenge to the youth of this country. Of course, the managers of the NSS should also do the right things which will motivate the youth and challenge them to plunge into national service wholeheartedly.
Mr Apedo and all others who are serving the people of this country in the remotest parts, at the expense of their comfort, deserve commendation and encouragement. The state must exhibit appreciation which will send the signal that service to one’s nation will not be in vain.

fokofi@yahoo.couk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

A capital in distress

2011-07-20T02:12:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
FOR well over a week Tema, the country’s industrial and port city, and the eastern part of Accra, the national capital, were without water. Ours is not about the lack of water which God has generously provided in abundance. In other places, people have to dig the bowels of the Sahara Desert for water. In other places, people have to settle for sea water using desalination plants.
In our situation, there should not have been any problem but for our inability to convert raw water which is in abundance into potable water for human consumption. In the latest episode, consumers have been told that the pipe taking raw water from the Volta River to the treatment plant is broken, spilling water freely on the main Accra-Akosombo road. So the wise thing to do was to stop the flow of water until the broken pipe was repaired.
According to officials of the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), the 63-inch pipeline buried 15 feet underground had not seen any maintenance for the over 50 years of its existence. That is typical of us — always waiting for disaster before setting in motion remedial measures. Otherwise, the big question is, why should our national capital, after 54 years of independence, continue to rely on the sole treatment plant at Kpong for water supply?
Apart from technical failure, such as the one we are experiencing now, reliance on one source of water supply, and for that matter all other services, has other dangers, one of which is sabotage which cannot be ruled out. That was why, over the years, we should have taken steps to build more treatment plants at strategic places and properly inter-connected to avoid situations such as the one residents of Tema and Accra East have been going through for more than a week now.
Unfortunately, this type of thinking never occurred to us. Instead, we preferred signing a management contract with a foreign firm to collect tolls for a system it never built and take hefty sums in consultancy fees, while the main problem of inadequate infrastructure in the water sector remained with us.
As stated earlier, ours is not about lack of resources but more about our inability to harness those resources. In fact, the gift that God has given us in the form of the River Volta and the lake formed after the construction of the Akosombo Dam has been woefully under-utilised.
The water downstream of the Kpong Dam flows wastefully into the sea, while we continue to suffer water shortage, not only in Accra and Tema but also other places that are within the Volta Basin. Strangely, the idea to build a treatment plant at Sogakope to transport water from the Volta River to Togo, which is not fortunate like Ghana in terms of water resources, for cash was mixed up by some people, out of ignorance, who talked as if someone was carrying the Volta River away.
The truth is, downstream Sogakope, until we find a better way of using the water, it is a waste because we do not even do irrigation farming with the waters of the river. So any investment that will enable the country to supply its less fortunate eastern neighbour, not for free, while at the same time addressing the water needs of the coastal towns along the route, will not be misplaced. That plant could also have been connected to the existing distribution system, so that on bad days such as what is happening at Kpong, industrial and commercial activities in Accra and Tema will not come to a halt, let alone bring untold hardship to millions of residents.
It is sad to say that we are behind time when it comes to long-term planning. We seem to be putting all our eggs into one basket. Take the case of the Tema Oil Refinery. This was a facility built in the 1960s by the man whose name some people do not want to hear but whose legacy, whether we admit it or not, continues to keep this country going on all fronts. I am talking about Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the man who, in all things, thought beyond his time.
Even before oil and gas was discovered, the man knew that the best way to assert one’s independence was to be free of external control as much as possible. Today, the irony is that we have oil and gas in abundance but the only refinery cannot refine crude or extract gas because it is old and weak. So, as we have done in the cocoa industry, exporting the raw beans and importing finished cocoa products such as chocolate and beverages, we are exporting crude oil and importing refined petroleum products at great cost. That partly explains why we have been experiencing periodic shortage of gas, a waste material in the oil production chain, on the market.
What prevented us from encouraging the establishment of more refineries which have more advantages than disadvantages, if any. Apart from being avenues for the employment of skilled personnel in the petro-chemical industry, more refineries mean more tax revenue. And, very importantly, we will not be held to ransom by a monopoly.
Until recently, there was only one cement manufacturing factory in the country and the consequences were quite obvious. The monopoly is now broken and the consuming public will agree that they are better off.
Many of the roads in Accra epitomise our short-sightedness. They were not designed and constructed with the future in mind. That is why we speed on the Accra-Tema Motorway, only to be trapped in heavy traffic at a point described as an interchange.
Accra is no where near most capitals in terms of road infrastructure and it will need a massive dose of funds to raise the status of our national capital. That could have been avoided if we had been proactive and planned 50 or even 100 years ahead. This year’s heavy rains have exposed how miserable our city roads are.
In all cases, we wait until the damage is done, and then suddenly we begin to talk reasonably. In the recent Kpong problem, the minister was fast to reach Kpong when the situation was critical and he was heard saying what all rationale thinking people should have known long ago — that it was unwise to rely on one source of water supply.
The situation could have been avoided if there had been more than one treatment plant and there was a system that could feed, say, the Weija Dam water into the Kpong system. Why should this simple fact be lost on us all these years?
Instead of using precious time to think and plan, our leaders prefer using all the time to talk and make wild promises, knowing very well that a greater part of the population cannot remember the last time they heard similar promises.
In his time, Dr Nkrumah thought of what he described as the Golden Triangle. That was the road network linking Accra to Kumasi, Kumasi to Takoradi and Takoradi to Accra, forming a triangle. That was in the 1960s. Today, after 54 years of independence, we cannot drive on an expressway between Accra and Kumasi, our two major cities. That explains why, out of desperation, drivers are compelled to do wrong overtaking which brings with it the danger of accidents.
Apart from the road, water and petroleum sectors, all other areas have similarly been overtaken by population growth and increased demand. The springing up of mushroom tertiary institutions with dubious credentials is the price we are paying for not planning for our children’s education over the years. These institutions may appear to be filling the gap but are actually destroying the human resource of this country. This is a reality that will dawn on us in the next 10 to 20 years when we will have illiterate graduates parading the streets or even the corridors of power with pieces of paper called university degrees.
We may have been sleeping for far too long. Our handicap at Kpong should be a wake-up call for better planning and thinking into the future.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

The congress that was

2011-07-13T13:03:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
IT was very beautiful seeing former President J.J. Rawlings raise the hands of President John Evans Atta Mills after the verdict of the delegates had given the latter a massive approval to lead the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to Election 2012. That symbolic gesture has its psychological and soothing effects which the party can build on.
The post-election speech delivered by President Mills was quite reconciliatory and accommodating and reached out to all factions to mend fences, something which is very necessary at this critical moment.
It was unfortunate Mrs Konadu Agyeman Rawlings could not deliver any post-election speech, as should have been the case. Instead of taking it as a snub, people should understand and appreciate her situation. Not many people can stand defeat, more so when it is unexpectedly overwhelming. But it also means that to be a leader and aspire to be the president of this country require no faint heart.
It is too early yet, but many expect that Nana Konadu and her supporters will take a few days to lick their wounds in silence, after which they will bounce back into mainstream politics. There should be no acrimonious statements, no insinuations nor victory parties.
To some of us watching from the fringes, the congress was a good exercise. The attempts to discourage Nana Konadu could not have solved the problem, since there would have been some lingering doubts to impede President Mills and undermine the authority of his presidency. Those doubts are gone forever.
It is, therefore, important that he takes the few months ahead of him to focus seriously on governance, so that he can gather the moral strength to appeal to Ghanaians to give him another chance.
Life is all about learning and there are many lessons to be learnt from the Sunyani congress. There is always a difference between what people say and what they do. There are always the cheerleaders and the praise singers, as against the pragmatists and realists. Sometimes the two merge, but very often they take different routes.
The truth is that removing an incumbent, even in a general election, is a Herculean task. That is why it has become an unwritten law that parties support their presidents to complete their full terms if the electorate so wish.
The NDC was not going to be the first party to go for a challenge on the incumbent. During the Kufuor administration, there were some feeble voices calling for a congress to endorse or change the President as part of democratic norms. Those voices of dissent were quickly suppressed.
The NDC can, therefore, console itself that it has opened up to voices of dissent and allowed its democratic ramifications to take its full course.
What the leadership must do now is quickly start a healing process. Pretending everything is okay can be hypocritical and dangerous. The things that were said and done during the campaign cannot be swept under the carpet easily.
Former President Rawlings played a key role in the whole exercise and he has a bigger role to play to bring affairs within the party back to normalcy. He started very well by raising President Mills’s hand in victory. He must continue on that path.
The former President should realise by now that public condemnation of President Mills may affect the government generally but will not make things better for him as founder and former president, as the results of the Sunyani congress have shown. That is why it will be better for him to play a statesman and elder opinion leader’s role than that of an opposition leader. There are still many who have great respect and admiration for him across the political divide and it is to his advantage to do everything to sustain that image.
It is good the congress itself went on without incident and that should be a starting point for any internal healing process. Democracy is not only about choosing leaders but also choosing people who can meet the aspirations of our people. Sunyani is another monumental bridge crossed in the country’s journey to true democracy.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Voice of defiance at Malabo

2011-07-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
When the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) decided to transform itself into the African Union (AU) questions were raised as to whether it was going to be a mere change of name or a change in direction.
When the baptism which transformed the OAU into the AU came in July, 2002 in Durban in the Republic of South of Africa, many Africans welcomed the birth of the new union, more so, when it made democratisation , good governance and economic development its cardinal objectives.
With the mandate of ridding the continent of the last vestiges of colonialism and dismantling apartheid in South Africa accomplished, many were of the opinion that the new challenges confronting the continent were the consolidation of democracy and the setting of a development agenda to move the continent from its under-development status to a more prosperous one to reflect its abundant natural resources.
There were doubts, however, in the ability of the AU to live up to its objectives, taking into consideration the fact that it had and still has on its roll leaders who were not democratically elected and who have been in power for decades.
One prominent name is that of Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, the man who came to power in 1969 through a coup d’état but was instrumental in the transformation process. Others were Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Omar Bongo of Gabon who are now history and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Paul Biya of Cameroun who are still in the saddle.
With such characters still at the helm of affairs, there were serious doubts about the union’s ability to fulfil its mandate of building a strong democratic system on the continent.
So the immediate challenge was how the AU could phase out the old dictators and supplant them with new democratically elected leaders. Granted that this could not be achieved overnight since the AU was up to overthrowing governments, the benefit of doubt had to be ruled in its favour.
However, what was expected immediately of the AU was strength of power to give Africa a voice in the international community. The continent had remained a pawn in the super-power rivalry for a very long time and it was the wish of many that with the end of the Cold War and the realignment of powers, the continent will have its own voice heard on major international issues, especially those that concern it directly.
Unfortunately events following the transformation proved that the continent was not ready to speak with one voice or act decisively on matters that undermine its democratic principles, if any.
More dangerous was the AU’s continued subservient role in international affairs, especially when it needs to assert its independence and choice of direction.
In August, 2003 West African leaders, under the auspices of ECOWAS, the sub-regional body, brokered a peace deal for Liberia, under which the then President, Mr Charles Taylor, was to vacate the Executive Mansion in Monrovia and take a diplomatic refuge in Nigeria.
Charles Taylor, it must be understood, was not a fugitive, neither was he a criminal but, as a matter of principle and mutual arrangement, was to step aside if that would pave the way for peace in Liberia.
True to expectation, Liberia enjoyed relative peace after 14 years of civil war and created the platform for the establishment of an interim government under Mr Gyuda Bryant. This was followed by a general election in which Mrs Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was declared the winner.
In June, 2003 the UN Special Court on Sierra Leone indicted Charles Taylor for his role in that country’s civil war. On March 17, 2006, President Sirleaf, who benefited most from Charles Taylor’s resignation and going into exile, made a formal request for his extradition, which was granted by the Obasanjo administration on March 25, 2006.
On March 29, 2006, Charles Taylor was arrested while trying to cross the border into Cameroun and flown to Freetown and later handed over to the UN Special Court on Sierra Leone. Charles Taylor is still on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity among other charges.
That singular betrayal has exposed AU’s weakness and undermined its capacity and ability to handle affairs of the continent and give any form of respectability to a continent that had remained an appendage of foreign powers.
Having been emboldened by the Charles Taylor case, the UN International Criminal Court again indicted Sudanese President, Omar al-Bashir, and issued an international warrant for his arrest. Nobody will praise Charles Taylor for the role he played in the conflicts in both Liberia and Sierra Leone; neither shall any close observer gloss over President al-Bashir’s handling of the Darfur conflict, but should that be the business of foreign powers to stay aloof and only criminalise African leaders.
In January there was a stand-off in Cote d’Ivoire, when incumbent Laurent Gbagbo refused to hand over to Alassane Ouattara, who was declared the winner of the November polls by the international community.
Again both ECOWAS and the AU failed to act decisively, paving the way for foreign powers, led by France, to push aside Gbagbo by use of force.
In March, when internal discontent started to mount in Libya, one would expect the AU to step in and take control of affairs. Again it failed and allowed France and the US to marshal their NATO members to launch an attack on Libya on the pretext of protecting civilian lives.
One would ask: Are those dying every day through the bombardment of Tripoli and other Libyan towns and cities, in the definition of NATO, camels or sheep? NATO and France in particular have succeeded in dismembering Libya because the AU failed to act with authority when it mattered most.
With similar impunity, the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for al-Gaddafi for genocide. Gaddafi and all other dictators on the continent have outlived their usefulness and the earlier the AU is bold to say so and dismantle them the better.
But until we do that, it is not the business of any foreign power to fight its own battles on the continent on the pretext of fighting for the interest of Africans.
The atrocities of the US and its allies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan cannot be described and if leaders should be punished for bringing untold hardships to many civilians without any justification, the Presidents of US and other NATO countries should all be in The Hague by now.
The choice of Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, whose dictator, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has been ruling since August 1979, as the venue for this year’s AU Summit speaks volumes of the continental body’s inability to pursue its own agenda of democratisation of the continent.
But that should be our choice and the hypocrisy of the western powers should be snubbed. That was why if nothing at all, the call on AU members to disregard the ICC’s arrest warrant for Muammar al-Gaddafi is welcome news.
Some of us agree with AU’s Jean Ping, who told reporters that the ICC is “discriminatory” and only goes after crimes committed in Africa, while ignoring those committed by western powers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The only way to avoid interference in what is purely regional matters is for the AU and other sub-regional bodies such as the ECOWAS to assert their independence and authority on continental matters.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

We saw the AVRL demise coming

2011-06-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
Some of us knew it will happen sooner or later. We foresaw the most rational thing being done when the management agreement with Aqua Vitens Rand Limited (AVRL) will be thrown into the dustbin where it appropriately belongs.
The AVRL management agreement followed a pattern that has become our national culture. I mean the tendency to look outward at the least excuse for solutions to our problems. Just before the AVRL agreement, the country went through two similar agreements on behalf of Ghana Telecom, the national telecommunications operator.
In 1995 or there about, an agreement was signed with Telekom Malaysia to manage the telecom operator which was going through management and cash crises. By the time the Malaysian management experts left in 2001, Ghana Telecom was not left in any better health but was more devastated and pillaged by the high-earning expatriates from Malaysia.
Typically of us, we did not learn any lesson, and so a new management agreement was signed with Telenor of Norway who also brought its brand of management to Ghana Telecom in 2003. That agreement expired or was abrogated in 2005 because there was no visible sign that the health of Ghana Telecom was better than the Norwegians came to meet it.
We all know what happened to Ghana Telecom finally. It was sold under controversial circumstances in July 2008 for $900 million to the Vodafone Group which acquired 70 per cent shares, while the Government of Ghana took home a paltry 30 per cent. That was how the country lost control of its vast telecommunications industry.
Some of us were, therefore, genuinely apprehensive when the government of the day decided that the best solution to the challenges facing the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) was a foreign management consultancy. I put my thoughts in this column.
The truth is that the GWCL, like all other service providers and, to a large extent, many public institutions, is facing numerous challenges, but human resource is the least. The GWCL has some of the best engineers and managers the industry could boast of.
The company has not been able to deliver its mandate over the years because it suffered and continues to suffer from one major canker – heavy politicisation. The management of the GWCL and that of almost all other public institutions has been heavily politicised to the extent that management positions do not necessarily go to the best but the loudest in terms of sycophancy. Those who try to do the right thing often find themselves hitting the concrete wall of political agitators. They are either bent or are ejected.
Many of our public institutions, notable among them Ghana Airways, have collapsed not because as a nation we lack the requisite human resource or qualified and dedicated Ghanaians to manage them but because we lack committed political leadership that is prepared to separate politics from business.
When the AVRL, which has its origins from The Netherlands and South Africa, was given the contract to manage the country’s urban water systems for a five-year period, we knew it was a wrong move. Many of the details of the agreement were not made public, but we were told that, among other things, AVRL was to ensure that more people got access to water, to plug loopholes to check revenue leakage and ensure that less treated water was wasted.
The contract did not provide that AVRL should bring even a wheelbarrow or a shovel, so straight away it meant AVRL, under the contract, was not expected to lay even a metre of new pipeline or build new treatment plants. It came to feed on what was already in existence — something that was built from the sweat and toil of Ghanaians. Strangely, even its own workers were not in agreement with the renewal of the contract.
The AVRL came with nothing and it was to use GWCL revenue staff to collect money for services it had not rendered and went home with fat commissions and consultancy fees at the end of the day. There was nothing special about AVRL. What it had which our local managers did not get was insulation from interference from any quarters and the free hand to operate because it made sure those clauses were captured in the agreement.
Many well-meaning Ghanaians have said repeatedly that as Ghanaians, we cannot assert our independence if we fail to be our own masters. One person, Mr Kwame Pianim, arguably one of the best economists produced by this country, has been a crusader on that front. He keeps reminding the powers that be that our continued reliance on so-called foreign consultants is not only sapping our national resources but also trapping us in perpetual inferiority complex and taking away our national dignity.
Most of the people we bring here as consultants come nowhere near our local experts who are ignored because they do not sing the same political or ethnic tunes. Cronyism and patronage are the twin evils undermining the administration of our national affairs.
Second, those given the jobs are not given the free hand to deliver without hindrance and interference.
Giving the same autonomy and independence, local experts can easily manage most of our institutions with excellence and with better results. Mind you, the local manager is not only working for money but also he is determined to build his own country and so his commitment will be guaranteed.
The technical audit on the performance of AVRL proved the obvious — that it could not find answers to the problems of GWCL. Meanwhile, it has drained the national coffers of millions in foreign cash. We have also, in a way, succeeded in reducing our self-esteem and making us look more inferior.
We need to establish self-confidence and begin to recognise our strengths in every sphere of national endeavour, including managing our national institutions. We need to stop making appointments for their sake or as a reward for loyalty.
We should be able to entrust our companies into local hands who should also be given the same management contracts which assure them of good returns and the freedom to take bold decisions for the good of the companies involved.
We should be able to disengage politics from serious national business if we want to make progress. It does not make sense to train people and abandon them for less-qualified people just because the latter are foreigners.
The GWCL would have gone the way of Ghana Telecom, Ghana Airways and many others long ago but for the fact that the privatisation of water is a very dangerous proposition. The problem lies not in our incapability but the failure of our leadership style and a mentality which does not recognise self worth.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

VALCO, the heart of Ghana's aluminium industry

2011-06-23T13:09:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
THE Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO) is a very well-known name on the country’s industrial landscape, and for obvious reasons.
VALCO is perhaps the country’s largest industrial enterprise in terms of technology and employment and revenue generation. More important, it is the mother that gave birth to the giant Volta River hydroelectric project.
At the time of the construction of the hydroelectric dam at Akosombo, there was the need to guarantee a ready consumer of the enormous power that was expected to be generated, since Ghana’s industrial base was very small.
Funding institutions were not ready to finance the project at that huge cost if there was no evidence of an industrial base that could utilise the power and, consequently, pay for the investment.
VALCO, therefore, became a strategic team player when a consortium of aluminium companies, headed by Kaiser Aluminium and Chemical Corporation, decided to build an aluminium smelter in Tema as the primary consumer of the power from Akosombo.
Even though the long-term agreement which guaranteed VALCO first-choice status in the use of power from Akosombo may not be the most favourable, President Kwame Nkrumah took consolation from the fact that no matter how long the power-sharing agreement went on, the Akosombo project would surely outlive that agreement.
More significant is the fact that President Nkrumah had already calculated the benefits of the dam and the smelter to Ghana’s future industrial advancement, with the aluminium industry playing a lead role.
With huge deposits of bauxite at Kibi, Nyinahin and Awaso which, at conservative estimates, could last more than 200 years at the current production capacity of VALCO, Dr Nkrumah foresaw an integrated aluminium industry (IAI) taking shape in the country.
Ghana, I am beginning to believe, has a special place in the heart of God. It is perhaps the only country that has all the major raw materials needed for an integrated aluminium industry. First, we have the bauxite in abundance; we have salt and lime which are needed at the refinery level and abundant energy resources for the smelter.
Knowing how multi-nationals operate, I am not surprised that after nearly 40 years of VALCO’s existence, we have still not attained full integration as was Kwame Nkrumah’s dream when the VALCO agreement was signed. They prefer to segment their operations, so that should there be any hostile political decision, they will not suffer unduly.
So while we export bauxite at approximately $25 per metric tonne (mt), VALCO imports alumina at approximately $400/mt for its operations and after processing the alumina, sells its aluminium ingots at approximately $2,500/mt. The vast difference between the price of the ore and the price of aluminium ingots and billets is a clear indication of a disservice to this nation so long as we continue to scrape our bauxite and sell it cheaply on the world market when we have better use for it.
As fate will have it, something that we never expected happened when Alcoa sold its last 10 per cent shares in VALCO to the government of Ghana in 2008, ending all foreign involvement in the ownership in VALCO.
What a coincidence that the ownership of VALCO changed hands just as Ghana made a breakthrough in the discovery of oil and gas in massive quantities!
The question is, now that we have VALCO, what are we going to do with it? Incidentally, the smelter is the most expensive both in terms of technology and cost and for that matter the most strategic in the aluminium production chain and, therefore, once we have the smelter, the only thing we need to complete the chain process is the refinery.
The benefits of an integrated aluminium industry cannot be over-emphasised. Apart from job-creation along the chain, from the mining level to the industrial level where aluminium products are converted into finished products, there will be foreign exchange conservation at all stages, such as the $186 million VALCO presently spends on the importation of alumina.
The energy situation will also improve dramatically, since about 100MW of electrical energy could be generated from steam from the alumina refinery. Other alumina refinery by-products can be used for housing construction.
The greatest explosion will be experienced at the industrial level when the end users of VALCO’s products, such as Aluworks, Tropical Cable, Western Rod and Wire, Ghanal, Ghana Pioneer Aluminium, and others can expand their plants, while new players can join the band wagon.
Ghana is close to a middle-income status not on paper but in reality. VALCO is currently operating at less than 30 per cent capacity of 200,000MT per annum. This will change when full power is restored and all the five potlines are put into full operation.
VALCO gave the economic justification for the building of the Akosombo Dam. It gave meaning to Nkrumah’s vision for an integrated aluminium industry in Ghana. Today, as a fully Ghanaian-owned company, VALCO is poised to lead Ghana into full industrialisation. It requires political will to get the refinery established, a protective cover to shield the company from political manipulation and watch Ghana move alongside Brazil, South Korea, China and India.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Overtaken by events

2011-06-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
For well over two hours there was no vehicular movement. All vehicles were trapped in heavy traffic which stretched kilometres, spilling in all directions. Those driving from the Accra-end of the Motorway suffered in the same way as those coming from Tema using the dual carriage from the Tema Port. Those going to Accra were naturally affected, and so while the empty road beckoned, the vehicles could not disentangle themselves from the trap at the roundabout.
The confusion and frustration at the Tema end of the Motorway needs to be experienced and not just imagined. No amount of description can paint the true picture of what motorists go through at peak hours at the Motorway Roundabout which has become a vital converging point for major roads leading into and out of Tema, our main port city, and Accra, the national capital.
More than 40 years ago when the Accra-Tema Motorway was under construction, there were some who protested that it was a frivolous expenditure on a misplaced priority. They felt the money for that road project could have been used in a more productive way.
However, the great architect of that project foresaw a future in which there would be a large volume of vehicular traffic between Accra and Tema, the industrial hub of the country. The Motorway was also not to carry traffic between Accra and Tema alone but beyond, towards the eastern corridor, which also means that it was to be a link between Ghana and its eastern neighbours of Togo, Benin and Nigeria.
Today, posterity is the best judge whether the investment was justified or not. Suffice it to say that the Motorway remains the most effective and reliable way of commuting between Accra and Tema and beyond.
What we have failed to do as a nation is expand the dreams of Nkrumah and improve upon what was constructed more than 40 years ago. The Accra-Motorway remains our national pride in road construction and even though it has long paid its due, we continue to enjoy collecting the tolls it generates, without devoting a fraction of those tolls for its maintenance.
With all its beauty and the aura around it, the Motorway is one of the most dangerous roads in the country. The reflective markings in the middle and edges which guide motorists have long faded and we are waiting, maybe, for the Chinese to come and help us mark the road. The craters especially on the outer lanes are so sharp that they can tear into pieces the best of tyres that fall into their open jaws.
At the time of the construction of the Motorway, all that expanse of land between Accra and the emerging industrial city of Tema was without human habitation. That was why those without foresight argued that the road was misplaced. Today, it divides human settlements with huge populations and consequently carries a large volume of traffic.
One would have thought that just as Nkrumah had the foresight to construct the Motorway, subsequent leaders would dream big and expand the Motorway from the present four-lane to a six- or even eight-lane dual carriage in response to current demands.
Typical of a mentality that does not create room for the future, we have allowed the Motorway in its present form for so long that today it has become more of a liability than an asset. While the surface has suffered a lot of wear and tear, its two ends have become a nightmare to motorists.
The Kufuor administration tried to open up the Accra-end of the Motorway with the construction of the Tetteh-Quarshie Interchange. Unfortunately, the final product could not meet today’s expectations. One of the greatest engineering blunders that could be foisted on a nation was a roundabout that has become a major obstacle to vehicular movement at the interchange. Very little consideration was given to the strategic nature of the interchange and its grand design in the total traffic distribution in the city.
Unlike the Motorway which was constructed with the philosophy: ‘Suffer today, enjoy tomorrow’, the Tetteh-Quarshie Interchange was designed and constructed with the philosophy: ‘Save money today, suffer tomorrow’. Yes, we are really suffering at Tetteh-Quarshie. Come to think of it — there is a huge shopping mall there which was built against good counsel.
The damage at Tetteh-Quarshie will require a lot of resources to rectify. But it must be done sooner than later if the objective of easing traffic and making driving a pleasant experience is to be met.
The challenge confronting users of the Motorway now is the obstacle at the roundabout at the Tema end. More than 40 years ago, Tema was a small place and all the settlements along the Tema-Ho-Akosombo and Tema-Aflao roads were non-existent or at best hamlets.
Today, gigantic towns have sprung up in all directions and with that the vehicle population has multiplied more than tenfold. That is why that roundabout has become a trap which saps the energy of motorists. Any country that cherishes productivity cannot afford to keep its workers trapped in traffic for hours through no fault of theirs.
The Accra-Tema Motorway story is a microcosm of a national situation. Accra’s roads have not developed to match the growth and expansion of human settlements. That is why all roads entering the city, whether from Takoradi-Cape Coast, Kumasi, Akosombo-Ho or Aflao-Lome are always choked. That is why leaving Accra on Fridays has become a punishment for every motorist.
Apart from the problem of inadequate roads, the few existing are poorly developed and hardly maintained. The result is that after a downpour and sometimes just a drizzle, almost all roads in the city become unmotorable. One can hardly drive for a kilometre on any major road in our capital without wading in mud, diving into ponds or crashing into potholes.
I do not want to believe that our leaders enjoy seeing us suffer. If that is the case, we want to see the removal of some roundabouts from the city. The Danquah Circle, the Obetsebi-Lamptey Circle, the great Kwame Nkrumah Circle, the Akuafo Circle at the 37 Military Hospital and the roundabout at the Tema-end of the motorway are all eyesores and hindrances to the movement of vehicles in the city and must be removed.
Sometimes I wonder what goes through the minds of our big people when they travel outside and they are driven on those smooth and expansive roads. Do they just recline in the back seat and enjoy the good ride or they dream of having similar roads in our beloved country?
Money should not always be the excuse for our failures. Something very serious is lacking in us. Maybe we lack the self-esteem, the confidence, the ability to dream big, the desire to translate dreams into reality or the leadership to champion our aspirations.
There are many challenges confronting this country and even if we find ourselves helpless, at least we can take time to ponder over them, instead of worrying about imaginary tape recordings and the hallucinations of modern-day Don Quixotes. Our national aspirations should go beyond the frivolous and the trivial.
Whatever way we look at it, we are stagnating unless we want to equate personal acquisitions with national development. The Accra-Tema Motorway is a clear example of how a people without vision could be overtaken by events.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogpost.com

Monuments of waste

2011-06-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
THE military regime of General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong took a wise decision to build modern office complexes to house the Ghana Police Service in all the regions. Those complexes were designed to provide office accommodation for a full-strength regional secretariat and workshops for the service and remove the personnel from the dilapidated and very often scanty buildings which had been their lot.
Those complexes had got to advanced stages of completion when the Acheampong/General F.W.K. Akuffo regime was removed by another group of coup makers on June 4, 1979, led by Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings. The abrupt end to that regime brought those laudable projects to a halt.
More than 30 years after the execution of General Acheampong and six others, namely, General Akuffo, General R.E.A. Kotei, Rear Admiral Joy Amedume, Air-Vice Marshal Yaw Boakye, General E.K. Utuka and Col Roger Felli, no government had found it necessary to complete the office complexes for the police.
Those abandoned complexes became the abode of miscreants until somebody decided that they should be turned into makeshift offices for the Ghana Police Service. The service still lacks the requisite office accommodation at the district and regional levels which exudes the authority and confidence it must portray to the public as the nation’s main law enforcing agency and its first line of defence, while the abandoned complexes remain ugly scars of national neglect.
The wanton neglect and abandonment of national projects did not begin yesterday. It was well pronounced after the overthrow of the government of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s first President. For ideological differences and to undermine all the good things the late Osagyefo stood for, all development projects initiated by that great man but which were not completed in his time were abandoned.
Prominent among such projects were the silos that were being constructed at various locations in the country for the storage of agricultural produce for very good reasons. While these silos remained uncompleted, we have just been reminded that sub-Saharan Africa loses an equivalent of US$4 billion as a result of post-harvest losses. Gone with the silos were the various processing plants established to give process and add value to agricultural produce in the country.
Today, Ghana, with a small population of 25 million or so, cannot support its food consumption, not only because we do not produce enough but significantly because even the little we produce go waste because of storage facilities. Unfortunately, our governments prefer to go begging for food aid from countries such as Japan which do not have a fraction of our fertile land, instead of addressing production and post-harvest losses in a more proactive and pragmatic manner.
Many years ago, Nkrumah’s administration decided on an integrated meat and leather industry by setting up the Aveyime Cattle Ranch and a tannery that would make industrial use of the hide of the cattle. His overthrow led to the abandonment of the equipment ordered from the then Czechoslovakia to rot in their containers. That display of hatred for one person also caused the collapse of our leather industry.
Today, after more than 40 years of that bad decision, we have gone back to the Czech Republic, one of the countries that emerged from the disintegration of Czechoslovakia, for assistance to build our leather industry.
Apart from the flagrant display of lack of any national development agenda which was characteristic of the immediate post-Nkrumah era, successive governments have not helped this country by following up and completing projects initiated by their predecessors.
The abandoned projects are many and varied and cumulatively undermine any pretence for a cohesive national development agenda. They include roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and housing projects which could be found in every part of the country. Some of them have been so totally forgotten that their original drawings could not even be found.
Most of these projects have been abandoned after heavy investments had been made in them. Take, for instance, cultural centres that were to be built in all the regional capitals. None of these have been completed, more than 30 years after they had been initiated. That means the annual national cultural festivals have to be celebrated in abandoned cultural centres, and at each celebration promises are made to complete the centres which were meant to be the central points of the nation’s cultural development and promotion to the outside world in the form of tourism.
The change over to multi-party democracy has not helped us much in this regard. While every new government initiates new projects to boost its political credentials, none makes the effort to complete what others have started. Incidentally, all the governments seldom see their projects through full completion before exiting office.
That is how, in the midst of our infrastructural shortfalls, we can boast bits and pieces of uncompleted projects all over the place. The latest in this haphazard approach to development is evidenced in the manner this government is handling the uncompleted housing projects started by the Kufuor administration.
This was a well-conceived and good-intentioned housing project but at the execution stage it ran into problems partly because of corruption, cronyism and the never-ending refrain of lack of funds. These estates which should have been accommodating workers in Accra, Ashanti-Mampong, Koforidua and other places have become dens of criminals and squatters who have a better use for a facility left to rot away slowly. Meanwhile, massive investments from our scarce resources have been sunk in the projects.
The Mills administration has its own housing agenda and is, therefore, not showing keen interest in the uncompleted ones started by the previous government. It has also initiated its own STX Housing Project which promises, among others, to accommodate the security agencies.
This project has its own challenges and by the time the first foundation stones are laid, there is no way the project will travel the full completion before President Mills completes his first term. So what happens if he does not get the chance for a second term? Does that leave our national investment in the lurch?
Take the Aflao Border Complex Project as another example. This was another project initiated under the Acheampong regime, designed to give a facelift to the Aflao Border Complex which is the country’s main gateway to the east linking us to our traditional neighbours Togo, Benin and Nigeria.
This project, which was to provide offices and residential accommodation for the various institutions operating at the border, including the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, the Ghana Immigration Service and the Ghana Police Service, was never completed.
The Pantang Psychiatric Hospital Complex, which was designed to be a one-touch facility, is hanging, with a lot of uncompleted buildings into which huge sums of money have been committed. The list does not end there.
Quite recently, in 2006, to be precise, a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Kwadwo Asenso- Okyere, started the construction of a stadium complex for the university which, after completion, was to host the West Africa University Games in 2008. More than four years down the line, the stadium project has stalled and the place has become home to squatters.
Sure, there should be a more serious approach to national projects. We cannot continue to abandon projects midway and expect to start new ones with better results. If all these abandoned projects will be reactivated and completed, there is no doubt that this country will experience a major facelift.
These projects are financed by the taxpayer’s money and should not be allowed to go waste at the pleasure of any person or groups of persons. We cannot continue to complain of lack of resources if we allow projects to go waste because some people think their personal interests are not at stake.
The idea that the National Development Planning Commission should be depoliticised to serve as the brokerage of all national projects should be given serious attention, since, left to the Executive alone, we shall continue to count more uncompleted projects.
Anytime I see the uncompleted MDPI building complex at Baatsona which has now been encircled by private buildings; anytime I see the uncompleted National Science Museum; anytime I think of the Kumasi Asafo-Sofoline Interchange, the Achimota-Ofankor, Nsawam-Apedwa, Tetteh Quarshie-Adenta roads, I know we have a long way to go as a nation.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Korle-Bu must stay alive

2011-05-31T13:18:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
Accident victims lie groaning on the bare floor. Those luckier find solace on benches. In all cases, relatives are on hand to help in the administration of drips and other medications. They have to be available to push the wheelchairs, if they cab find one, while saying their silent prayers for the survival of their relatives.
This is not a scenario in some medical facility in a remote part of the country. Those who have ever had the unfortunate experience of rushing accident victims to the Accident Centre of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital will tell you that the picture painted above is too generous to describe the pathetic situation on the ground.
That is just a small part of the Korle-Bu story. Naturally, not all victims survive the ordeal, even though with better and more adequate resources, supported with more caring and dedicated health professionals, the story will be quite different.
Korle-Bu is a human institution which cannot escape the challenges that confront institutions of that nature. Already, as a teaching hospital and the nation’s largest and arguably the last referral medical facility which is also home to some of the best brains in the medical profession, Korle-Bu’s resources, both human and material, are under constant pressure.
It should have been a last resort but patients want the best medical attention they can get and so those with simple ailments that can be handled by the polyclinics and even lesser medical facilities prefer going straight to Korle-Bu and creating congestion that should not have been the case.
These cases of clear misuse of vital national resources notwithstanding, Korle-Bu, for its strategic role in health delivery in the country, can do better than it is doing now. Korle-Bu, for many, has become a huge jungle where one could easily get lost in an emergency situation and what could easily be a manageable situation could result in death because of bureaucracy, neglect or both.
A friend said he saw his wife die before him on a stretcher at the OPD because it was a Saturday and no medical officer was available to handle a life or death situation.
Maintaining operational and administrative discipline in a vast place such as Korle-Bu, with its array of different professional groups, cannot be an easy task. All the same, its operational efficiency could be greatly undermined if workers are left to do their own thing, to the detriment of the general public.
As it is now, it seems the centre cannot hold and things are falling apart. The chain of command is blurred and patients are victims of circumstances beyond their control. That is why response to emergency situations in the country’s last referral medical facility is not the best.
The human factor aside, the most baffling thing is the neglect of Korle-Bu in terms of vital installations and equipment. Some time ago, we were told almost all the lifts were not working. Health workers and relatives are compelled to hire the services of labourers to carry patients to upper floors of the wards and consulting rooms. Surely, that cannot be a gracious commentary on our number one teaching hospital in this 21st century. Even as you read this piece, the rehabilitation/replacement of the lifts is not complete.
Korle-Bu is overcrowded and basic facilities that should be standard for any medical facility are very often unavailable at the place we all boast of as our number one hospital.
This cannot be a question of lack of funds. Installing and maintaining lifts at Korle-Bu should not be too expensive for the Republic of Ghana, the land of gold, diamond, cocoa and now oil and gas. Somebody somewhere or some groups of people are simply not taking the life of our people seriously.
Last week, we were told that 13 surgical theatres at the hospital had to be temporarily closed down because major equipment at the Anaesthesia Department had broken down. Such was the importance of the equipment that apart from emergency cases, Korle-Bu had to suspend most surgical operations.
The question is, why should this happen to Korle-Bu? We were not told what caused the breakdown of the anaesthetic machine. Whatever the cause, have we observed good practices in terms of maintenance and back-up plans?
As it is, we are not likely to get the problem resolved sooner. We have been told the hospital will require more than US$1 million to procure new machines. Secondly, the Ministry of Health has started the long process of scanning the market to identify suppliers who can deliver the equipment promptly and at competitive cost, while at the same time making efforts to mobilise funds for the procurement.
Unless the President intervenes, as has always been the case in such matters, we are not likely to get a new anaesthetic machine in the nearest future. That will be a big blow to health delivery in the country, as we have been told that Korle-Bu handles an average of 1,500 surgical operations a month.
If Korle-Bu paints such a gloomy picture, then we just have to admit that our health delivery system is in serious crisis. It seems we have tolerated our human failures for far too long. We have taken things for granted because we know at the end of the day no one would be held accountable or at worst we shall blame everything on lack of funds. And that ends the matter.
Korle-Bu is our last hope when it comes to our survival and nothing should be spared to make it function to the satisfaction of the general public. Korle-Bu must stay alive if we should not die of what is within the capability of human beings.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

A brothel called children's park

2011-05-24T12:43:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
I was not in the least surprised to hear that the Children’s Park in Kumasi has become a haven for prostitutes, armed robbers and other miscreants. I was not amused to hear that the place which was to serve as a recreational and learning ground for our children has become a free range toilet for some members of the public. As usual, this is a tradition that is being observed.
The Children’s Park in Kumasi is just one of the numerous public facilities that have suffered neglect and left to rot with time. In the 1970s, the government of General I. K. Acheampong built the Kaneshie Sports Complex to serve the sporting needs of Kaneshie and its environs.
The place was designed to have playing fields for various sporting events including football, the nation’s most favourite game, and for indoor games. It also had hostel facilities to serve the camping purposes of our national teams.
It did not take long for the place to become the venue for major sporting events including international boxing tournaments. One would have thought that for its strategic importance for developing the talents of the youth apart from its recreational value, the Kaneshie Sports Complex would be developed to a higher standard beyond how the Acheampong regime left it.
Unfortunately, the place suffered total neglect until the mention of Kaneshie Sports Complex conjured images of criminal gangs, wild reptiles and mosquitoes in the minds of those who know the place very well and have had regular contact with it.
President J.A. Kufuor, in his genuine desire to honour some of our sporting heroes, decided to name the Kaneshie Sports Complex after Azumah ‘Zoom Zoom’ Nelson, the only professor of boxing in the country. One would have expected that the place will undergo a massive transformation before or after this honour. As it is now, I wonder if Azumah Nelson will feel honoured for having such a decrepit place as the Kaneshie Sports Complex named after him.
At the same time that former President Kufuor was doing honour to Azumah Nelson for his exploits in boxing, he honoured Mr Charles Kumi Gyamfi, arguably one of the best footballers, coaches and football administrators this country has ever had, by naming the Winneba Sports College after him.
Unfortunately, that was also another run-down national facility that does not do justice to the stature of C.K. Gyamfi. The good intentions notwithstanding, the deplorable conditions at the Azumah Nelson Sports Complex and the C.K. Gyamfi Sports College at Winneba have debased the spirit behind the change of name.
The Azumah Nelson Sports Complex which bears the name of a great boxer should have been provided with a modern gym to groom the up-and-coming ones, to rekindle interest in the sport and to make it more possible to raise more boxers with the pedigree of Azumah Nelson and even better.
The same can be said of the C.K. Gyamfi Sports College. The name should have conjured images of a soccer icon whose exploits both as a footballer and football coach were unmatched in the nation’s history. But the college named after a great footballer lacks the facilities that would inspire young budding stars and serve as a great monument and a symbol of Ghana’s achievements in football on the continent and on the world stage.
So if these facilities dedicated to two great sports personalities could be left to their fate, if the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum in the heart of the capital could suffer neglect, why should anyone be surprised that playgrounds dedicated to children could be turned into brothels and havens for criminals in the country?
The story of the other children parks in the country is not different from the Kumasi one. Even the Efua Sutherland Park in Accra has not been spared the neglect. Most of the time, the place is in total darkness and only comes to life occasionally on national holidays.
Elsewhere, the Efua Sutherland Park or the Accra Children’s Park should have been a beehive of daily activity. It should have been boasting a library and other educational facilities in addition to recreational activities where working mothers could conveniently live their children while attending to their money-chasing activities.
It will not be surprising if Efua Sutherland Park, like the Kumasi Children’s Park and others in the regional capitals, is serving more as a brothel and a sleeping place for lunatics than as a recreational and educational ground for children. Culture of neglect at its best.
The Kumasi story ended on a promising note. The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, has expressed his intention to take over the development of the park to bring it back to life. Knowing the Asantehene’s position vis-à-vis education and children’s welfare, the Kumasi Children’s Park may be on the way for recovery. What about the rest?

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Flying on worn-out tyres

2011-05-17T13:40:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
Alhaji Asuma Banda might have touched raw nerves when he suggested a few months ago that the government should ban the importation of second-hand vehicles as a way of minimising the carnage on the roads.
From where he is coming from — a business magnate who is well-resourced to acquire any model of vehicle he wishes — it is easy for him to come to the conclusion that banning second-hand vehicles from the roads will provide an answer to the accident menace.
There is no doubt that old vehicles contribute to road accidents. Anything old cannot perform at optimum level. Therefore, it should be expected that a very old vehicle will experience frequent breakdowns and sometimes accidents. But, in our circumstances, it has been established that, in majority of cases, accidents are the result of human failure.
These include speeding, wrong overtaking, disregard of other road users and driving under the influence of alcohol and illegal drugs. Driving has been taken for granted and so there are many people behind the steering wheel who have not gone through any proper training but still managed to possess valid driving licences because of our corrupt nature. All these contribute 80 per cent or more to accident cases.
This means that no matter how new a vehicle is, unless we remove or reduce the above factors, the situation will not see any significant improvement.
But the greatest challenge to Alhaji Banda’s prescription is that majority of vehicles in the country are second-hand.
In the past, it was easy for any senior officer in the public service to acquire a brand new vehicle. Today, things are different. Apart from a few people who, because of their status or job specification, are given brand new vehicles by their organisations, the rest of us must go to the junk market.
At the ministries, departments and agencies, only the chief directors and a few privileged directors have access to brand new vehicles. Other officers have to fight for themselves with their meagre salaries. That was how the second-hand car business became a lucrative one.
Most of the banks have put up packages, in collaboration with the auto companies, to help workers purchase their own vehicles, but salary levels are so low that majority of workers cannot access big loans to go in for brand new vehicles.
So, as Alhaji Banda and others who share in his opinion will realise, it is not the wish of any person to purchase a used or second-hand vehicle. It is the economic status of majority of Ghanaians, including top grade professionals such as medical officers, lecturers, architects, engineers and pharmacists, that forces them onto the second-hand market.
Things are not so easy even on the second-hand market. A fairly good vehicle which is less than 10 years old, depending on the model and year of manufacture, ranges between GH¢12,000 and GH¢25,000.
The high cost of second-hand vehicles has been attributed to the excessive tax regime being applied by the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA). So a vehicle that may cost, say, US$2,000 (equivalent to GH¢3,000) may end up costing more than GH¢10,000 at the point of purchase.
Any attempt to ban the importation of used vehicles will mean that the vast majority of Ghanaians will be without their personal vehicles for private, commercial or industrial use. With the present very poor public transportation system, the situation could well be imagined.
What is even more humiliating to our dignity and dangerous to driving is the fact that about 75 per cent of tyres used by vehicles in Ghana are second-hand. This was the conclusion of a research conducted by the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC).
According to the figures, in 2005, 2006 and 2007, about 6.6 million tyres were imported into the country, out of which about 5.1 million were used ones. That translates into the fact that three in every four tyres sold in Ghana are second-hand. It means the country is virtually driving on tyres used or rejected in other countries.
The same research showed that some imported tyres were not roadworthy, as their service lives had already expired. Other tyres, labelled snow tyres, have found their way into a tropical environment like ours. It is, therefore, not surprising that the research came to the conclusion that a third of accidents could be attributed to second-hand tyres.
The Ghana Standards Board, according to its Head of Marketing and Public Relations, Mr Kofi Amponsah-Bediako, said there were no immediate plans to ban second-hand tyres until there was a review of government’s trade policy on the importation of second-hand tyres.
In February, the Vice-President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, called for a national debate on the importation of second-hand spare parts and tyres. The question is, where will the debate lead us? Second-hand goods are not a choice. No one wants anything second-hand. Even in marriage, every person would want to go in for somebody fresh.
We have been forced by our miserable circumstances to go second-hand in everything — from pants, towels, handkerchiefs, cutlery, plates, glasses, saucepans to electronic goods that have been declared waste in other countries.
Sometimes one may see a truck loaded with junk which under normal circumstances should head for the dumping site. In all probability, that truck may he heading for Abossey Okai from the Tema Port.
In the absence of a manufacturing industry, the second-hand goods business has become a major income-generation and job-creation avenue in the country. So any government will have to calculate the economic and social consequences before coming up with a policy to ban some of the used goods that have choked our markets.
Our poverty level is also a clear indication that no matter how hard we try, for a very long time to come we will have to endure the indignity of consuming what others have used and thrown away.
Maybe our oil and gas will change things later. But since we are not likely to end the importation of second-hand vehicles and worn-out tyres so soon, we just have to advise ourselves, especially the commercial drivers who get excited on the wheels, to go slow on the road.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Africa and leadership deficit syndrome

2011-05-11T12:21:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
Last week, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) set in motion events that adequately offer Ghanaians an idea of things to come next year when campaign for the Presidency and Parliament gathers steam and moves into top gear.
On Tuesday, May 3, 2011, a former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, paid a visit to the NDC headquarters to collect nomination forms in pursuit of her presidential ambitions.
She did not go there alone; she was joined by her cheering supporters. She followed it up with a press conference the following day at the Accra International Conference Centre to formally launch her campaign for the NDC flagbearership.
On Thursday, May 5, 2011, half of Accra came to a standstill when President John Evans Atta Mills visited the NDC headquarters to collect his nomination forms to begin another journey for the Presidency.
That should have been a simple event, but it took the form of a street carnival and it was obvious that official work in the ministries was abandoned for the day, since every minister was part of the presidential entourage in order not to be seen as part of the other camp.
In the few weeks before the Sunyani congress, we are going to witness a lot of activity from both the Nana Konadu and the President Mills camps to win the hearts of the delegates. Foul words may flow out. There may even be brawls, all in a desperate effort to win power at the party level and later at the national level.
The grand battle will be fought next year when the various presidential candidates gear up for the Presidency. A few loyalists have their fortunes intrinsically tied to those of their presidential candidates. Some will get political appointments, while others will witness breakthroughs in their business activities, hence the desperation in the campaign strategies, sometimes turning acrimonious and bloody.
But what is the gain for the country in general? Does political leadership bring about significant change in the lives of the people?
Surely, those committed to the development of this country will not waste their lives or those of others on their way to seeking the opportunity to serve their nation. The selfish motive is very strong, bringing out all the animalistic instincts in us.
That is the problem of Africa. The enthusiasm with which we approach the quest for political power wanes terribly after we get the power. Africa’s political leadership has become a subject for intense discussion at various international fora. Slavery and colonialism, which were the excuses we had been citing in the past for our poor performance in national development, have been mentioned so often that they have lost attraction.
Notwithstanding those two historical misfortunes, Africa’s underdevelopment remains a mystery, judging from the rich resources it has in abundance and which have gone to make other nations rich and powerful.
The focus is now on political leadership which has been identified as the weakest link in the continent’s quest for development. Addressing a World Economic Forum in South Africa, a former Secretary-General of the UN, Mr Kofi Annan, threw the searchlight on political leadership on the continent and said Africa risked squandering rapid economic growth because of poor leadership.
He criticised African leaders who wanted to cling on to power at all cost, instead of developing their economies. He also questioned the over-reliance on unprocessed commodities and insufficient investment in manufacturing and infrastructure.
Mr Annan is a Ghanaian and so he knew what he was talking about. We in Ghana know our situation very well, which fits into what Mr Annan described as “low-quality growth” where we have to import everything, including toothpick from China.
We pride ourselves as top exporters of cocoa beans, timber and bauxite. We have not been able to build industries revolving around these commodities to develop the country’s industrial base and offer employment to our youth.
The cocoa industry alone has the potential of offering jobs to hundreds of thousands of people if we make a deliberate policy to go beyond the production of raw cocoa beans and go into processing.
The case of Nestle is a clear example of what we can do with our natural resources. Nestle is a Swiss company. They do not grow cocoa in Switzerland but Nestle is one of the biggest manufacturers of chocolate and other cocoa products. Why should we be satisfied with being the farmers who produce the cocoa beans while others derive the full benefits?
The same can be said of timber. Why should we destroy our forests by cutting timber logs and exporting them and turn round to import furniture made from our timber for our offices?
We mine gold in Ghana, but, strangely, we do not have a gold refinery which will add value to the unrefined gold. Turkey does not mine gold or diamonds but it has one of the largest jewellery factories in the world.
We have fruits in abundance which go bad when they are in season, but almost all the fruit juices on the shelves of our supermarkets are imported.
It is sad to see tomato puree imported from China being advertised on local television as if they are the best things that could ever happen to a people.
These are serious deficiencies that cannot be blamed on slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism or any world economic order. It is all about leadership and direction. These are serious challenges confronting us as a nation, and so when we pick nomination forms with fanfare, we should not forget that the real work is not just about talking and making promises.
It will be a good thing for our country if we pursue the goals of national development with the same vigour as we pursue the glory of political power.
We must change this country and we do not have any excuse for failure.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Are we serious with tourism development?

2011-05-03T12:43:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
Ghanaians are generally fun-loving people. That is why they take advantage of every national holiday or any special occasion to celebrate with food, drink and music. Even funerals which are supposed to be solemn occasions are fun as soon as the dead is buried.
Unfortunately, recreational spots are woefully limited, thereby compelling most residents of Accra to turn to the beaches for pleasure during holidays and special occasions. This always comes with its dangers as our beaches are not well-developed for mass use by holidaymakers.
This year’s Easter beach parties turned tragic when over nine deaths through drowning or stampede were recorded. Accidents do occur no matter the precautions but either way, fatalities could have been prevented or reduced if there were good management in place at the various beaches frequented by revellers.
Take the La Pleasure Beach for instance. Apart from the sea and sand, there is nothing pleasurable about the place. All the same, people are able to extort money from holidaymakers without providing for their needs, safety and security.
This brings in the question of how enterprising our tourism industry is, for which a whole ministry has been created. The creation of the Ministry of Tourism underscores the government’s acknowledgement of the importance of tourism in packaging the country for the international market and for revenue generation.
The country abounds in tourism potential from the coastal belt with its sandy beaches to the northern zone, which could be developed to attract not only international tourists but local ones who need to travel and appreciate the good things God has endowed this country with.
It is an obvious fact that it is the interest that local people show in their tourist sites that act as magnets to attract foreign visitors. In Ghana, apart from students and occasionally church and other social groups who organize group tours, many Ghanaians show very little interest in internal tourism.
The fault is not theirs. Tourism has seen very little development, if any at all, and, therefore, holds very little attraction to the generality of the population. Take the Aburi Botanical Gardens for example. This wonderful place opened in March 1890 on 64.8 hectares of land is only 35 kilometres away from Accra, the national capital.
Situated 460 metres above sea level, Aburi Botanical Gardens is one of the most beautiful, peaceful and fascinating places that many Ghanaians and foreign visitors would like to visit, for the sheer beauty of the place or to relax and kill stress because of the invigorating nature of the place. I mean this would happen under normal circumstances, but things are not normal at Aburi Botanical Gardens.
Since the colonialists handed over the place to us, we have done very little to add value to it. I will not be surprised if the people of Aburi no longer feel any sense of pride about the place. The visitor is left in awe at the beauty of nature. That is all. Other things that should complement the place and make it exciting and attractive are not there. By now, Aburi Botanical Gardens should have modern chalets that would attract writers, the religiously-inclined, the sick and even newly-wed couples who want a quiet but luxurious environment to spend a few days to work, meditate, convalesce or enjoy at a reasonable fee.
It needs good restaurants which serve local dishes for the sake of foreign guests who will want to savour some of our delicacies they cannot find in their home countries. It needs amusement parks where children, accompanied by their parents, could visit at weekends for educational tours and relaxation.
After more than 100 years of existence, Aburi Botanical Gardens has lost its ‘gardenness’ and is now more or less a forest reserve with very little attraction for those who love nature and the luxury of green vegetation. So even though Aburi Botanical Gardens is so close to Accra, the city dwellers do not frequent the place as expected. Foreigners who would want to escape the harsh winter conditions in their countries to spend days at Aburi Botanical Gardens may be disappointed for lack of the necessary facilities. That is the miserable story of Aburi Botanical Gardens.
The Mole Game Reserve in the Northern Region has a big name on the tourism map of Ghana. However, all excitement will be deflated when the visitor comes face-to-face with the game reserve. Mole Game Reserve is in shambles.
The game reserve is the largest national park and home to 93 mammalian species, 33 reptiles, nine amphibians and an estimated 300 bird species. With this rich collection of animals, Mole Game Park should be an attraction to both local and foreign visitors, but it is not. The roads are bad; the hospitality facility is very poor and inadequate. What nature has generously provided, we as human beings have failed to harness and add value to.
The overlord of the Gonja Traditional Area, Yagbonwura Tuntumka Boresa I, in desperation, called on the government to do something about the game reserve to save it from total collapse when he addressed his people at the recent Damba festival of the people.
Our beaches have been degraded to the extent that only we find it a suitable place for holidays. Beach fronts are prime zones in many places where many would like to spend their days and evenings. Ours have been turned into public toilets and dumping grounds for refuse.
Aburi Botanical Gardens and Mole Game Reserve are true reflections of how serious we have taken tourism development in the country over the years. The places are not accessible. When you manage to get there, you are quickly disappointed by what you see or what you do not see.
Even the castles and forts that we market widely for historical reasons have not been developed and repackaged as tourism attractions for both local and foreign visitors.
Tourism has the potential of bringing money not only into the national coffers, but also capable of changing the economy of our rural areas. The multiplier effect of tourism facilities are obvious and should be known to our political leaders who need to pursue an aggressive tourism development agenda and not the lip-service witnessed so far.
Employment generated in the tourism industry will be more long-lasting and not the short-term measures being pursued by our governments for some political advantage. The vast tourism potential of the Volta Lake, with its numerous islands, are being wasted away while we continue to beg others who know how to harness their natural resources for development for support. Dodi Island is another disappointment for those who were excited on hearing of the place and visited there.
Tourism is a money spinner and can transform our economy, especially the rural economy. But if we are to make it big, then tourism development counts. If we are serious then the plans must be taken away from the desks of bureaucrats and their political masters to the corporate world where firms and individual entrepreneurs will be prepared to make heavy investments in the industry.
Maybe if the Tourism Development Authority becomes real, it would generate more heat and put a fresh impetus into the sector. Aburi Botanical Gardens, the Mole Game Reserve and such other places must not die. And Ghanaians should not die at the beaches because of poor management practice.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Are we missing the fruits of democracy?

2011-04-26T13:16:00.001-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
The politics of our democracy, it seems, is being driven by two powerful forces – the quest for power and the determination to remain in power. So powerful are these obsessions that all other things must fit into a grand design that goes to consolidate them.
In the process, we are unconsciously missing out on most of the good things that democracy offers countries that practise it. These include a very liberal environment that would engender free flow of ideas out of which will come consensus-building towards a common national development objective.
During election time, all the political parties and candidates use every available platform to market themselves and at the same time use every opportunity to discredit their opponents. This is tolerated in any multi-party environment since the more you can make your opponent appear weaker and less reliable, the better your chances of getting the support of the electorate.
Unfortunately, so consumed are we in our determination to win power that our campaigns become very acrimonious, unethical and antagonistic to the point of threatening national peace and stability. All said and done, one would have thought that the end of an election would signify the end of political campaign until another season, so that the party in power will address serious matters of state that will transform the country into a better place.
We are yet to come to that level in our political development. Right from day one, government officials do not know how to exit the campaign platform because their opponents, by some cunning way, have succeeded in keeping them there, thanks to a media that has found politics a profitable venture that should be exploited to the fullest advantage.
What that means is that the government’s focus is always distorted and its actions are virtually dictated by the opposition, whether internal or external, as the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government of Professor John Evans Atta Mills is experiencing now.
That is why the media, especially the electronic media, have become campaign platforms in which case on daily basis government officials must hop from one radio or television station to another, supported by party activists, justifying why they won the election and why the other party lost the election.
We are constantly being reminded of the past as if our whole national life is dependent on that and not the present and the future. A party in government rather than pursuing the agenda of national development becomes the party on the defensive, always trying to parry queries from the opposition or trying desperately to please its so-called grass roots supporters, who have become an army of hungry and frustrated foot-soldiers.
A big chunk of the population has turned every part of the city into a marketplace. City authorities want to act by enforcing the bye-laws. The traders let off the battle cry: “We shall not vote for you in 2012”. Party victory supersedes national development, so the government recoils to allow the illegality to continue. Opposition parties, especially those who are more likely to gain from any slip by the ruling party, know the truth and know that the city authorities are on the right track if there should be decency in the town we call our capital city but will join the chorus with the traders. “You see how callous the people you elected are?” they would ask with wicked smile on their faces. A national cause has been lost to political expediency.
A President comes under siege from within and without. He is reeling under a barrage of accusations – from leaving party loyalists to go hungry to failing to arrest and prosecute people perceived to have drained the national coffers for personal aggrandisement.
Out of desperation and without doing proper ground work, people are sent to court and later set free not necessarily because they are innocent but on technical grounds. Nothing can be more humiliating than to see a typical national wrecker laughing all the way to celebrate victory over haste and impropriety.
We know things that governments such as the ones that we have under the 1992 Constitution cannot do even if they wish to do so. We have gone beyond arbitrariness, so no matter how hard we may try, at the end of the day, the rule of law will prevail, no matter how people interpret it.
These realities are often lost to us when we are campaigning for political office. At the end of the day, we are held hostage by our own promises. The late Ya Na’s case is a national calamity that should be addressed so accordingly. But we have made it a political case to the extent that the effects have gone beyond the boundaries of Dagbon and are gradually pitting half of the country against the other, when that should not have been the case in the first place.
We must be bold and admit that our democracy is drifting. The party in government is spending a greater part of its time fending off accusations, while the major one in opposition is pushing the government on retreat. Both ways, the national cause is lost and it is all about how to remain in power or how to come back to power.
Meanwhile our national problems remain almost the same. Our educational system is still in a bad shape. To some of us the Capitation Grant and the School Feeding Programme that have become the song on the lips of government officials are not what we consider to be the solutions to a collapsing system. They are not answers for poor infrastructure, inadequate learning materials, lack of motivation for teachers and other workers in the education system and the poor examination results being recorded by our children.
We still have poor road network. It is strange and amazing that travelling between Accra and Kumasi, our two biggest and most important cities, cannot be an exhilarating experience, nearly 60 years after independence. Even a journey between Accra and Tema, a distance of about 30 kilometres, can be nightmarish.
With all the bureaucracy called the Ministry of Agriculture, we are not ashamed to receive maize donation from Japan, a country that is still trying to recover from the devastation of earthquake and the resultant tsunami and nuclear melt-down.
We still have serious challenges in several sectors, including health, water and sanitation, graduate unemployment and youth delinquency. These are serious challenges but which appear not to be of much concern to our politics. Ours is to win power, fair or foul, and do everything to remain there.
Very soon, four years will be over and the game will start all over. Government officials will tell us a million and one achievements they have chalked up while the rest of us struggle to see or come to terms with those achievements. The blame game will start as usual in the inordinate ambitious fight for supremacy in the political arena. But our country may not change for the better.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping and Training Centre — A beacon of peace-building, conflict resolution

2011-04-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
From the ashes of any major calamity sprouts monuments of peace and progress. That being the case, one can say the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) did not come by through accident.
Those who have followed the numerous political upheavals in the sub-region, some culminating in violent confrontations and civil wars, will admit that the KAIPTC was a consequence of the many conflicts which bedevilled the sub-region over the last two decades or so. It was conceived and nurtured by the desire to pre-determine coming events, proactively act to stem conflicts and, where they become unavoidable, put mechanisms in place to restore normalcy in conflict situations as quickly as possible and reduce to the barest minimum the carnage and social disintegration associated with such violent conflicts.
After the secessionist war between the short-lived Biafra and Nigeria between 1967 and 1970, the sub-region enjoyed relative peace, even though military coups were rampant in most of the countries. But when Charles Taylor led his fighters of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) to launch an attack on Samuel Doe’s forces on Christmas Eve, 1989, the situation in the sub-region changed.
For the next 10 years or so, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) had to intervene in the Liberian civil war until the return to civilian rule in 2003. That war and those in Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire and, to a limited extent, Cape Verde, might have brought it home to leaders of the sub-region the need to have an early-warning mechanism in place to engender proactive efforts to pre-empt violent confrontations, instead of waiting for the harm to be done before mobilising for peacekeeping operations.
The experiences gained mainly by Ghanaian soldiers in several peacekeeping operations in various parts of the world, including the Middle East, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur and other conflict zones where they saw the ravages and miseries brought about by wars, created the platform for the establishment of an institution that would serve as a forum for top military officers, leading politicians and civil society organisations committed to peacekeeping and conflict prevention and resolution to engage themselves on matters of peace-building and security challenges.
There was also the growing awareness that the wind of democracy blowing across the continent had brought in its wake election-related conflicts such as those witnessed in Kenya in 2007 and Cote d’Ivoire after the November 2010 elections. That demanded diplomacy and expertise in peace-building and conflict resolution to handle. The ground was, therefore, fertile for an institution such as the KAIPTC to sprout out of the debris of war and conflicts in the sub-region.
In January 2004, the KAIPTC became formally established, even though the records show that it started its programmes in 2003 as one of the three ECOWAS-designated training centres of excellence committed to undertaking research into conflict and issues of which appropriate training courses are developed and delivered for various military, police and civilian personnel involved in peace support operations not only in West Africa but also other parts of the world.
It was established by the Ministry of Defence Instruction (MDI) dated November 10, 1998, with Establishment Number MOD/03. The Ministry of Defence, in collaboration with the ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Interior and Finance, exercise limited supervision over the activities of the KAIPTC. It, however, has an independent governing board as its highest decision-making body.
For its vision, the KAIPTC aims: “To be an internationally preferred centre of excellence for research into and training for conflict prevention, management and resolution, and innovative thinking in integrated peace support operations and sustainable delivery of enhanced regional capacity building for peace support operations.”
It has as its mission: “To develop and deliver internationally recognized professional training courses and related programmes to equip personnel with selected skills and competencies required to meet Africa’s present and future complex peace and security challenges.”
At the end of the day, the strategic objectives of the KAIPTC include: Contributing to the development of regional and sub-regional capacity in the delivery of integrated peace support operations; Enhancing regional and sub-regional capacity for conflict prevention, management, resolution and peace-building; Enhancing understanding of critical peace and security issues in West Africa in particular and the continent as a whole; Creating effective, efficient and sustainable management and support arrangements for the centre.
These are laudable objectives and, seven years down the line, the research and training staff of the centre have collaborated with various development partners to deliver over 170 courses in diverse aspects of peace support operations for over 5,400 individuals and organisations from 87 countries across the world.
Within this short period of its existence, the KAIPTC has already attained recognition as a renowned international centre of excellence for education, training and research in peace support operations. It has, over the period, successfully engaged and collaborated effectively with national governments, regional and international organisations, diverse national and international institutions and others involved in research/training, governance, peace and security issues.
It has programmes in crisis information management; disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration; small arms and light weapons specialised course; conflict prevention; the rule of law and the media in peace support operations.
The centre has also been conducting research in areas such as regional peace and security, conflict prevention and peace-building and civil-military relations. Others are human trafficking, money laundering, maritime security, cross-border crimes and post-conflict peace-building.
As an indication of its development and progress, it has received accreditation from the National Accreditation Board as a tertiary institution. This has paved the way for the centre to run graduate programmes, including Master of Arts in Conflict, Peace and Security; Postgraduate Diploma in Development Diplomacy and Post-Certificate in Integrated Peace Support Operations.
The idea is to deliver peace and security training at an academically upgraded level, while at the same time providing an avenue for generating sustainable funds for the centre.
The centre has also established partnerships with some renowned international bodies and educational institutions, including the University of Pretoria in South Africa, the Fourah Bay College, the University of Sierra Leone, the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services and the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Conflict Prevention.
The KAIPTC’s journey this far would not have been possible without support from various international development partners, both governmental and non-governmental, from the US, Germany and the UK.

NDC bleeding slowly internally

2011-04-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
Whenever there is a cut on the body, blood oozes out to signal that there is damage that needs to be repaired. It is not always that we see blood where the body suffers an injury. There is something called internal bleeding and health professionals will tell you that it is very dangerous, since you are not likely detect any danger until it is too late.
I lost a colleague who suffered that fate. He had been involved in a motor accident and since there had been no wounds on the body, it was assumed that the injuries were minor and so he did not go for a thorough medical check-up. Two weeks later, the man was dead. He had woken up in the morning and prepared to go for a review of a broken limb which had been put in plaster of Paris (POP) when he collapsed.
Apparently, he had had a cruel knock on the head in the accident and suffered internal bleeding. Who knows, my friend would be alive by now if the damage had been detected through scan or something else.
Such is internal bleeding.
I do not think only the human body suffers internal bleeding, at least from the figurative sense. And I want to think that one organisation or institution which is suffering from what can be described as internal bleeding is the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the party that forms the present government led by President John Evans Atta Mills.
The NDC has gone that lane before and so apart from the fresh disciples, those who have been with the party for a long time know what I am referring to. The NDC has two serious ailments which keep recurring, with severe consequences. These are its inability to manage internal dissent and excessive hero-worshipping.
The party suffered its first major political defeat in 2000 mainly on account of these twin ailments. That does not take away credit from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) which went into the 2000 electoral battle fully prepared and well organised. But it confronted an opponent that was bleeding from self-inflicted wounds.
So at a time when the NDC needed its human and material resources most, it suffered a split and went into an election battling itself. It started in 1998 when the Founder and Leader, Jerry John Rawlings, breached party protocol and declared Professor Mills his chosen successor. That anointing episode became known as the Swedru Declaration.
As a man who brooked no challenge, Rawlings’s declaration blocked all appeals for a democratic means of choosing his successor and voices of dissent were actually silenced in a ruthless manner to compel some party members, especially a good chunk of youthful activists, led by Goosie Tandoh, to break away.
The wounds deepened and bled profusely when the leader and founder played a significant role in the choice of parliamentary candidates. The death blow came when Dr Obed Yao Asamoah, who had his eyes glued to the running mate slot, was swerved in the last minute and replaced by Mr Martin Amidu, Obed’s deputy at the Ministry of Justice. Not even the huge popularity of President Rawlings, who was exiting after two terms, could save the NDC in the 2000 elections.
No lessons were learnt, as later events proved. In 2002, at the International Trade Fair Centre at La, the party went into battle against itself again. That time, it was over the election of national officers. The founder and leader came out strongly against Dr Asamoah, one of the contestants for the chairmanship.
The contest became so acrimonious that by the end of it the NDC was so battered and bruised that unity was the last thing anyone would expect from disgruntled members.
The fragmentation continued. In 2003, the party went to congress at the University of Ghana to elect a flag bearer for the 2004 presidential election. The congress venue became a hostile turf for supporters of Dr Kwesi Botchway, the man who was contesting Prof Mills. It was more like a battle between two opposing forces than a party event to pick a presidential candidate to represent the party. There were even allegations of ball-squeezing at the congress to put more fear into those who dared to challenge the founder’s choice.
Things went so bad that by the time the party geared up for the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2004, the presidential candidate and the party chairman could not be seen on the same campaign platform.
The infamous Koforidua Congress to elect national officers for the party left deep scars which time has not been able to heal. That time the injuries went from bruises to gaping wounds. The formation of the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) by Dr Asamoah, who lost his position as party chairman, was one of the fallout from that congress.
The Koforidua Congress and the experience gained from it informed the party leadership to prescribe a format for the election of a flag bearer for the 2008 presidential election which seemed to have worked and brought the NDC back to power.
In the past, all the battles were engineered and led by Rawlings in favour of Prof Mills, the man he had chosen against party wishes and who, he made sure, faced no obstacles on his path.
Today, Rawlings is preparing for another battle. Incidentally, by an irony of fate, the gun has been turned on Prof Mills, the man Rawlings claims has betrayed him and the party he founded. From day one when the man entered office as President of the Republic, he has had no peace and, for the first time since we entered the Fourth Republic, an incumbent President is to face challenge from his own party for nomination to contest a second time.
There is nothing wrong with that if some people think the ship of state is not being steered out of troubled waters and want a change of captain. After all, democracy is about choices. But the bitter and foul language being used by the game players and the ill-effects they are bound to leave behind make it necessary for some of us to appeal for moderation.
We can learn something from Mrs Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. They fought one of the fiercest battles for nomination as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. But when it ended, they are still working together.
Mrs Clinton has not given any indication that she is going to challenge President Obama, who has declared his intention for a second term. Who knows — Mrs Clinton may be waiting for the end of Obama’s era before restaging her ambition for the presidency, apparently in reverence for the man who made her Secretary of State.
The NDC leadership is not unaware of the damage internal bleeding can cause to its fortunes and must, therefore, play it cool to avoid another electoral fiasco in 2012.
It is the prayer of many Ghanaians, I hope, that after July 10, 2011, things will return to normalcy in the NDC and President Mills will have the needed concentration to complete his term on a sound note for the sake of the millions of Ghanaians who want to see positive changes in their lives.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Back to Okada debate

2011-04-05T05:05:00.001-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
A friend once narrated a traumatic experience he had in one of those terrible traffic jams ravaging Accra. He was being driven to the Kotoka International Airport to catch a flight when he got caught in heavy traffic.
At one stage, he became desperate, as his mind was in turmoil. He knew that unless something miraculous happened, he was definitely going to miss his flight. Then it happened. A motor rider was passing by and without knowing why, he signalled him to stop. The rider obliged and my friend pleaded with him that he was on his way to the airport but, as things stood, he would need his assistance if he was to get to the airport in time to board his flight. The rider did not hesitate and so my friend bid his driver farewell and joined the rider with his suitcase at the back.
If there is anything such as divine intervention, that was one. My friend got to the airport on time to go through departure formalities. The motor rider even politely rejected the monetary ‘thank you’ my friend had offered him but gave my friend his phone number so that they could stay in touch.
In today’s scheme of things, that kind rider would have qualified as an Okada operator and possibly face prosecution for undertaking an illegal operation.
I cannot tell how the Okada business started. Maybe it began on a very low key with a few motorbike owners who wisely thought they could make a living out of the madness on the streets of Accra called traffic jams by ferrying desperate commuters through the jam to their destinations.
And who says the market is not saturated with willing passengers like my friend who can see their business opportunities slipping away as they get trapped in heavy traffic at Mallam, on the Spintex Road or Abeka-Lapaz.
That is how Okada operations has become part of our transportation system.
But, no matter the good purpose Okada serves, it is illegal. The law is quite explicit on that. Section 128, Part IV of the Road Traffic Regulations prevents the use of motorcycles for commercial purposes. The regulations also make the ownership and patronage of commercial motorcycles or tricycles for commercial purposes illegal. As a result, Okada operators occasionally suffer arrest and court fines upon conviction.
On Tuesday, February 1, 2011, the Okada operators decided to make a case for their business and to seek legal recognition. They, therefore, rode in convoy, about 300 of them, to present a petition to Parliament.
The operators, who parade under the umbrella of the Ghana Private Motorbike Operators Union, wanted legal recognition so that they could operate freely without arrest. They made a strong case for recognition because, apart from finding employment for themselves, the Okada system was also serving the travelling public to avoid heavy traffic or go to areas vehicles could not go.
The reception at Parliament House was cordial, as the Majority Leader, Mr Cletus Avoka, and the Deputy Minority Leader, Mr Ambrose Dery, gave the Okada leadership a good hearing and promised to push their petition to the appropriate quarters for consideration. They also praised them for the orderly manner in which they had organised themselves to the House.
However, the response of some members of the public was not positive for Okada operations. Some perceived Okada operators to be mostly criminals who snatch bags. Others also claimed that the Okada business, if legalised, would add to the chaos on the streets. Some, for environmental purposes, kicked against the Okada business because the bikes would pollute the atmosphere with their fumes.
These are all legitimate concerns. But can we say Okada has no positive sides? In the first place, who says everyone on a motorbike is a criminal? Don’t we have criminals driving some of the most expensive vehicles in town? If we take the case of the fumes, can we say that motorbikes emit more carbon monoxide than the jalopies we are compelled by scarce resources to allow into the country and which are polluting the atmosphere with dark smoke?
For a developing country confronted by many challenges, the best we can do is to look at the positive side of things. Secondly, the best way to manage a situation is to recognise its existence and the good things it can offer. Then we can be in a position to streamline its operations.
It is a fact that many Ghanaians patronise the services of Okada operators, not only in Accra and the big towns but also in the rural areas where roads are very bad or non-existent. We also know that Accra’s traffic problem is partly due to the large number of vehicles on our limited roads. So if there is a way we can reduce reliance on vehicles for intra-city movement, that opportunity must be exploited.
Remaining glued to the past, without relating to current trends and exigencies, will only lead to sabotaging our forward march. The law against the use of motorbikes for commercial purposes was made by man for man. At the time of making that law, it made sense because we had a smaller population, public transportation was not much of a problem and only a few vehicles were on the roads.
Today, the reality is that we have a bigger population and more vehicles are on the same few roads and so very often people get to their appointments very late or never make it. If we are not in the position to build vast flyovers in the city to reduce traffic, we can use our ingenuity to find other ways to solve an endemic problem.
So, as stated earlier, the law was made by man for man and, therefore, the law can be changed by man for the convenience of man. It should be possible to amend the law so that motorbikes that want to operate commercially will have special registration plates and insured appropriately. It should also be possible to organise Okada operators under a recognised body, just as the GPRTU is for commercial vehicles. To further protect patrons, other precautionary measures, such as special uniforms and personal identity tags, will be required of the riders.
As for criminalising Okada operations, the earlier that notion is discarded, the better. There are criminals among taxi drivers who rob their passengers; there are criminals who wear three-piece suits and drive expensive cars; there are criminals in our offices, in our communities. In fact, there are criminals everywhere and it should not be strange to find a few criminals in the Okada business.
But, surely, there are those in the majority who are committed to their job and are saving many on a daily basis the heartache of getting stuck in heavy traffic for hours.
It is for us, as a nation, to accept Okada as part of our transportation system and define the rules that will govern its operation. That is thinking positively.
It is, therefore, reassuring that Alhaji Collins Dauda, the Minister of Transport, has stated that the subject is not closed and that his ministry will consult various stakeholders to discuss the issue. I hope at the end of the day the positive things about Okada will see more light than the negatives to pave the way for legalising it.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot

US, its war allies at it again

2011-03-30T13:44:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
Their politicians sound like missionaries on a humanitarian mission while the excitement in the voice of their media commentators could not be missed.
The United States of America and its allies in the Western world always find excuse to launch military attacks on less powerful nations when it suits them. They are either fending off communism, defending democracy or fighting terrorism. Whatever the excuse, it offers the opportunity for the US and its European allies to test their latest military weapons while unleashing massive destruction on their hapless victims.
As usual, the powerful Western media is available to justify these military operations while downplaying the atrocities, the destruction and the human suffering these wars bring upon the people on whose behalf those operations were being executed.
As far back as August 6, 1945, the US demonstrated how far it could go to use its massive military power to annihilate and humiliate people when it dropped the first nuclear bomb in human history on Hiroshima, a Japanese city. That operation killed an estimated 80,000 people immediately and the casualty figures rose to between 90,000 and 140,000.
Three days later on August 9, 1945, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, another Japanese city, killing an estimated 40,000 people immediately, with the death toll going up to 74,000 over time.
Almost 65 years after these devastating atrocities, the Japanese people are still carrying reminders of the nuclear holocaust unleashed on them by the US. It was, therefore, not surprising that the recent powerful earthquake which struck Japan and triggered a nuclear meltdown from their nuclear plants brought back traumatic memories of those Hiroshima and Nagasaki days.
The US justified the deployment of nuclear weapons in those days, claiming they wanted to bring the Second World War to a speedy end when many historians will tell you that the war had virtually come to an end but for a few pockets of resistance and, therefore, eliminating over 200,000 people from the surface of the earth in three days was the most monstrous thing for any self-respecting military to do.
Japan had since come out of that annihilation to become an industrial and economic giant, partially with American support, apparently to purge their conscience and mostly due to the hard work and ingenuity of the Japanese.
One of the primary goals for the formation of the United Nations Organisation after the end of World War II (WW2), was to end all hostilities and avoid wars, especially taking into account the massive devastation which characterised that war.
Unfortunately the UN could not end wars, because the principal movers of the global organisation spearheaded by the US had national and regional interests which they were determined to use all means to defend and in some cases foist on others. That brought in the Cold War when the military balance was between the Eastern socialist bloc led by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the Western capitalist bloc led by the US.
All the wars that were fought in the post WW2 era were ideological battles between the West and the East. You can mention the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in the jungles of Laos, Cambodia in south-east Asia and in the Ogaden in the Horn of Africa and forests of Nicaragua, Grenada and Panama and in the mountains of Afghanistan.
Incidentally, the US featured prominently in all these wars either directly or using surrogate forces all in the name of defending democracy or fighting communism.
The bi-polar world did not help Third Countries especially those of Africa, whose leaders took refuge in the ambits of either power depending on the exigencies of the day. That was how many dictators such as Mobutu Sese Seko of former Zaire, now DR Congo, General Gnasingbe Eyadema of Togo and many others were able to survive on the continent.
The Cold War also cut short the rule of some progressive African leaders whose ideological biases did not conform to the wishes of the US and their allies. But be as it may, the world welcomed the collapse of the Soviet Empire which brought down the Berlin Wall and historically brought to an end the Cold War.
Before the world could settle down to reap the benefits of a world without ideological battles, the US, which emerged as the sole superpower, started picking its own targets especially those that escaped its wrath by seeking protection under the Soviet umbrella during the Cold War era.
In 1992, the US attacked Iraq. Even though the official excuse was to free Kuwait from Iraqi invasion, the hidden ambition to annex the oilfields of Iraq and weaken it militarily on the wishes of Israel were well known to those who follow Middle East politics.
The Operation Desert Storm was never conclusive so the US and its allies were lying in wait for the right time.
In 2001, the US found an excuse to invade Afghanistan, when on September 11, 2001, a group of Arab youth surprised the world by blowing the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York with hijacked aircraft and attacked important buildings in Washington DC.
The attacks were blamed on the Taliban who were ruling in Afghanistan and the US mobilised international forces to invade Afghanistan to chase the Talibans out of office. The war in Afghanistan is still raging and whether the US took a wise decision or not is still being debated.
In 2003, the US mobilised world opinion against President Hussein Saddam, claiming he had a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction which were dangerous for the safety and security of the world. Against all voices of moderation, President George W. Bush Jnr managed to get Britain, the traditional ally of the US, and other so-called forces to attack Iraq.
The coalition forces managed to topple and kill Saddam, and also succeeded in destroying the infrastructure of Iraq and reducing a historical civilisation into rubble. No weapons of mass destruction were found.
Everybody knows Col Muammar Gadaffi has overstayed his welcome as leader of Libya. It is also recognised that it is unfair to attack protesters with military might. But can anybody honestly describe as protesters heavily armed men wielding automatic weapons and anti-aircraft missile launchers who are ready to confront the regular army of Libya when peaceful revolutions had taken place in Tunisia and Egypt a few weeks earlier?
As usual, the US and its allies have once again succeeded in hoodwinking the whole world by claiming they want a UN resolution to impose a No Fly Zone over Libyan airspace. They got Resolution 1973 and the rest is another history unfolding.
Those who fought for UN Security Council Resolution 1973 claimed they wanted to protect innocent Libyans from the military attacks of Gaddafi’s army. But who are they protecting now, having unleashed their military might on Libya, destroying everything in sight including oil installations and human settlements?
What would have been the response of the United Kingdom, if some benevolent force were to rally to the protection of the Irish Republican Army which for many years battled the British Armed Forces? What about the Red Brigades of Italy, do they not deserve to be heard? Or the Basque Separatists of Spain. Is their demand for autonomy not a genuine cause which deserves global support?
So why should Libya be destroyed because some of her citizens are justifiably demanding political reforms? How many of those who demonstrated in Tunisia and Egypt used AK-47s, machine guns and anti-aircraft weapons? Only the US, Britain, France, Italy and their allies could tell.
Where next will the war allies move is a wild guess, but the Libyan people and the countries of the Arab League will be making a serious mistake if they think their cause is the prime motive for the calamity befalling Libya from the US and its coalition partners.
If they are still in doubt they should find out why UN Security Resolution 242 passed as far back as 1967, ordering Israel to vacate all Arab lands occupied during the war of that year cannot still be enforced.
The UN, rather than protecting the world against unnecessary aggression and making it a better place for all, has become a tool in the hands of the US and its allies to use as and when they find it convenient to hold the rest of the world to ransom.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Lessons from Cuba

2011-03-22T04:59:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
THE Cuban experience is a well-known story. Cuba is a small island in the Caribbean. Latest estimates show that it has a population of 11 million. In terms of land mass, Cuba is smaller than Ghana, with a size of 110,860sq.km, as against Ghana’s 238,500sq.km.
Cuba’s modern history began in 1959 when Fidel Castro and his 26th of July Movement removed Fulgencio Batista from office in what has become the Cuban Revolution. The revolution witnessed the expropriation of private property with little or no compensation, the naturalisation of public utilities and the closing down of the Mafia-controlled gambling industry.
That development met with stiff resistance from the US, its powerful northern neighbour, resulting in the imposition of trade and diplomatic embargo by the US on Cuba in 1963. The US also launched several covert operations through its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to topple the regime without success. Cuba has survived till today.
Cuba has not only survived after decades of isolation by the US and its Western allies but also chalked up tremendous successes which even its opponents admit are mind-boggling and worthy of commendation and emulation.
Our Vice President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, who last week was the guest of the Cuban government, could not but proclaim that the US blockade notwithstanding, Cuba had made tremendous progress in several fields, especially medicine, that Africa could learn from in moving forward.
Cuba has attained a literacy rate of 99.8 per cent and its infant mortality rate (6.1 per 1,000 births) is lower than that most of developed countries, including the US, whose rate is 6.8/1,000 births.
Cuba’s average life expectancy rate is 78.3, third to Canada and Chile in the Americas, while its doctor/patient ratio is the highest in the world. In fact, Cuba has thousands of doctors serving in over 40 countries worldwide, including Ghana, where Cuban doctors and other health professionals have been rendering services in some of the remotest parts of the country.
Cuba is not an oil-exporting country and derives most of its revenue from the sugar industry, mining and tourism, including medical tourism which brings cash from the export of medical professionals to Europe, Latin America, Canada and America.
Notwithstanding hostility from the US, Cuba had been a friend of Africa’s fight against colonialism and imperialism. Cuban soldiers have fought in the same trenches alongside their African brothers in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia and elsewhere in the wars of independence and liberation.
Cuba’s case may not be all rosy, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union when support from the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) dried up while the US commercial blockade was still on.
But the Cuban spirit is still worthy of emulation by African countries if they hope to one day be their own masters.
Vice President Mahama did not mince words when he told African envoys in Havana that in order to turn around Africa’s challenges into success stories like Cuba’s, “Africa must stand as a continent that represents itself; we must break down the regulations that tie us to our colonial masters”.
He went on, “Until we break the barriers, all the protocols that we have signed, such as the free movement of persons, will not work.”
We in Ghana particularly have to take a cue from Cuba that nothing comes easy and that it takes a lot of determination to separate one from freedom and bondage. Apart from the Cuban medical brigade consisting of more than 200 health personnel currently in the country, the Cuban government has offered to assist Ghana to train 250 specialist doctors to beef up the resource capacity of the Ghana Health Service (GHS).
These specialist doctors will train our doctors in areas such as anaesthetics, clinical pathology and haematology, internal medicine, general surgery, morbid anatomy and paediatrics and most of these doctors will be deployed in health facilities in most of the deprived areas which most of our doctors see as no-go areas.
In addition to this, Cuba has extended a US$74 million facility to Ghana to enhance the national effort at fighting malaria. The money is to be used to pay for the chemicals that will be used for the anti-malaria project, the technical personnel who will be deployed from Cuba and their Ghanaian counterparts.
As could be seen, the Cuban offer is not free of charge. Already, Cuba is demanding that Ghana should be responsible for the payment and upkeep of the specialist doctors who will be posted to the country.
The question is, for how long are we going to rely on Cuban doctors? Can we learn from Cuba how it has been able to train so many doctors for export and do the same here, instead of continuing to rely on that country’s largesse which will not last forever?
Since the Vice President himself has seen the wisdom in breaking the bonds of colonialism and dependency as the surest way of moving forward, shall we, for once, pledge to ourselves that in the next 10 years or so we shall end the importation of Cuban doctors into the country?
I believe if we end spending money frivolously in certain areas and protect our national revenue more than we are doing now, we should be able to provide for our needs. The difference between Ghana and Cuba is not about the availability of resources, as a cursory glance at the natural resources of the two countries will show that Ghana is far ahead. The difference lies in focus, management and setting a strong national agenda that must be pursued with all vigorousness and seriousness.
If yesterday we saw our salvation in the advanced Western countries and today, after many years of self-rule, we see salvation in countries we share trenches with in the developing world, then we must admit that there is something fundamentally wrong with us and the earlier we recover ourselves, the better.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Teachers' uprising and other matters

2011-03-15T05:19:00.000-07:00

By Kofi Akordor
IT was the end of the month and teachers, like all salaried workers, trooped to the banks to withdraw what will keep body and soul together for the following 30 or so days. That time, their expectations were very high because their salaries were not going to be the usual thing but something they had been promised would keep them smiling all the way from the bank to the classrooms and, obviously, to their homes.
As we all do when a back pay or some windfall is on its way, the teachers drew lavish budgets against the latest flat screen TV sets and all those modern electronic gadgets that have become the envy of most workers whose incomes could only afford them dreaming about those items.
Many were those who were ready to confront their merciless landlords, for once, with some cynical smile as they doled out wads of notes to pay for rent arrears and possibly pay in advance to cover rent for a month or two.
Nobody should blame the teachers. They had been assured by their leadership and spokespersons for the government that things were going to change dramatically in a positive way after they (teachers) had been migrated onto the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS).
Then the unexpected happened. What promised to be a happy pay day became a doomsday. Things did not work out the right way. Salaries, instead of seeing major increases, had been slashed, allowances agreed upon did no reflect in the salaries and, where there had been increases, they were so insignificant that to some it was better they stayed where they were before. The budget has been thrown in disarray. All the expectations had evaporated into thin air. Immediately excitement gave way to exasperation, desperation, frustration and total rejection.
Everybody admitted that serious things had gone wrong. The first buck stopped at the doorstep of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC). Mr George Smith-Graham of the FWSC, the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department (CAGD) and the Ghana Education Service (GES), the major employer, quickly downloaded the burden. The leadership of the teachers had been in a rush to join the SSSS and did not allow a test run of the new salaries to allow for the correction of anomalies.
Meanwhile, the leaderships of the various teachers’ groups — the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), which appears to be the most vocal, the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) — had their own versions for those who cared to listen.
The SSSS, which was conceived with all good intentions, had run into serious trouble at the crucial hour when it mattered most. The implementation had backfired, putting into jeopardy many months of tireless work.
The government, in anticipation of the backlash, put in place a joint technical committee made up of representatives of NAGRAT, GNAT, TEWU, the GES, the FWSC and the CAGD and tucked it away in the serene environment of Dodowa to deliberate on all the anomalies and come out quickly to solve them.
The teachers, however, would not compromise. All appeals to them to return to the classroom fell on deaf ears. They had suffered for far long and the latest was a slap in the face and so they would not take any excuses short of the right thing being done. At one stage, they saw their leaders as traitors who had sold out to the government. Some even threatened to go the Tunisian or Egyptian way and camp at the Independence Square until all anomalies were rectified and allowances paid.
These allowances include: Professional allowance (15%); Risk (30%); Rent (20%); Transport (10%); Clothing (10%); Stationery (15%); Co-curricular (20%); Marking (25%); Research (15%); Preparation of Lesson notes (5%) and Invigilation (5%).
The more the explanations and appeals, the more resilient the teachers became. Apart from a nation-wide demonstration to press home their case, the teachers threatened to disrupt the 54th Independence anniversary by boycotting the event. Thank God, the celebration went on successfully at the Independence Square.
On Friday, March 11, 2011, when their leaders were locked up in serious negotiations with their employers and government representatives, some teachers were still demonstrating and at one stage came under tear gas from the canisters of the police for going beyond bounds.
Thankfully, some kind of agreement has been reached and the parties have found a common ground on which to stand for future negotiations. On Friday, March 11, 2011, the various representatives on both the teachers and the government sides appended their signatures to a document which we hope will send the teachers back to the classrooms.
Those who signed the document included Mr John Nyoagbe, Deputy General Secretary of GNAT; Mr Stanilaus P. Nabome, Deputy General Secretary of NAGRAT; Mr Peter Lumor, National Chairman of TEWU; Dr Kwabena Duffuor, the Minister of Finance; Mrs Betty Mould-Iddrisu, the Minister of Education; Mr Mahama Ayariga, the Deputy Minister of Education; Mr Smith-Graham, the Chief Executive of the FWSC, and Mr E.T. Mensah, the Minister of Employment and Labour who witnessed the day’s agreement.
A major point in the agreement was the introduction of the 15 per cent teachers retention premium which is an incentive package covering all professional teachers and certain categories of non-teaching staff in the GES who are members of TEWU, with the aim of attracting and retaining teachers in the classroom.
The committee also agreed that the joint technical committee should ensure that all errors detected in the February salaries of teachers were corrected and the right salaries paid at the end of March.
The question is, could we have avoided the one week of hostilities and confrontation? The answer is, it was possible. There is this saying that what is worth doing is worth doing well. All the parties should have exercised patience, instead of raising the stakes so high. We have allowed too much politics into the whole exercise of migrating workers onto the SSSS, thereby diverting attention which should have been devoted to the exercise to ensure that the best comes out of it.
The government, on one hand, was too eager to please workers, while the workers. on the other, with their appetites whetted to astronomical levels were in no mood to wait. The result was what we witnessed over the last two weeks.
There are many more workers’ groups to be migrated onto the SSSS. We hope the FWSC and other stakeholders are gaining experience in this exercise and will do due diligence before coming up with its final products to save the nation unnecessary tension.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Save the beloved country

2011-03-08T03:17:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
IT was a winding, dusty and muddy journey from Sakumono to Accra. The driver, in order to beat the traffic, decided to use what in local parlance is described as short-cuts. What should, therefore, have been a straight drive from Sakumono through Nungua and Teshie to Accra turned out to be a winding, meandering and delicate manoeuvring at the outskirts of the two suburbs before finally emerging at a place close to the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC).
The question is: Was this circuitous route worth the effort? Here we are, confronted with a dirty, dusty road which has been under construction for more than five years without any sign of progress, let alone completion.
The neglect of this beach road strips us bare of any national pride as our children marched in the scorching sun to rekindle the dreams of independence earned 54 years ago. I hope many Ghanaians will join me in the belief that we have simply failed ourselves, using poverty as an excuse.
Come to think of it. On this short stretch of road are some national installations or institutions that we should be proud of and gladly showcase to the international world. We have the Southern Command Headquarters of the Ghana Army; The Military Academy and Training School (MATS); the Armed Forces Staff College and, above all, the KAIPTC which has been receiving foreign delegations on regular basis. Are we saying we do not have the money to make this road beautiful and durable for motoring?
Can you imagine the feeling, after hearing so much about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States of America, only to meet a dusty, potholes-filled road at Langley, Virginia, as you approach the headquarters of this internationally known and dreaded security institution? We have treated our version of the CIA or the Pentagon with careless abandon.
So, after 54 years as a sovereign nation, where lies our national pride and dignity? Something very serious and fundamental is lacking in our national life. We may have a very good document called the Constitution; we may have all the legislative and administrative structures in place. We may have all the anti-corruption laws and institutions, but without any serious sense of direction, we labour in vain.
For a very long time we have been missing the inspiring leadership that will give direction and carry on its shoulders a broad-based national development agenda. There is no evidence that we have any national development targets for, say, the next five, 10, 15, 20 and 25 years.
We lack the leadership that will challenge the various sectors such as business, agriculture, science and technology to innovative and exceptional achievements just as the great leaders who have left their footprints in the sands of history had done.
On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy of the United States challenged scientists of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to conquer the moon before the end of the decade. That was three weeks after Alan Sheppard had become the first American in space.
President Kennedy’s bold challenge set the US on a determined journey to the Moon. He did not live to savour the occasion when, on July 20, 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong stepped out of the lunar module of the Apollo 11 and took “one small step” in the Sea of Tranquillity, calling it a “giant leap for mankind”. The US has, since then, made six successful landings on the Moon with Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17.
Similarly, during the Cultural Revolution in China, Chairman Mao Zedong closed China’s borders and challenged his compatriots to prove those who claimed the Chinese were primitive either right or wrong. Mao Zedong is dead and gone, but the Chinese miracle has become the wonder of the 21st century and all countries, including mighty America, are all falling head over heels to have their fair share of the Chinese cake. That is the type of challenge I am talking about.
Do we have any such challenge from our leaders? Why are we importing everything, including toothpicks? Why are we unable to make bicycles when we were assembling vehicles in this country in the 1960s? Why are we still heavily importing food items when, many years ago, other countries, including Malaysia, sent their researchers to come and learn from our research institutes?
Why is our educational system in such a miserable state when, at one stage after independence, ours was one of the best, not only on the continent but in the advanced world of those days? Why is our road network in such an appalling state when, year in year out we continue to vote huge amounts of money for road construction?
After 54 years when our railway system should have gone modern, we do not even have the locomotives that predated the colonial period.
We have continued to blame our failures on external factors. We have always been quick to mention slavery and colonialism and lately dictatorship as the source of our problems and underdevelopment when these factors are not limited to Ghana and Africa.
Today, just like yesterday, we have put all our hope on donor support, to the extent that we rely on charity to procure reflective jackets and flash lights for our policemen and women for their official duties.
We have entered the 55th year of our national independence as usual with a lot of promises and pledges. We want a new leadership that will talk less and act more. We want transformational leadership that breaks away from the routine promise-making and pursue achievable goals with religious fervour.
Our youth are losing hope as they see the dreams of independence to be fading away. The democracy that we have been yearning for has come without any signs of a breakthrough in our national life.
The optimists may say we should not lose hope, but hope alone will not offer solutions if we do not take concrete steps to salvage this country from poverty and underdevelopment. We must begin to have confidence in our ability to solve our own problems and end the excessive dependence on external support.
Yesterday, we put all our hope in Western countries – America, Britain, Germany, France, etc. Today, we have shifted to China, Korea, Malaysia and even Thailand. Where our next redeemers shall come from is the big question. Incidentally, in comparative terms, none of these countries could count on more resources than Ghana.
It is time we gave meaning to our independence or stopped subjecting our children to the annual march past under hostile weather conditions for a freedom which does not go beyond raising a national flag and singing a national anthem. We want independence that will make us self-reliant, self-sufficient, proud and authors of our own history.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Politics of insults, mischief and acrimony

2011-03-01T11:48:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
Midway through President Barack Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address to Congress, a voice rang out, “It’s not true.”
The maker of that embarrassing statement was later identified as Samuel Anthony Alito, a former Supreme Court judge.
That irresponsible behaviour was widely condemned. The leadership of Congress rendered a public apology to President Obama. The man himself called Obama and apologised for that split moment of indiscretion.
The message here is loud and clear: The sanctity of the American Presidency cannot be violated, no matter the freedoms spelt out for individuals in the constitution. That is the politics of a nation that believes in playing the game according to the rules.
On Tuesday, February 15, 2011, President John Evans Atta Mills breached protocol when he delivered his State of the Nation Address to Parliament by not acknowledging the presence of the Chief Justice, the leadership of the House and former President John Agyekum Kufuor.
The President publicly acknowledged his mistake, which he said had been oversight, and went on to apologise to the personalities concerned.
On the same day, the Minority Leader in Parliament chose to register his protest on the same matter by publicly snubbing the President by refusing to escort him out of the chamber of the House, as is customarily the case.
As has been said very often, two wrongs do not make a right. Many might not have realised that the President breached protocol in his salutation during the State of the Nation Address, but millions watched while the Minority Leader chose the path of positive defiance to register his protest at the President’s mistake. What was otherwise a good case had been poorly bungled by that act of indiscretion.
All those who felt slighted by the President’s mistake, including the Minority Leader, are justified in expressing so, at least for the records, but should it have been at the expense of the sanctity of the presidency? Should our democracy be reduced to a child’s play because one party has faltered or made a mistake? Should the Minority Leader’s action be a signal to people of this country to defy authority or treat our leadership with scorn and contempt at the least mistake or provocation?
A week after that unfortunate incident, many Ghanaians heaved a heavy sigh of relief when information got round that President Mills had invited former President Kufuor for a meeting at the Castle. Truly, the meeting came on and former President Kufuor admitted that even though the invitation had been at short notice, he was obliged to honour it because of his respect for the presidency. Secondly, as a former President and an elder statesman, he must be prepared to respond to national calls at all times.
Nothing can be more soothing to the hearts of Ghanaians than those beautiful words. The two leaders never told the public what went into their discussions, except that they dwelt on national and international issues which are of interest to Ghana.
One would have thought that the meeting between the two leaders would serve as a solid foundation for us to mend our ways and reach out to one another. Sadly, commentators from both the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and New Patriotic Party (NPP) chose to dwell on the negative side of that great event.
While the NDC hatchet men saw the invitation as a lesson to former President Kufuor on how to reach out to former office holders, NPP activists saw the invitation as a public relations gimmick, as if public relations itself is a bad thing in communication science.
Such is the nature of our politics that everything has been reduced to the level of personal confrontation among people who do not see anything good in one another. At every turn it seems we are only looking out for negative things about other people. We are missing the good things democracy offers to people.
The freedoms our Constitution guarantees the individual, to many, mean freedom to insult, vilify and attack verbally or physically our perceived political opponents. At first we thought political confrontations were restricted to election years and during political rallies. But here we are; our whole national life has been characterised by political violence in one form or another, acrimonious debates empty of rationalisation, sober and meaningful contributions.
While we are at one another’s throats, we have failed to notice that just after one heavy rainfall, Accra, our national capital, has become one huge mud city because of poor drainage and irresponsible behaviour on our part as residents. We do not even realise that most of our traffic lights do not work at peak hours. We are rather interested in trivialities such as what dress somebody was wearing.
In other words, we have failed to use our democracy, which we are told on a daily basis is the envy of other countries, to confront development challenges. Instead, we think it is an opportune time to settle old scores that years of dictatorship had suppressed.
The media, especially the radio, have not helped our quest for national unity and the crusade to move this country away from its present miserable state into a better place for us all. Far from setting a development agenda, the media have set a confrontational agenda by feeding the people with nothing but hatred and insults in divisive language.
The leadership of the various political parties, especially the NDC and the NPP, and those in government have not helped matters in any way by their outbursts and other forms of irresponsible conduct. It appears people are more interested in winning political power, without necessarily being interested in solving our problems.
I saw a full-page advert placed by Mr Kofi Amoah, a business executive, raising issues with the negative trend which is diluting our politics. That means many discerning Ghanaians are not happy with the way some people are doing politics in this country.
The challenges confronting this country are just too many that we cannot afford the luxury of spending the whole day insulting one another, threatening death and mayhem and fanning ethnocentric sentiments.
Media practitioners and owners of radio stations should remember that they stand accused for creating the platform, in the name of media freedom and freedom of expression, for hostility to flourish in the country. I still do not know the benefits of some of the phone-in programmes and discussion programmes on television apart from bringing out the animalistic instincts in us.
We may not realise it now, but we may be gradually sowing seeds of social disintegration by the politics of hate, acrimony and mischief which is now the order of the day.
It is better we emphasise the things that unite us than those which divide us.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Democratic reforms and accountability

2011-02-24T10:08:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
THE Arab world is in turmoil and nobody needs a soothsayer to tell that centuries-old monarchies face imminent collapse.
What began as one person’s expression of frustration and anger has turned into a hurricane blowing away once very powerful rulers in the Arab world.
On December 17, 2010, Tarek el-Tayyib Mohamed Ben Bouazizi, a street vendor in Tunis, Tunisia, set himself on fire in protest over the confiscation of his wares and the humiliation that was inflicted on him by a female official of the municipal authority.
Anger and violence flared when Bouazizi died. The violent streets protests and riots over social and political issues that followed forced President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali to flee Tunisia on January 14, 2011. Strangely, Ben Ali had, a year earlier on October 25, 2009, won with a landslide at the polls, taking 89.6 per cent of the votes, while three other candidates shared the rest of the votes.
The contagion that has become known as the Tunisian or the Jasmine Revolution has spread to other Arab countries and claimed another casualty, Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian President who had been in power since 1979.
From North Africa to the Gulf Region, citizens who, for years, have lived under authoritarian regimes and absolute monarchies are battling their leaders not only for political reforms but accountability — a fair share of the vast national resources that have remained in the hands of a few office holders and members of the royal families.
Incidentally, maybe with the exception of Libya, all these dictatorships are staunch allies of the United States of America. Col Muamar al-Qathafi, the man who has been in office for 42 years and who many see as a benevolent dictator, is in a battle for survival. He is confronting the protesters with brute force which has left many people dead. How long he will continue with the killing remains to be seen.
Some of the leaders who have seen the writing on the wall have started their own reforms, but whether that will appease the angry population is very much in doubt, since it is now or never.
For African leaders south of the Sahara, events up north may seem far away, but the wise among them will begin to realise that just like the Arabs, many blacks will soon begin to question the legitimacy of their leaders who have been in office for years and who have turned political office into dynasties.
Mubarak never dreamt that his rule will come to such a miserable end. At the age of 82, he was still preparing to contest the sham elections his tenure had inflicted on Egyptians until his son, Gamal Mubarak, takes over.
All over the continent there are leaders like Mubarak who have outlived their usefulness but who still cling on to power. The new phenomenon which is gaining ground is the father-to-son craze. Joseph Kabila has done it in the Democratic Republic of Congo, succeeding his father Laurent Kabila; Faure Gnasingbe has succeeded his father Gnasingbe Eyadema in Togo, while Omar Bongo was succeeded by his son, Ali Bongo.
Laurent Gbagbo has ignored the electoral process and defied international opinion to remain in power in Cote d’Ivoire when he should have respected the sovereign will of the people who voted for Allassane Ouattara in the presidential polls.
A former UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, made an observation that Gbagbo’s refusal to concede defeat was a threat to democracy and peace.
“Africa and the world cannot afford such a development because if Gbagbo is allowed to prevail, elections as instruments of peaceful change in Africa will suffer a serious set-back,” Mr Annan told an audience at the Oxford University in a lecture on: “The future of Africa: Challenges and Opportunities”.
He said if there was one area which would determine the direction of Africa’s future, it was the quality of its governance and leadership. Apart from its challenges with democracy, Africa has a bigger problem that has undermined its development.
The quality of leadership is definitely not the best, as most of the leaders on the continent hardly appreciate the problems confronting their countries, let alone have any idea how to solve them. It is, therefore, not surprising that in the midst of abundance, African countries are the poorest in the world. Apart from South Africa, which was an observer at a meeting of the world’s top 20 economies, African countries have remained in their self-imposed Third-World status, always loudly begging other countries on other continents for basics.
Whoever thinks democracy will solve the continent’s development problems may be making a big mistake. Mismanagement and corruption are the twin evils destroying African countries. Governments have devised ways of siphoning national revenue into private pockets. So for a country like Ghana which is still fighting poverty and deprivation, it is not strange to see some of the best of vehicles on our poor roads belonging to people without any identifiable sources of income.
Our politics has become a do-or-die affair because political power means an opportunity to pillage, plunder and rape the economy. That is why politicians are able to vow that they are prepared to lay down their lives if that will be the only way to gain political power.
It is only a matter of time when the masses will begin to realise their folly in pledging their lives to a few persons who will turn round to strip them bare of their sustenance. They will begin to realise that while it took almost half of the voting population to bring a party into power, national resources are clandestinely utilised by a few in their hundreds.
It took one street vendor, Bouazizi, to trigger a chain reaction with historical consequences among Arabs. We in Ghana may be happy that we have got our democracy. Very soon, the people will demand good governance and accountability.
What we are seeing today as the phenomenon of the foot soldiers may be the signal of things to come when the masses will begin to demand a fairer share of what belongs to all. They will begin to demand answers to several questions. They would want to know why some of them cannot get a square meal when others have got more than enough to feed their pets from the supermarket. They would want to know why the classroom buildings are collapsing over their children while others, with no extra effort, can afford fees in dollars for their children. The time will come when they will no longer accept the ‘no money’ excuse because they can smell and see money all around them.
When that day comes, it will take one Bouazizi to trigger events. We could avoid that day if our leaders will be more transparent in the way they handle state resources and improve upon state governance. Otherwise, North Africa may not be far away, after all.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Hypocritical voices in the West

2011-02-15T12:21:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
Once again the United States of America has demonstrated that it has permanent interests and not permanent friends when it joined protesting Egyptians to give a final push to Hosni Mubarak’s regime. In the last days of Mubarak’s administration, he struggled desperately to hang onto the powerful shoulders of the US, its main sponsor and supporter for well over 30 years but realised rather disappointingly that when it matters most, the US looks towards the direction where it will find protection for its interests.
In 2003, the US tried and succeeded somehow to whip up international sentiment against President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, describing him as a maniac who will bring the world to destruction because of his large stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam was accused of being dictator who was oppressing his people and annihilating some with chemical weapons. Without any UN mandate, the US, supported by Tony Blair’s Britain and some of their appendages launched an attack on Iraq.
They succeeded in toppling Saddam, which was the main objective but failed to find any weapons of mass destruction, because there was none. They also succeeded in destroying the infrastructure of Iraq, one of the best in the Middle East and pushing backwards centuries-old civilisation if that will secure them the oilfields of Iraq and give the Jewish State of Israel the leverage it requires to maintain its dominance in the Middle East.
In a way, the invasion of Iraq by the US and Britain exposed the hypocrisy of the West regarding their international diplomacy. At the time the US was waging war in Iraq to save the people from dictatorship, it had been busy over the last three decades propping up dictators such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt who never shared power with anybody and suppressed all forms of dissent.
Democracy was not an important commodity for the people of Egypt and Hosni Mubarak was a good leader so long as he served the US interest of policing the Middle East and giving protective cover to Israel, a protégé of the US.
Mubarak himself was a consequence of the Camp David Accord signed on September 17, 1978 between Anwar El Sadat, President of Egypt and Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel and witnessed by President Jimmy Carter of the US. This led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. The two leaders were jointly honoured subsequently with the Nobel Peace Prize for 1978.
Even though Egypt regained control over the Sinai Peninsula as part of the peace accord, Egyptians in particular and Arabs in general never forgave Sadat for the Camp David Accord, which to them was a kind of betrayal of the Arab cause. On October 6, 1981, while reviewing a military parade, shots rang out and Sadat was airlifted away in a military helicopter. The man was dead. That was how Hosni Mubarak, an air force general who became vice president six years earlier became the President of Egypt, three years after the Camp David Accord.
It did not take long for Mubarak to stir himself into the saddle and proved wrong, all those including the Americans who doubted his ability to hold onto the peace treaty with Israel and to steer the affairs of Egypt in a volatile region with its power play dynamics.
The US did not take long to embrace Mubarak and made him one their allies alongside Israel in the Middle East. With Egypt effectively compromised through the Camp David Accord, the US was left with Iraq and Iran as the only dangerous countries to contend with as far as its interest and that of Israel are concerned.
The 10-year 1979-1989 Iran-Iraq war over a piece of land was not accidental but had the remote hands of the US and its allies in it to weaken the two countries. It was not surprising that soon after that the first Gulf War – Operation Desert Storm – was fought between the US and her allies and Iraq. The 2003 invasion was to finish what President George Bush started in 1991 and which never came to any definitive conclusion.
For 30 years, Mubarak was the darling of the US and its Western allies. Then the unexpected happened. First President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, another US ally in the Arab was toppled suddenly by what started as a normal street demonstration. Then the Egyptian protests began but the Americans confident that Mubarak will deal with the situation viciously with dispatch just as he had done in the past decided to play the cautious game.
From a distance, they started urging Mubarak to avoid violence and enact reforms. One may ask, since did it occur to the West that Mubarak had been ruling for over 30 years without even a vice President? Meanwhile the West started to denounce deposed Ben Ali and all his close associates and relations. The Canadian government for example, declared its intention to arrest and depot Belhassen Trabelsi, the brother-in-law of Ben Ali when he arrived in Montreal in a private jet.
“He is not welcome, we are going to find in the context obviously of current legislation, ways to assure as quickly as possible that we might comply with the demand from the Tunisian government”, Lawrence Cannon, Canadian Foreign Minister said.
Immediately, Interpol also issued an alert for the arrest of Mr Ben Ali and six family members on request from Tunisia which accused them of property theft and illegal transfer of foreign currency, among other charges. Where was the West’s sense of fairness when Ben Ali was in power and amassing wealth at the expense of the state of Tunisia?
As the protests continued in Cairo continued and it was becoming increasingly obvious that Mubarak’s days as President were numbered, the US changed its tone and started mounting pressure on the beleaguered leader to quit.
On Thursday, February 11, 2011, the day Mubarak was expected to announce his resignation, President Barack Obama delivered a speech which virtually denounced the former Egyptian President and threw him over to the dogs.
“The Egyptian government must put forward a credible, concrete an unequivocal path toward genuine democracy and they have not yet seized that opportunity. As we said from the beginning of this unrest, the future of Egypt will be determined by the Egyptian people” Barack Obama stated.
He went on: “But the US has also been clear that we stand for a set of core principles. We believe that the universal rights of the Egyptian people must be respected and their aspirations must be met. We believe that this transition must immediately demonstrate irreversible political change and a negotiated path to democracy. To that end, we believe that the emergency law should be lifted. We believe that meaningful negotiations with the broad opposition and Egyptian civil society should address the key questions

Weep not, Mr President

2011-02-08T08:07:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
There was no doubt the President was in a foul mood. His voice could be heard trembling with emotion that was fully charged with anguish and despair.
President John Evans Atta Mills was a near-nervous wreck triggered by an Anas Aremeyaw Anas documentary which catalogued some of the malpractice going on at the Tema Port, with officials of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) being the main characters.
“Why couldn’t I receive reports on these wrongdoings from the numerous security agents operating at the ports, instead of relying on an Anas documentary?” the President asked himself in disbelief.
Any person in the President’s position will see his blood pressure rising to astronomical heights seeing so much horse-trading going on with national revenue, which is like the blood running through the country’s arteries and veins, being the main commodity. No leader desperately looking for cash to tackle serious development challenges will feel comfortable at the sight of the bargaining that was captured in the documentary.
I do not know how the President’s countenance would be like if he were told that most of what he saw in that documentary were just scratches on the surface. Seriously, a lot of the money changing hands was peanut. You may describe it as waakye or yor-ke-gari cash that could hardly dent the national cash box.
The real damage is done on paper which even the ubiquitous camera of Anas cannot capture. That is where 20 containers of goods could be cleared by documents covering one container. That is how containers with expensive items which could attract millions of Ghana cedis in duty could be cleared as containing second-hand clothing or used tyres with little or no value.
These are some of the ways in which the nation loses huge sums of revenue running into millions of Ghana cedis and the monetary benefits accruing to officials involved cannot be counted before any cameras. These is money that could buy vehicles, build the houses that the President made reference to during his visit to the Tema Port and not the pittance for buying fruit juice by the roadside that was captured in the documentary.
Those instances of malpractice have been part and parcel of customs business at the entry points, especially the main ones at Elubo, Aflao, the Kotoka International Airport and the Takoradi and Tema ports. Occasionally a few officials are caught and used as sacrificial lambs. Others may suffer punitive transfers. But, generally, the ports are money-spinning zones and the few dedicated ones are hardly noticed and recognised.
Those who have worked assiduously at the ports or in CEPS generally will tell you that the more hardworking and dedicated you are, the odder you become and the more you are likely to lose your job because you are seen as an enemy of an establishment in which bribery and corruption has been institutionalised.
The GRA has started initiating some measures against officials suspected to have played a part in the rape of the country of its revenue resources. In the coming days, some officials may be asked to proceed on transfer to areas where the grass is less green, all in the name of clearing the mess and making officers to be alive to their responsibilities.
Time will tell whether these measures will make the desired impact or not. The truth is that the system is fraught with so many loopholes to be exploited for personal aggrandisement that it will take more than presidential lamentations and a few spade works here and there to make any meaningful change overnight.
We will be making a sad mistake if we put all the blame on the doorstep of Customs officials. The chain is very long and the Customs officials are just only one of the conduits. There are the big-time importers with their agents in government who are always breathing down hard on the necks of Customs officials who want to do genuine work. As stated earlier, some Customs officials have lost their jobs or positions in the past not because they were corrupt, incompetent or inefficient. They were too good, dedicated and committed to pander to the corrupt whims of superior officers and politicians. So they had to suffer for being too honest.
It is good to ask GRA workers to fill asset declaration forms. It may deter some and make some more cautious. Beyond that, I am yet to be convinced that it will end the pillage. Remember — ministers and other top government officials have been enjoined by a constitutional provision to declare their assets before and after living office. But since the 1992 Constitution came into existence, are we saying all our political office holders have been saints and do not put a pesewa of state money into their pockets? Some have even refused to fill the forms and damned the consequences.
Are we saying those beautiful buildings in plush areas and the flashy vehicles being driven about were acquired from the public servants’ salary which everybody is complaining about every day? The President may want to know why people are ready to kill to attain political power, if it is only about serving the people.
President Mills should save his tears yet. He should spend one weekend at the Peduase Lodge and go through the Auditor-General’s annual report over the last 10 years. If he finds the documents too voluminous to digest, he should concentrate on the latest on the 2009 financial report of the country. He will realise, that is, if he had not come to that realisation already, that the monetary donations we have been so eager to receive, even at the expense of sacrificing our national sovereignty, are nothing compared to the money that has been siphoned out of our public funds.
We have paid millions of Ghana cedis for contracts poorly executed. We have even paid for contracts that were never executed. There are cases of the same project being awarded on several occasions to different contractors and huge sums paid. If he cares to find out, he will realise that some projects always feature in the country’s budget statements as being at various levels of execution. The truth is that some projects, away from the President’s eyes, have become regular sources of income for some people.
Our President should find out those who benefit most from exemptions on imported goods. He will be surprised to notice that far from being an instrument to assist charitable organisations and certain vulnerable sectors of the economy, the tax exemption regime has benefited many of those who have pledged to serve the people, even at the peril of their own lives.
Apart from dealing with the Customs officials, what happens to the National Security agents with the big titles who have, either through negligence or collusion, failed to live up to their national responsibilities? Will they continue to hold on to their titles at state expense?
We may also have to take a critical look at the bureaucracy at the ports. When simple things are made to look complex, it creates avenues for corruption. Our tax regime for imported items, especially second-hand vehicles which have become the mainstay of the majority of Ghanaians, should be given a second look.
This country, by its size and the resources God has given it, should not be where it is today. There are very few checks and balances, leaving room for too much illicit money in the system. The honest ones are the fools who make all the sacrifices so that this country does not grind to a halt. They have nothing to show for truth, honesty and dedication.
We may be making the mistake in thinking that Customs officials are the entire problem. They constitute a small fraction.
Mr. President, weep not. Start looking critically at some of the men and women very close to you. Start from the BIG House towards the ministries, departments and agencies. Many who profess your virtues are not only milking this country dry but also bleeding it slowly to death.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

CALM, AFTER THE STORM

2011-02-02T13:22:00.000-08:00

By Kofi Akordor
THE Cote d’Ivoire electoral impasse has predictably but miserably dragged on. As the days roll into weeks, the militant voices which are very loudly calling for military intervention to enforce what they describe as the people’s choice are becoming fainter and fainter, being taken over, surprisingly, by voices of moderation. Those who made it look so easy to walk into another man’s country, change the government and walk out in no time, without a scratch, have been unfair to ECOWAS countries.
As we reflect, we begin to wonder where those machoistic voices calling for war to enforce election results came from. The Americans and the French, who were goading ECOWAS countries into battle against recalcitrant Laurent Gbagbo, seem to have lost interest and diplomacy, like the stone the builders rejected, is gradually being accepted as the surest way to resolve the impasse.
On hindsight, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda said something which made some sense, considering the way the international effort at solving the problem was handled. He said ECOWAS was too quick to reject Gbagbo for Allassane Ouattara when the sub-regional body’s neutrality and mediating role should have been manifest.
ECOWAS and the other international bodies such as the AU and the UN should, first of all, have shown more interest in the election results to determine whether there were genuine grievances from both sides to be addressed. After clearing all doubts about the validity of the results, pressure could then be mounted to get all the parties to accept them and for Gbagbo to abide by the decision of the majority of the people, if that was what the results meant.
Unfortunately, ECOWAS, pushed by the AU, the UN, the US and its allies, dangled the military option before the diplomatic offensive. If the idea was to use the military option as a threat to cajole Gbagbo into submission, we have all realised, rather too late, that it was a miserable failure.
For the Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, to issue military threats to Gbagbo and turn out to become an emissary of the AU was one of the greatest ironies of the times. Odinga could not be part of the solution, having come out forcefully with his war posture, apparently due to his bitter experiences in 2007 when he saw the presidency of his country slip through his fingers because of a Gbagbo-like Kibaki who defied majority decision and declared himself re-elected.
ECOWAS leaders have not explained the form the military option was going to take — whether to just airlift Gbagbo from the presidential palace in a commando-fashion or confront the Armed Forces of Cote d’Ivoire in a full-scale war which may take days, weeks, months or years to accomplish, with devastating consequences for the sub-region, especially neighbouring countries such as Ghana.
Whatever the strategy, anything with the semblance of a military operation will not offer any solution. One can, therefore, say that ECOWAS leaders have dug in too early. On a continent that has very little to show in terms of democratic credentials, it sounded quixotic to threaten military action for an election dispute when a determined sub-regional group such as ECOWAS has many options open to it to make a more meaningful impact.
At least, thanks to a lone voice which was very loud in the wilderness, ECOWAS has avoided being tele-guided from Washington, New York and Paris into a conflict that would have seen no end but only serve the interest of the metropolitan powers far away from the pain, suffering and destruction in a region already devastated by poverty and bad political leadership.
It is good that the AU, just like the ECOWAS, is now back-tracking more towards a peaceful resolution of the impasse. At the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, African leaders have agreed to set up a panel of mediators to begin another diplomatic offensive towards the resolution of the problem. Clearly, this turn of events will strengthen the hands of Gbagbo, who stood firm and demanded a negotiated settlement rather than stepping down.
In the coming days and weeks, ECOWAS countries will wait anxiously to see how the AU mediating panel will set out to do its work and whether it will achieve results where earlier mediators have failed.
What is encouraging and very much welcome is the fact that the battle drums are falling silent after the initial storm stirred by the US and France, giving way to a comforting calm which will engender more tactful and diplomatic effort to get to the root of the Ivorian crisis and come up with a lasting solution.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com Calm, after the storm
By Kofi Akordor
THE Cote d’Ivoire electoral impasse has predictably but miserably dragged on. As the days roll into weeks, the militant voices which are very loudly calling for military intervention to enforce what they describe as the people’s choice are becoming fainter and fainter, being taken over, surprisingly, by voices of moderation. Those who made it look so easy to walk into another man’s country, change the government and walk out in no time, without a scratch, have been unfair to ECOWAS countries.
As we reflect, we begin to wonder where those machoistic voices calling for war to enforce election results came from. The Americans and the French, who were goading ECOWAS countries into battle against recalcitrant Laurent Gbagbo, seem to have lost interest and diplomacy, like the stone the builders rejected, is gradually being accepted as the surest way to resolve the impasse.
On hindsight, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda said something which made some sense, considering the way the international effort at solving the problem was handled. He said ECOWAS was too quick to reject Gbagbo for Allassane Ouattara when the sub-regional body’s neutrality and mediating role should have been manifest.
ECOWAS and the other international bodies such as the AU and the UN should, first of all, have shown more interest in the election results to determine whether there were genuine grievances from both sides to be addressed. After clearing all doubts about the validity of the results, pressure could then be mounted to get all the parties to accept them and for Gbagbo to abide by the decision of the majority of the people, if that was what the results meant.
Unfortunately, ECOWAS, pushed by the AU, the UN, the US and its allies, dangled the military option before the diplomatic offensive. If the idea was to use the military option as a threat to cajole Gbagbo into submission, we have all realised, rather too late, that it was a miserable failure.
For the Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, to issue military threats to Gbagbo and turn out to become an emissary of the AU was one of the greatest ironies of the times. Odinga could not be part of the solution, having come out forcefully with his war posture, apparently due to his bitter experiences in 2007 when he saw the presidency of his country slip through his fingers because of a Gbagbo-like Kibaki who defied majority decision and declared himself re-elected.
ECOWAS leaders have not explained the form the military option was going to take — whether to just airlift Gbagbo from the presidential palace in a commando-fashion or confront the Armed Forces of Cote d’Ivoire in a full-scale war which may take days, weeks, months or years to accomplish, with devastating consequences for the sub-region, especially neighbouring countries such as Ghana.
Whatever the strategy, anything with the semblance of a military operation will not offer any solution. One can, therefore, say that ECOWAS leaders have dug in too early. On a continent that has very little to show in terms of democratic credentials, it sounded quixotic to threaten military action for an election dispute when a determined sub-regional group such as ECOWAS has many options open to it to make a more meaningful impact.
At least, thanks to a lone voice which was very loud in the wilderness, ECOWAS has avoided being tele-guided from Washington, New York and Paris into a conflict that would have seen no end but only serve the interest of the metropolitan powers far away from the pain, suffering and destruction in a region already devastated by poverty and bad political leadership.
It is good that the AU, just like the ECOWAS, is now back-tracking more towards a peaceful resolution of the impasse. At the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, African leaders have agreed to set up a panel of mediators to begin another diplomatic offensive towards the resolution of the problem. Clearly, this turn of events will strengthen the hands of Gbagbo, who stood firm and demanded a negotiated settlement rather than stepping down.
In the coming days and weeks, ECOWAS countries will wait anxiously to see how the AU mediating panel will set out to do its work and whether it will achieve results where earlier mediators have failed.
What is encouraging and very much welcome is the fact that the battle drums are falling silent after the initial storm stirred by the US and France, giving way to a comforting calm which will engender more tactful and diplomatic effort to get to the root of the Ivorian crisis and come up with a lasting solution.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

RIPPLES OF JASMINE REVOLUTION (JAN 25, 2011)

2011-01-25T07:31:00.000-08:00

ON December 17, 2010, a young man set himself on fire in protest against the harsh conditions necessitated by poverty and unemployment that were prevailing in his country, Tunisia. That singular act might have been the trigger which released the pent-up feelings of the youth of Tunisia, manifested in street demonstrations.
At first, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali did what many in his show would have done — he released the security agents to confront the demonstrators with brute force. As the days rolled by, it became more and more obvious that the demonstrators were not ready to be cowed into submission. The more they fell from the bullets and truncheons of the police, the more determined and uncontrollable they became.
As 2010 headed for a close, President Ben Ali began to adopt a defensive posture, having failed to suppress the uprising that was unfolding before him after many years of having had his own way.
Panic set in and Ben Ali began to cave in with a series of decisions. First, he reduced the prices of staple foods, whose high prices had triggered the demonstrations in the place. He also pledged not to contest the next election scheduled for 2014.
When the pressure did not show signs of easing, he declared a state of emergency, dissolved the government and promised new legislative elections within six months.
President Ben Ali’s reign had come to an abrupt end. On the day he announced his latest reforms, his Prime Minister, Mohammed Ghannouchi, was on air to announce his take-over of the administration.
Ben Ali’s reign came to an end as abruptly as that of Habib Bourguiba, the man he had succeeded in 1987, had. Bourguiba, who until that time had not experienced any serious challenge to his government, having led Tunisia to independence from French colonial rule in 1956, woke up one day and was told he was no longer President because he had grown senile.
The mantle fell on Ben Ali, who started well with a lot of economic and political reforms which made Tunisia, in comparative terms, a model democratic state in a region of monarchies and autocratic regimes.
With time, Ben Ali got consumed by power and began drifting towards the path of democratic dictatorship. First, he closed all doors to political dissent. Changes were made to the constitution which allowed him to extend his rule. He, therefore, contested elections in 2004 and 2009 with near absolute margins. Possibly, he would have contested the 2014 elections but for the uprising which became known as the Jasmine Revolution.
Ben Ali’s crime was not restricted to political intolerance and media repression, including Internet censorship. He was also accused of presiding over a corrupt regime of gigantic proportions, nepotism and what had been described as kleptocracy.
According to a study conducted by The Economist — Democracy Index of 2008 — Tunisia was ranked 141st out of 167 countries studied. In terms of freedom of the press, Tunisia was ranked 143rd out of 173 countries. Such was the situation that when the protests, led by industrial workers and professionals, gathered steam, there was little the state security apparatus could do about them.
Any hope that life will return to normalcy after Ben Ali had fled to Saudi Arabia is fading. Prime Minister Ghannouchi, who took over power from his former boss, is doing everything to placate the angry mob that has become a regular feature on the streets of Tunis without success.
First was the announcement that all political prisoners are to be freed and others granted amnesty; then the recognition given to all banned political groupings and the promise to hold free and fair elections within six months.
Tunisians will have none of these. They want to do away with Ben Ali and everything he represented on the political landscape of Tunisia.
Now the ripples of the Jasmine Revolution are being felt not only in North Africa but the whole of the Arab world where democracy has remained a distant dream in many countries.
The most important thing, however, is that what is happening in Tunisia is a signal to all dictatorships and other repressive regimes that no matter how hard and long you suppress the people and deny them their fundamental rights, the day of reckoning will come when the people’s power will prevail.
The Tunisian model has also shown that change — the real one — will come not through the goodwill of a few people wielding guns and declaring themselves redeemers, liberators or revolutionaries who, with time, constitute another group of oppressors, but through the collective will and resistance of the people.
As the legendary Robert Nester Marley said: “You can fool some people some time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.”
The war cry of the people of Tunisia now is: “Down with poverty, inflation, corruption, injustice, oppression, torture, fraud and tyranny” and the ripples will be felt in all other places where the interest of the majority is mortgaged for the comfort of a few.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

DANGERS OF HATE SPEECHES (JAN 18, 2011)

2011-01-18T07:10:00.000-08:00

in far away Tucson, Arizona, USA, on Saturday, January 8, 2011, a young man opened fire with his semi-automatic weapon and by the time he emptied the magazine, six people lay dead, with a dozen or so wounded. Among the dead were Christina Taylor Green, a nine-year-old girl, and a federal judge.
Jared Loughner, 22, engaged in that shooting spree outside a supermarket while Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords was on her way to address a constituency event. She escaped death but got seriously wounded when a bullet went through her head.
Loughner, according to those close to him, had shown traces of mental instability and, therefore, the shooting incident could be described as an irrational behaviour by somebody mentally unhinged. That has left many Americans wondering whether the world’s sole superpower has in place an efficient mental health system.
For a young man whose mental stability was under suspicion to find in his possession such a powerful weapon also brought to the fore federal and state laws as to who should own or possess what weapons.
While these two issues, especially the one on gun ownership, are already subjects of debate by politicians and social commentators, a third element in Loughner’s shooting spree which has pricked the conscience of many Americans and sent the alarm bells ringing is the fear that the country is intensely becoming politically polarised, to the extent that people are beginning to react violently on matters purely political.
In other words, Loughner may have his own mental problems and might have taken advantage of liberal laws on gun ownership to gain access to a dangerous weapon, but the act on that Saturday morning had a lot to do with politics.
Some people are linking the sad incident to political rhetoric. This was rebuffed by Sarah Palin, the former Alaska Governor, who was specifically criticised by some commentators for using an online graphic presentation of crossbar symbols that marked targeted Democratic districts in the US mid-term elections.
At a memorial service last Wednesday for victims of the shooting in Tucson, President Barack Obama, already well-known for his powerful speeches, made an emotional delivery which left many in no doubt that America was gradually heading towards a direction that might not be good for the health of the nation and appealed to Americans to heal divisions opened by “sharply polarised” political debate.
“But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarised, at a time when we are too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it is important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds,” he said.
Obama soothingly went on: “Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and to remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bond together.
“We recognise our own mortality and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, that what matters is not wealth or status or power or fame but rather, how well we have loved and what small part we have played to better the lives of others.”
America is a sophisticated society. At least the majority of the people can tell the difference between political pranks and the reality. They are more equipped to draw the line between those things said merely on political platforms to provoke opponents or excite supporters and those that carry the true meanings of the words said. Even there, they are realising rather tragically that they are becoming victims of their own freedoms.
They say if you see a neighbour’s house on fire, you must start preparing for any eventuality. If, after many years of practising democracy which has become the measure for judging others, Americans cannot tolerate dissent and accommodate racial differences, then we in Ghana cannot afford to take things for granted.
We have, for some time now, noticed a creeping culture of intolerance in our politics. At first it could be attributed to the natural consequences of our infant democracy. Gradually we are realising that no subject gains any national attention unless it is painted in political colours. It must either be in the colours of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) or the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
It is now easy for a crime suspect to wear political colours and that immediately turns his prosecution into persecution. It is now easy for people to be applauded for using abusive language against a perceived political opponent.
We have become such political fanatics that we are blind to the naked truth. Serious national issues on health, education, energy, water and sanitation, agriculture and many others have been reduced to political pranks, to the extent that we seem not to appreciate the national interest as against parochial or self-serving interests.
The most dangerous trend lies in the language some of the men and women who claim to be our political leaders use, some bordering on vulgar and others with ethnocentric undertones.
We have been blessed in several ways. There is hardly any family in Ghana today which can claim it has no blend of another tribal blood in it. Through a deliberate policy of Ghanaianisation introduced by the first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, and which was pursued by other leaders, Ghanaians of different tribal and ethnic backgrounds are developing gradually into a unit. Even then, some people still want to make distinctions and scorn others.
Our democracy may be the envy of others, but we know we still have a long way to go. We can make it stronger and better if we collectively begin to identify the common enemies. They are not the political opponents. They are the reckless statements we make, using abusive and inflammatory language; they are the lies we tell to deceive and undermine; they are the things we say and do which, instead of bringing us together, drift us apart.
We do not need to wait for a Loughner to surface from nowhere and start pumping bullets into us before we awaken to the reality that our paths are intertwined, leading to the same destination, and the earlier we begin to accept one another, the better. Some of the things we say may sound ordinary but they can turn into ammunition tomorrow to devastate us.
Let us beware of hate words.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com

WHO WANTS WAR NEXT DOOR? (DAILY GRAPHIC, JAN 11, 2011)

2011-01-11T05:13:00.000-08:00

The first troops of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) landed at the Freeport of Monrovia on August 24, 1990 at the invitation of Master-Sergeant Samuel K. Doe, President and Commander-in-Chief of the Republic of Liberia who was then under siege from the rebel forces of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), led by Charles Taylor.
The then President Doe had invoked Article 4 (b) of the Mutual Defence Assistance Protocol of the ECOWAS which was signed in Freetown on May 29, 1981. That provides for a non-standing military force to be used to render mutual military aid and assistance to a member state that falls victim to external aggression.
Article 4 (b), under which Doe applied for the intervention of the ECOWAS military support, spells out a collective response where a member state is a victim of internal armed conflict that is engineered and supported actively from outside and which is likely to endanger the peace and security of other member states.
Article 18 (2) of the Protocol makes it clear that member states are not entitled to intervene militarily, if the internal armed conflict poses no danger outside the borders of the afflicted state, and if it is supported from outside.
In order to secure the military intervention of the sub-regional group, the Protocol demands that the head of state of the country desiring assistance should put it in writing to the chairperson of ECOWAS. This force will then be known as the Allied Armed Forces of the Community (AAFC).
At the time President Doe made the request, it was commonly suspected that Libya, which trained the combatants, Cote d’Ivoire, whose President, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, was Taylor’s in-law, and Burkina Faso, whose leader, Blasé Compoare, had a Libyan backing, were supporting the NPFL.
It was, therefore, not possible for ECOWAS to put together the AAFC for military intervention in Liberia. However, at an ECOWAS Standing Mediation Committee Meeting in Banjul, The Gambia, four countries, namely; Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone and The Gambia, decided to send a peace-monitoring group to Liberia.
Notwithstanding the initial setbacks of the group, the success story of ECOMOG, as it became to be known, when it was led into action by its first commander, General Arnold Quainoo of Ghana, had placed it on record as the first credible attempt at a regional security initiative since the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) tried to establish an Inter-African force in Chad in 1981.
Apart from stabilising the conflict situation in Liberia culminating in the election of Charles Taylor as President of Liberia on July 19, 1997, ECOMOG, which qualified to be described as the military wing of ECOWAS, carried out other operations in Sierra Leone (1997), and Guinea Bissau (1999).
In Sierra Leone, ECOMOG forces intervened to stop the combined forces of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) led by Major Johnny Koromah from succeeding with a military coup against President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah while in Guinea Bissau, ECOMOG troops again went into battle when fighting broke out between troops loyal to President Bernado Viera and those of his army chief, Brigadier Ansumane Mane. ECOWAS, through ECOMOG, played a major role in brokering a peace deal leading to a general election on November 28, 1999.
ECOMOG, in its nearly 10 years of peace-keeping and conflict resolution in the sub-region, has brought about a new evolution in inter-African affairs and rekindled hope that sub-regional conflicts could be handled without recourse to external involvement.
This might have been the reasoning behind the decision by ECOWAS leaders to resort to military intervention after diplomatic efforts have failed to settle the electoral impasse in Cote d’Ivoire. Maybe with time, ECOWAS leaders could only see the success of ECOMOG without recounting the very demanding conditions under which it operated.
Right from the word go, ECOMOG did not receive the unanimous recognition and support of the whole ECOWAS group for obvious reasons as stated earlier. There were serious operational command problems as field commanders were divided between taking orders from home authorities and operational commanders on the ground.
Again, heads of state had not established any guidelines, principles or rules of engagement for managing internal conflicts and more seriously, not all states were willing to work together or within institutions to ensure a regional response to conflicts.
It is instructive to remember that at the time ECOMOG was conceived, the sub-region was virtually under military dictatorship or autocratic civilian governments that had very little regard for democratic credentials. It was, therefore, very easy for leaders at the time to take decisions that suit their individual interests and what to them constituted the common good.
The two major players in the ECOMOG operations were undoubtedly Nigeria and Ghana under General Ibrahim Babaginda and Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings respectively, both military dictators. Other military/civilian dictators at the time include General Gnansigbe Eyadema of Togo, Capt Blasé Campaore of Burkina Faso, General Lansana Conte of Guinea, Houphouet-Boigny of Cote d’Ivoire and the rest who were virtually answerable to no one within or without.
Things have changed considerably since those days and some of the countries in the sub-region cannot commit troops for international campaigns without getting the necessary backing of their elected representatives who must be convinced of the legitimacy and justification for such operations, as peace-keeping missions are not the same as combat operations.
In 1990, it was easy for President Doe to seek military assistance from ECOWAS, based on Article 4 (b) of the Mutual Defence Assistance Protocol, because Charles Taylor’s Christmas Eve attack launched from the soil of Cote d’Ivoire and tacitly supported by the President of that country at the time and other African countries qualified it to be an external aggression to justify an intervention.
How justifiable is it to qualify an electoral impasse as an external aggression to necessitate invoking Article 4 (b) of the Mutual Defence Assistance Protocol? As of now, Allassane Ouattara is not a President and has not written to ECOWAS as the Protocol requires to apply for military support to fight an enemy aggression. So wherein lays the legitimacy of any such action?
For now, the moral strength of ECOWAS is found in the determination of the sub-regional body and for that matter other bodies to safeguard and protect democracy first in West Africa, and then on the continent. That is the wish of many if not all.
If a free and fair election is considered one of the essential pillars of democracy, who determines what constitutes a free and fair election among ECOWAS countries? Nigeria, the sub-region’s superpower, and the country to spearhead any military operation, should it become ECOWAS’ final trump card, cannot stick out its neck on such a matter, remembering vividly, the 2007 general election in that country which brought Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’dua and the now President Jonathan Goodluck to power.
Nobody could forget so soon how Faure Gnansigbe came to power by succeeding his father, the late General Eyadema, who himself was in power for well over 35 years till death took him away. In Burkina Faso, Ghana’s northern neighbour, Campaore has been in power since 1982 and recently won another term as a democratic ruler whose term seems not to have any constitutional limit.
So who are going to cast the first moral stone at Cote d’Ivoire and pass the democratic test? Ghana and Benin so far have the best results in terms of adherence to constitutional provisions of electoral practice and succession even though Ghana’s case, as is evident, cannot be said to be smooth-sailing.
These are moral questions ECOWAS leaders have to ponder over as they try to solve the problem in Cote d’Ivoire. Morality and legitimacy aside, the military option which seems so fluid on the lips of some people has its own questions begging for answers.
Who pays for the military operation? Who bears responsibility for the thousands who will die and the millions who will be displaced? How do we reconcile the parties involved after the military might of the sub-region had been put on display?
By the way, is ECOWAS going to set the record as being the first sub-regional body that went to war against itself to enforce an electoral decision?
The Americans can afford to beat the war drums in far away Washington DC, the French can do so in Paris. Can we in Ghana so soon forget what led to the creation of a new township called Buduburam in the Central Region? Do we remember that the Liberian conflict killed an estimated 200,000 people including 50,000 children?
These are just a few questions that should engage our attention as we confront the Ivorian crisis. People like Laurent Gbagbo should not be tolerated, lest what they stand for becomes an addiction that will destroy all of us.
But they can still be handled not necessarily through military confrontation, which, as the Americans will admit, is a long a journey easy to embark upon but which hardly comes to an end with desired results. Total isolation, if religiously enforced, can do the trick at a lesser cost.
Those far away can afford the luxury of trumpeting the virtues of military expedition. Ghana, unfortunately, cannot afford international war next door when we have just been told we have turned middle-income and ready to enjoy the fruits of being an oil-exporting country.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com