So, Kufuor and his government functionaries stole official documents too?

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Sometimes, I find it difficult to believe the utterances made by some public officials, particularly when such statements are good only as a demonstration of frustration or uselessness. I have all along been tempted to disregard statements coming from government functionaries, especially those that shift blame for their own inadequacies.

Most of such useless statements facilitate the buck passing that has dominated our national affairs over the years—and they annoy us! We have had too much buck passing under all governments, especially in this 4^th Republic, beginning with the Kufuor government’s blaming the Rawlings one for leaving behind intractable problems. Then, when President Mills took over, the blame game continued. It has been so until now, and will definitely continue ad infinitum.

Somalia is a failed state but teaches African countries useful lessons

Friday, February 24, 2012

At long last, there is something on the horizon to assure us that the decades-long Somali crisis will be tackled to restore sanity to the Horn of Africa and relieve the world of a major headache. Somalia may be suffering the negative backlash of political instability but the world feels the pinch when the Somali pirates strike vessels plying the Indian Ocean. 

In a fell swoop, the international community wants to kill many birds with one stone—a resolute determination to eradicate en bloc al-Shabab, the terrorist group!

Kennedy Agyapong apologizes… Who goes next?

Friday, February 24, 2012

We may be tempted to heave a sigh of guarded relief at what we have just heard: that the NPP’s Kennedy Agyapong has apologized to President Mills for insulting him last Saturday. He aired the apology in an interview with Citi FM’s Umaru Sanda Amadu (Ghanaweb, February 24, 2012).

On its face value, this apology may be regarded as a show of maturity and Agyapong commended for demonstrating a sense of maturity. However, there are many aspects of his action that won’t portray his apology as genuine. First, he indicated that “he has been forced to swallow the bitter pill because of the incessant pressure mounting on him to do so,” citing calls from friends and a Pastor of the Pentecost Church as evidence.

If he were genuinely remorseful about his unguarded utterances against the President, why should he wait to be “forced” to apologize?

Solving Ghana’s problems doesn’t call for throat slashing

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Our political landscape is tense, apparently because of the hardline position taken by the various politicians to be at each other’s throat. Do we already not have the appropriate mechanisms in place for replacing one government with the other without having to resort to throat slashing?

No amount of sermonizing against using insults or physical confrontations as the main political tool seems to be catching on. There is no change for civility to drive politicking in the country because by its very nature, our politics itself is dirty—very dirty indeed! It can’t be done otherwise.

Jailing President Mills is not the answer, NPP!!

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Once again, the NPP’s Kennedy Agyapong is in the news, not to attract goodwill to his party’s cause, but to continue dragging himself into the mud and to expose his party’s desperation.

Speaking at a rally in Accra on Saturday to climax the NPP flagbearer’s national listening tour, he took a turn for the worse by bad-mouthing President Mills and making very serious utterances that must not go unexamined.

Ghana Politics: Who will be proud of this Parliament?

Friday, February 17, 2012

Ghanaians must be bothered by the manner in which our Parliamentarians are misconducting themselves. What transpired during President Mills’ presentation of the State of the Nation Address on Thursday is a clear confirmation that our Legislature is made up of people who are taking an undue advantage of Ghanaians’ patience and tolerance to create needless tension in the system.

Those among them, especially those in the Minority, going about criticizing President Mills for what they call his non-performance, gave democracy a bad name on the occasion. By turning themselves into referees to give President Mills a “red card,” they took their waywardness too far. That attitude is unbecoming of their status and they should bow their heads in shame.  

Nobody can build Ghana through armchair criticism

Monday, February 13, 2012

A group calling itself “Ghanaians living in the diaspora” has circulated a letter, entitled “GHANA’S PRESIDENT PROFESSOR MILLS MUST STEP DOWN IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST” (See SpyGhana.com, February 12, 2012: http://spyghana.com/opinion/president-professor-mills-must-step-down/), which has attracted my interest for obvious reasons.

Endorsed by 22 signatories resident in several countries, this letter was copied to many in the international community, including The President of the World Bank and the Chief Executive of the International Monetary Fund. 

Carrying their idiocy further, this group also served the Russian Kremlin, the Central Committee of the Chinese People’s Republic, the State Department of the United States of America, the President of the European Union, and the Secretary General of the United Nations. A glance at this list quickly tells me how uninformed these so-called Ghanaian residents in the diaspora are. I will return to this issue soon.

Fighting Corruption in Ghana? Forget it!!

Friday, February 10, 2012

The Woyome fraud has opened a wide window through which we can peek into the web that makes it difficult for anybody to attempt fighting or eradicating corruption in Ghana. 

What is it about Woyome’s misconduct that will make anybody sympathize with him and create the impression that the official action being taken against him is bad or that he shouldn’t have been arrested at all?

Before this Woyome, there have been other Woyomes

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Indeed, the deal perpetrated by Alfred Agbesi Woyome is horrendous and will remain as such for long. However, it is nothing new or spectacular in our country except that it has happened at a time that nothing seems to be working well for the political party in power that he finances.

This Woyome fraud is just a different form of the thievery that has been going on in our part of the world over the years, although it is peculiar because it seems to have generated much heat and public interest (or anger) for several reasons. What makes it particularly intriguing is explicable in many ways:

As the Charles Taylors Betray Africa to Uncle Sam…

Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Woyome judgement debt payment scandal seems to have taken a better part of our attention for us not to consider as worth our bother other important events that have occurred within the period.

One had to do with Liberia’s former warlord and President, Charles Taylor. The United States authorities disclosed that form Taylor worked for its intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the Boston Globe reports (according to BBC News).

The revelation came in response to a Freedom of Information request by the newspaper. A Boston Globe reporter told the BBC this was the first official confirmation of long-held reports of a relationship between US intelligence and Taylor.

Woyome here, Woyome there, we are all in it together

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Not until the conditions that facilitated the fraud perpetrated by Alfred Agbesi Woyome are eliminated, we shouldn’t be surprised if worse cases occur in the future or if dubious suits continue to be filed by all manner of “aggrieved people” to benefit from this phenomenon of judgement debt payment. Once the precedent exists, trust Ghanaians to do all they can to exploit the situation.

That is why all the noise being made by the NPP activists in a bid to reap some political capital out of this Woyome scandal annoys me. The conditions which spawned that fraud won’t vanish if the NPP replaces the NDC administration. They are human-centred and will continue to give birth to fraud for as long as public officials collude with unconscionable people to take undue advantage of the loopholes in the system; or to devise their own sinister strategies to hatch such a fraud to rip off the state.

When both the horse and its rider are mad…

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

It is often said that revolutions end up eating their own children. How true! Never before have we been told, though, that the children of revolutions also end up eating their own children. That is what is happening in the NDC, which is the product of a “revolution” of sorts, orchestrated by former President Jerry Rawlings.

The eating can take different forms and be triggered in many ways. For the NDC, it is in-fighting and now the problem created by Alfred Agbesi Woyome, one of the party’s major financiers. Is it not paradoxical that the very financier of the party should turn out to be the one being devoured by the party’s own grand design on “probity and accountability”? And whose misconduct is now intensifying the internal crisis?

Cuba’s Fidel Castro writes his Memoirs: Any lesson for Ghana’s Rawlings?

Monday, February 6, 2012

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro made a rare public appearance to launch his memoirs at the Havana Convention Centre last Saturday (BBC News, February 4, 2012).

The book, Guerrilla of Time, is almost 1,000 pages long and relates his childhood and rise to power in the Cuban Revolution. The two-volume memoir is based on conversations between Fidel Castro and journalist Katiuska Blanco. It starts with former President Castro's earliest childhood memories and takes the reader up to December 1958, the eve of the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista by Castro and his followers.

Nigeria breaks away from African Union at its own risk

Friday, February 3, 2012

Nigeria has threatened to pull out of the African Union just because its leader (Jonathan Goodluck) lost his bid to take over from the Equatorial Guinean leader (Theodoro Mbasago Obiang) as the Chairman of the AU. He lost to Benin’s Boni Yayi and is so peeved as to contemplate this action as a way to teach the AU a bitter lesson.

I hope this news report is not true. But we are far away from April 1 (April Fools’ Day).

Specifically, Nigeria is not just threatening to break away from Africa but it is threatening to form an independent continent of Nigeria. What else could be more ridiculous than “an independent continent of Nigeria”? 

Of course, Nigeria is a big country—probably, its size being a curse in disguise, something that would make the former Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi agitate for the country to be split into three—but it doesn’t justify any politically suicidal move to turn it into a continent of its own. What malarkey?

As China enters Africa, new challenges emerge (Part II)

Friday, February 3, 2012

Under the colonial enterprise, the British and their rival European powers knew only one way to grab resources—entering other people’s worlds and plundering their resources. That colonial enterprise was motivated by nothing but greed and a heartless exploitation and subjugation of other people, including those in the United States.

As if oblivious to its own past, the US has also latched on to the imperialist agenda, doing things in a more brazen manner even if it doesn’t directly exploit other systems as European imperialism did. On the surface, the US “gives” instead of “taking,” which makes a huge difference between its form of imperialism and the European one. However, it has its own nauseating aspects.

As China enters Africa, new challenges emerge (Part I)

Friday, February 3, 2012

China has taken its relationship with Africa to a new level by snuggling to the continental body, the African Union. It has given a concrete evidence to authenticate that relationship and provided a new $200m (£127m) AU headquarters, funded and built by it. The building was officially opened on Saturday for use by the African leaders gathered for the AU’s 18^th ordinary session.

A statue of Ghana’s first President and foremost Pan-Africanist, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, was also unveiled and prizes in his name awarded to two African scientists for their accomplishments. Beyond its material significance, this gift symbolizes China’s determination to make friends with Africa and opens a new chapter in the China-Africa relationship.

When the Woyomes finance political parties in Ghana…

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Until the scandal aroused by the payment of the judgement debt to Alfred Agbesi Woyome, a private businessman and a prominent financier of the governing NDC, is properly investigated and concluded, we will continue to hammer on it as part of our efforts to examine the factors that endanger our national life. 

The controversy it has provoked continues to raise very serious questions, one of which is about the financing of the various political parties by individuals such as this Woyome.

Who has any clean conscience in Ghana anymore? (Part II)

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Kufuor is asking for a truly independent Public Commission of Enquiry to investigate this Woyome case for Ghanaians to know the “truth.” His strong objection to the task being performed by EOCO seems to be fed by suspicions, fears, and doubts about the integrity of the EOCO.

Here is the crux of the matter. Kufuor doesn't base his stance on anything else but the suspicion, apprehension, or doubt surrounding the process of investigation and the body tasked to do this investigation.

Who has any clean conscience in Ghana anymore? (Part I)

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Ghanaians know the extent to which public office holders can manipulate the state apparatus as they siphon off funds from the national coffers for personal gains. This manipulation seems to be the fait accompli that almost everyone condemns but isn’t prepared to fight against.

The whopping compensation paid to Alfred Agbesi Woyome, a businessman and major financier of the NDC, stands tall as the worst form of thievery to have been perpetrated in recent times. It is so because of its sophistication—being perpetrated through the ambit of the courts and presented as the outcome of his following the due process of law to seek redress.

And to imagine that this Woyome can hold a press conference to portray himself as a saint in this matter is nauseating, to say the least. Again, to imagine that the government isn’t able to take any drastic action to assure Ghanaians that it is capable of handling this matter to its convincing conclusion worsens the case. Is there anybody with any clean conscience left in this country of ours?