WEEP NOT FOR GHANA

The floods and inferno that last week hit Accra, capital of Ghana have stirred up compassionate hearts toward us, and incompetent and selfish politicians and public and civil servants are taking cover under this wave of sympathy to plead for more wasteful tears to be shed for us. But their insincerity tears off the woollen veil as if it were a spent spider web.

Weep not for Ghana! This is a country so richly endowed by God, but so poorly managed by its leaders – both political and non-political. At independence, South Korea and Malaysia were not better off than Ghana in gross domestic product (GDP) and basic human resources. And to be fair, I must say that the first independent government of Ghana did a lot of strategic development investments that even frightened our colonial master to the bone. The vision of that government and its actualisation efforts elicited both admiration and some hatred. And leadership at the time also made some policy mistakes that turned hatred into enmity and sabotage which eventually resulted into the overthrow of the first president, the visionary son of Africa, Dr Kwame Nkrumah.

Nkrumah should have been less loud intra-continentally and intercontinentally, and more inward and louder nationally. He would have been less noticed, less hated and even supported to be successful with his industrialisation agenda. Ghana would have been better off. But visionary as he was, he could not envision the fact that he could not pose as an enemy to the bees and receive their honey. He was tactically and strategically crippled with commodity price manipulation, especially cocoa price, which brought Ghana’s economy to knees and caused internal hatred and disquiet against him. Perhaps leaders in South Korea, Malaysia and recently, China, were wiser or more careful. But credit for Ghana’s effective development foundation cannot be denied Kwame Nkrumah. He was a great man! Nearly 50 years after his overthrow, not much has been added to the country strategically, except economic plunder and psychic disorientation which is fast smothering self-confidence in the people.

In 1964, two years before the 1966 change of direction, a structural plan had been prepared to conserve several parts of waterways in Accra including the then unpopulated Old Fadama area which now is home to over a hundred thousand people. The unpopulated low lying areas of Adabraka were to be hived off as small nature parks with drainage systems that protected the then built up areas. Achimota Forest and the forests on the ridge from Abokobi extending southwest were to be conserved with to reduce runoff from unusual downpours and rainstorms. But out Nkrumah, and in successive governments, and all has been thrown to the dogs!

Why should 170 people, more or less, die because of a two-hour heavy downpour? What would have happened if the rains had extended to four or six hours? And did you see the undignified way in which the dead bodies were packed into trucks as if they were firewood? Are there no corpse bags in Ghana? Oh, how the people are disgraced!

Who is to blame, political leaders or public and civil servants? Surely, political leaders are a failure, but are they the only ones to blame? Let’s analyse. Take the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, which is an obvious easy blame target for many. And are they right?

EPA officials are paid to ensure that environmental health and safety are paramount considerations in all constructional developments everywhere in the country. But all over the country structures are dangerously misplaced with careless abandon. EPA has overlooked several important features of environmental assessments perhaps in collaboration with quack or corrupt environmental and social management consultants, and has allowed structures to be placed where they should not be, and impacts unmitigated. Fuel stations are springing up at unauthorised areas, many in waterways: and extractive industries are not being helped to do the right thing. Because in the short term it is cheaper to do the wrong thing, extractive industries are tempted to take advantage of a weak EPA and cut corners to save money. But as has been the case, in many instances, they have had to spend more to correct the wrongs which a weak and corrupt EPA helped them to do.

But is one not being unfairly too harsh on the EPA? After all, is it not a state institution working in cooperation with other state and social actors? How would the EPA do its work properly when we have a bogus local government system that is so politically unstable and is manipulated by political party officials whose reps may be stark illiterate in country planning and environmental management, or just do not care about the right thing that needs to be done. Ghana’s current local government system is so bogus that it does not tolerate good and conscientious district chief executives (DCEs). It is constituency party executives that nominate a candidate for appoint as DCE. He or she owes his/her tenure to them and not the people as a whole. A DCE further looks over his/her shoulders in respect of usually corrupt and demanding regional party executives who work in tandem with a ready-to-bully regional minister who, is himself/herself, at the mercy of regional party executives. These two levels of party executives are so demonic that they hold DCEs and regional ministers in their hands like raw eggs. They can smash and crush them at will. And regional ministers and DCEs acknowledge their power by dancing to their tunes.

What about the local government and rural development minister? What can he/she do to protect regional ministers and DCEs? Nothing, nothing, nothing! Absolutely nothing! Once complaints and request for removal have gone to the national party office and the presidency, the local government minister can do nothing but collaborate for the removal. He/she can feign some cosmetic intervention by going to the region or district ostensibly to settle matters. But it all depends on the inclination and resolve of the regional and district constituency party executives. If they want your removal you will have to be removed. Nothing, nothing can stop them!

With this kind of spurious structure and system in place, DCEs and regional ministers lack the independence of mind and will power to do a good job no matter their professional background. And with this kind of fake and ridiculous system in place, every policy decision and action at the regional and district level is governed by political economy. These two public servants must protect their jobs. They must spend, even if wasteful, when it pleases their party officials. The planning departments at the regional and district levels are rendered impotent. And who does not like money and good living? So, many planning officers close their minds to zoning and layout issues. They generally appear to be insistent when they need some bribe. Ask many Town and Country Planning Officers, and they will tell you how sometimes they have been ordered by DCEs, coordinating directors and regional ministers to ignore the right things in order to let some powerful people have their way. Painfully so, these planning officers have sometimes been used by unscrupulous DCEs and regional ministers to frustrate genuine development projects by people they see as no party friends.

In this Ghana’s current reality where DCEs are not elected and are brutally controlled by party officials, they find themselves operating a weak and wieldy system exploitable by corrupt EPA officials for wrong doing. Good planning and control have failed because the key agencies do not work properly under the current phony local government system we have. And there seems to be no hope as the overwhelming demand by Ghanaians (shown in the Constitutional Review Committee’s work) for election of DCEs has been surreptitiously set aside by a government white paper which now suggests election of one nominee out of five obviously to be put up by party constituency executives. This constitutional fraud on the people cannot change anything for the better, and planning and supervision will continue to suffer.

Look at the nasty and shameful power-show that took place a few days ago, in which Accra Metro Assembly officials were conducting a demolition exercise in the Odododiodio Constituency and the Member of Parliament stepped in and stopped the action because, reportedly, he feared that would make him unpopular! And being a deputy minister of local government and a boss of the Accra Metro DCE, the DCE (he calls himself mayor) stayed away with his tail between his thighs on hearing the news. Can that be described as cowardice? Could that have happened if the DCE had been properly elected in universal suffrage where he would not jeopardise his position by pursuing the right thing even if that meant challenging that deputy minister? In the past, Accra DCEs and other DCEs elsewhere have tried to do the right thing, but they have always been “called to order” by their bosses and party officials with the excuse that the DCE’s action for decongestion and environmental ordering would cause disaffection and cost the ruling party votes in an election. This is the political selfish reason our towns have become overbuilt, congested, dirty, unhealthy and dangerous. I speak with personal experience and virtually every Ghanaian will boldly attest to what I have said here.

I was sacked at the peak of my performance as DCE (of Jomoro District Assembly) because I refused to comply with wayward and corrupt instructions given me by the Regional Minister and my constituency party executives. My good friend, the Local Government Minister (Late Hon. Baah Wiredu) to whom I was a private policy advisor, had to painfully sign my letter of removal which was dubiously worded as if I was on transfer – but to nowhere – even though I continued to be paid for over a year until I wrote for termination of the payment because I thought I was not adequately earning my salary. I was only attending meetings on the River Transport Project which I was chairing in Accra for the Minister before I was removed from office in Jomoro. He only occasionally picked my brain on policy matters, and I thought that was not good enough. Many senior members of government were disappointed with my removal but they could not do anything about. I was honest and results-yielding, but that made me unsuitable and unfit for the system. Pity DCEs in this bogus local government system Ghana is operating!

The election of DCEs and even regional ministers (call them Regional Chief Executives (RCEs)) is key to effective and less lawless development in Ghana. An elected DCE will make for true decentralisation with the local people owning and controlling his/her tenure of office. He/she will then feel confident enough to make demands on officers in his district to perform to district needs and standards. As it is now some district coordinators and other officials are even more powerful than DCEs, making DCEs cow to save their tenure in this era of high poverty and social hardship.

It is very disappointing that current political leaders seeking to take power after 2016 are selfishly and myopically not seeing the need to ensure that DCEs and RCEs are elected by universal suffrage. They selfishly fear a loss of control of power and so are falsely pleading policy uncooperativeness from elected DCEs and RCEs as their justification for avoiding universal suffrage. That is surely dishonest! Their real reason is their fear of loss of control which stems from inadequate understanding or care about good governance.

Instead of weeping for Ghana, tell us the truth, however bitter, to put our house in order constitutionally and functionally.

May God have mercy upon the poor departed souls! Amen and Amen.

Author: Ketiboa K. Blay, June 10, 2015