Saturday,
December 21, 2013
Folks,
I have for many years now been insisting that the Ministry of Information (in
its former and current configurations with the addition of "Media
Relations" to its name) is irrelevant to the contemporary Ghanaian system
of governance.
I
have also called for its abolition, simply because it is not serving any useful
purpose. Whatever public/media relations work that the government needs can be
done by the Communications Directorate at the Presidency if the requisite
calibre of people are employed there to rake in public goodwill and not
contempt or scorn for the government.
Elsewhere,
no government goes out of its way to have a Ministry of Information that
doesn't justify the expenditure of the tax payers' money on it. Someone, tell
me. What particular useful and significant, lasting achievement has this
Ministry of Information and Media Relations made all these years?
What
comes from that Ministry that is not already passed on to the public by other
information outlets? In effect, what exactly is this Ministry being retained to
achieve? It can't even do damage control to save the government from the daily
bashing that goes on.
How
many of the hostile mass media of communication (especially the print and
electronic media that don't see anything good about the NDC) has this Ministry
of Information and Media Relations been able to win over to confirm that it is
indeed capable of doing a "media relations" work?
Or
to even suggest that it knows how to manage information so that the negative
press given the government can be either neutralized or disregarded by the
public. Nothing!!!
Under
President Mahama, especially, this Ministry of Information and Media Relations
has turned out to be causing more harm to his government than any good that
might still warrant its existence.
Mahama
Ayariga has goofed on numerous occasions and painted a very bad picture of
himself and the government as either "irresponsible" or
"insensitive". In other words, much of the bad press that the
government gets stems from the irresistible tendency of Ministers/Deputy
Ministers of that Ministry to embarrass the government more than do anything to
help it claw back lost public goodwill.
Talk
about the flip-flopping that Ayariga has done to create the impression that the
government is dishonest when it comes to information dissemination. Then, add
to it the current problem that the Media Development Fund has generated because
Ayariga said too many contradictory things in one breath!
His
Deputies, especially Murtala Ibrahim Mohammed, have also goofed on several
occasions and made irritating utterances.
Plainly
put, these are novices that don't know anything about information management
and shouldn't have been placed at that Ministry—assuming that the Ministry
itself deserves being maintained.
Here
is the latest statement from Murtala Mohammed to prove that he is a liability:
“The
government is blaming Nana Akufo-Addo and two others who initiated the election
petition case for its failure to build the 50 community day senior high schools
promised this year.
Murtala
Ibrahim Mohammed, Deputy Minister for Information and Media Relations, however,
assured that the total of 200 schools will be built by the end of 2016 just as
promised by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) during the 2012
electioneering period.
Speaking
on TV3’s Agenda, the Deputy Minister, who is also Member of Parliament for
Nanton Constituency, asserted that the Mahama-led government is not the first
to miss a policy target.
‘...
It is not a crime,’ he stressed, blaming the missing of one of the key
manifesto promises on many factors including the decision by Nana Addo Dankwa
Akufo-Addo and two others to contest the results of the 2012 elections. ‘The
Supreme Court [proceedings] affected us economically,’ he stated”.
What
arrant nonsense?
True,
the petition hearing created distortions here and there but cannot be upheld as
the cause of the government's inability to perform its functions. At the time
the hearing was going on, did President Mahama not remain in office to govern
the country? Did he not know the development agenda that won him the general
elections?
How
much money did the government take from the national coffers to pay for the
petition hearing to suggest that its budget was negatively affected?
Of
course, the atmosphere of gloom and insecurity that the petition hearing
created might have discouraged investors from doing business, which some
government officials were quick to adduce as the cause of the hundreds of
millions of dollars lost; but I doubt that what Murtala Mohammed has said is
justifiable at all by any stretch of imagination.
True,
we may blame Akufo-Addo for certain happenings in the country, especially the
volatile environment that the NPP created after losing the 2012 elections; but
the security agencies stamped their authority on the situation to prevent any
catastrophe. And the Supreme Court exhaustively ended it all for the NPP.
So,
now, how would Akufo-Addo come in to be blamed as the cause of the government's
inability to fulfill its own electioneering campaign promise of building 50 new
SHS a year to give Ghana 200 of such schools by the end of President Mahama's
first term in office?
At
the time that promise was made, voices of reason quickly stepped in to caution
the NDC against it because it was not feasible. Viable it might be, but it
couldn't be accomplished and needed to be retracted. They didn't, and now that
they have come face-to-face with their own under-performance on that score,
they are blaming poor Akufo-Addo for their own failure. Sad!!
In
truth, Murtala Mohammed’s utterance is the most irresponsible that I have heard
in many years. I hope he won’t come out to deny it or run away from the truth
to say that he has been misquoted. His is a clear instance of lazy thinking. It
is a clear demonstration of extreme lousiness for which I expect the President
to call him to order.
Speaking
for the government means being responsible; but he isn’t. If the government
thinks that it can shift blame this way and still expect public sympathy, it is
deceived. Isn’t it saddening for this kind of politics to be done?
Yes,
blame Akufo-Addo for what he is and is already known for; but not when he has
no hand in the government’s own miscalculations and failures. How do some of
these government functionaries think at all?
I shall return…
·
E-mail:
mjbokor@yahoo.com
·
Join
me on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/mjkbokor to continue the conversation.
No comments:
Post a Comment