PERISCOPE DEPTH
…With Our Publisher
By the time this article appears in print, a group calling itself ‘Arise Ghana Movement’ would most probably be on the second day of planned demonstrations targeted toward forcing the Akufo Addo government to accept overtures from the international finance organizations and allow them to assist him manage the economy.
I think that for many patriotic Ghanaians, the irony of the name “Arise Ghana Movement’ and their latest objects, to push government to accept economic oversiight from international organizations, would not be lost.
I think it is clear that there is a wide disparity between the name of that organization, and its latest objects. A rising Ghana must never, in all contemplation, accede to a demand to allow financial oversight by a foreign organization.
There are many Ghanaian leaders today and in times past who have stated that Ghana is not poor, and I agree with them. This nation is not poor and has never been poor in terms of resources. What we may have a problem with in our country, is leadership, and when I say ‘leadership’ I am not by any means speaking of he economic, social and political leadership of today. I am speaking about our leadership since Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, and the fact that if we do not consciously make efforts to improve the capacity of our leaders, we would never find our way out of economic doldrums and into economic prosperity.
Our problem, as I see it, is that we need a new leadership in Ghana that should begin to realize that the solutions to our problems, should be homegrown solutions. No Eton or Harvard educated nitwit is ever going to be in a position to educate us on how to run our nation. This nation is ours. This continent is ours. The land is ours and for God’s sake the people are ours. If there are problems, then it is our problem and by God we should own that mess, accept responsibility for the fact that we have not behaved well, that we have created that mess and ask ourselves how we can change our collective character and change our collective fortunes as a people and a nation.
No white man has the solutions to our problems. In a real sense, these white people constitute our problem as a people, whether they are do-gooders, or outright exploiters of people of the black skin, which in all likelihood many of them are, even those of them who come here claiming to mean well.
Before I go off tangent, and let my passion and anger about how many of our people think the White Skin is some sort of Messiah for our woes, let me say that in terms of economic management, we have managed, as a country, to walk into a cul de sac, a trap, out of which we would find it nigh impossible to meander our way out of.
In a recent lecture, Ghana’s Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, stated about Ghana’s economy that our total debt stock stands at the astronomical figure of GHc 351.8 billion in 2022. With interest alone, Ghana is paying about GHc37 billion a year in interest payments.
In comparison, Ghana is spending just about GHc7 billion annually on the nation’s flagship social intervention policy, the Free Seniuor Hiigh School policy.
The money we owe, which we are going to pay back one way or the other, can run the free SHS for fifty more years. In other words, we can deploy fifty additional programs like free shs with the money we owe and will have to pay back. The interest we pay alone each year can fund five more policies of the scale of the free shs.
Which then begs the question; how in the name of everything holy did we come to accumulate so much debt? I would not ask any questions about what we used the money for. Surely, there must be projects to account for the money borrowed, but if we hope to pay all that debt with its interest, why on earth did it not occur to us that we could apply the repayment monies, directly towards development, without going through the process of securing loans and paying interests, which accumulate in private pockets?
I have stated ahead, somewhere up ahead in this write-up, that what we need as a country, is a leadership with a new mind. And before somebody gets me wrong, I am not talking about the current leadership in Ghana. With great sorrow, I must say that the current leadership of Ghana has demonstrated an amazing affinity of thinking with all previous leadership in Ghana. They all attended the same schools.
Somewhere after the 2000 elections, Ghana discovered oil in comercial quantities. Anybody who has been to some of the Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates, can see the wonders that could be achieved with resources from oil. When Ghana discovered oil, a huge debate began in Ghana as to the exploitation of the oil resource. Twenty-two years down the line (yes, twenty-two years!) Ghana cannot boast of a single useful thing that has been achieved with the funds from the oil.
Not one thing.
It is a sad testimony to the fact that no amount of western and intellectual help of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and its set of alphabetical corporations is going to be able to help us out of our financial woes. If we can virtually misuse and ill-use so many billions of dollars, and get into debt at the same time, then we really are a case study of the mentally incompetent.
I recall, one time, the late former President John Evans Atta Mills travelling to China and coming back with the news that the Chinese were willing to loan Ghana fifteen billion dollars. At the time, I said that that was one of the most useless propositions that could ever have been contemplated by any government. And I recall being roundly insulted for my troubles. The loan was never procured to that amont, even though since then all our governments have frittered with aspects of it. If one sees what is happening in other countries and in other continents, one can see clearly that I was right then, and I am right now. The loan offer from China was just bait to get their hands on our oil. Quite possibly, they have succeeded.
And today, after chasing loans with such abandon, and faced with impossible interest payments, impossible inflation and impossible debts even when we are making billions from oil, cocoa and gold, we believe that a few hundred millions of dollars and a magic wand from some twenty-year old educated at Harvard can turn our fortunes around.
It can’t. Until we find ourselves mentally, no amount of such aid, will take us out of our troubles.
(This article was first published in the column PERISCOPE DEPTH of the Daily Searchlight of 29/06/2022. The Daily Searchlight appears on the newsstands of Ghana every working day and for sale online twenty-four hours a day all day throughout the world on www.ghananewsstand.com).
