Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies : Government of Failed Memories

When is come to flagrant display of legendary incompetence and deceit you can always trust the NPP government under the leadership of the excellent one Nana Addo Dankwah Akuffo Addo to excel. In December 2018 Presidential meeting with the press, Atinka FM journalist asked President Akufo-Addo whether he was aware that the Michigan Aerospace Manufacturers Association (MAMA) had offered to build 10 regional emergency centers with ambulances, and to provide the country with two helicopters for medical supplies together with drones for the supply of vaccines for the Health Ministry. President Akufo-Addo denied knowledge and called the Health Minister, "Hon." Kwaku Agyeman Manu to respond. According to the Minister, “When they (MAMA Delegation) came, they were about seven Ghanaians and one American who was neither the MD for Michigan Aerospace Manufacturers Association (MAMA) Gavin Brown nor Bill Gates” and that "MAMA opted out after he asked them to demonstrate its source of funding for the project". Last Thursday the same health minister was asked again that based on the group photograph of the meeting with the president the American he indicated was not the MD of MAMA Gavin Brown was in fact Gavin Brown, he retorted that he is and old man and does not remember whether it was Gavin Brown or not. Meanwhile the facts of the whole affair is that Dr. Afisah Zachariah, who was Director of Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation at the Ministry of Health at the time, led a team to Michigan to solicit assistance from MAMA (https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20150320/NEWS/150329983/michigan-aerospace-firms-to-manage-medical-supply-delivery-effort-in). Dr. Afisah subsequently did a report on the visit and the "agreement" with MAMA. When the MAMA delegation which included the Executive Director of MAMA Gavin Brown visited Ghana in 2017, they held meetings with the Minister of health (the very same old man who doesn't remember) and latter with the President (who had no knowledge about the deal) and group photographs of the event was taken with the MAMA delegation which was widely published. The drone delivery part of the deal was to be handled by zipline, the very same zipline the Government led by Vice President contracted to carry out a much reduced drone services at US$ 12million per anum. The questions that are begging answers are 1. why would a government that promised to protect the public purse refuse a free offer and turn around and pay US$ 12m for a much reduced version of the same service by the sane contractor? 2. Did the Health Minister really forget about the whole encounter with MAMA? 3 How did the Health Minister introduce Gavin Brown to the President during their meeting? 4. Did the president really forgot about his meeting with MAMA and Gavin Brown? 5. How was the health Minister able to remember the exact number of the delegation and their race? 6. how was the health minister able to remember that the delegation did not include Gavin Brown or Bill Gate after one year, but six months down the line he cannot remember whether Gavin Brown was part of the delegation or not? 7. Based on the fact that Kwaku Agyemang Manu is now old and cant remember much should he continue to be in Office? 8. Is there something they are not telling us? because just like Hon Osafo Marfo said we ( Ghanaians) would not understand? The NPP is demonstrating their lightly veiled contempt for the electorate they depend on. This whole affair is quintessence of how this government is running the affairs of Ghana.

Ofosu Ampofo and the Cleaners – Training with Live Bullets

It was German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who in his “twilight of the idols” said that there is no greater error than mistaking the consequences for the cause. It is from this premise that I proceed from the invitation of the chairman of the Opposition NDC by the CID for questioning over a leaked tape in which he allegedly made very disgusting pronouncement. (Small digression, what has the CID done about the leaked tape of their own boss Mrs Addo Dankwah? Did the bible talk about the log in somebody’s eyes?). Back to what I was saying, the content of the tape cannot be divorced from the events of the Ayawaso West Wogon (AWW). The ruling NPP predictably have jumped on the leaked tapes to justify the AWW events and put the blame on the NDC. The content of the leaked tapes if true are very disgusting and very alarming to say the least. But the NDC has quickly issued a press conference casting doubts on the authenticity of the leaked tapes, claiming they were doctored and criminally obtained. Now let us following the NPP side of events following the AWW election, the original story was that national security got intelligence about a cache of arms at the residence of the NDC parliamentary candidate for AWW, so forces were deployed to seize and retrieves same. I have never believed that line because I cannot believe our national security could get such intelligence and fail to retrieve them. Now with the leaked tape the NPP has shifted to the fact that they knew it was Azorka boys in the house of the NDC candidate. For me I don’t believe that story too because if they knew the forces were sent to contain Azorka boys why didn’t they say so and why hasn’t it come up at the hearing of the Emil Short Commission of enquiry? Those calling on Mr Ofosu Ampofo and the NDC to produce the undoctored tape if they claim the tapes have been doctored, I want them to cast their mind back, some few years ago the Senior Minister was heard on tape allegedly making some disgraceful pronouncements, he said the tapes were doctored, when he was asked to produce the undoctored tape, he said “we don’t go round recording our conversations with other people”. I want to know whether we now go round recording everyday conversation with others. Here again the NPP as usual is holding everyone else to the moral standards while they hold themselves to the legal standards. Did Mr Ofosu Ampofo make those statements on the tape? We would never know, but if he did we must all in a chorus condemn him for venturing on the path of such war games. Is it possible Mr Ofosu Ampofo did not make such pronouncements and that the ruling government made the tape up to explain away the events of AWW? That is also very possible judging from the shifting story being told by the NPP about AWW. The truth lies somewhere you and I would never find.

A Nation in search of a Cathedral

The eight year rule of the NDC we saw them borrowed a whooping Gh S 79bn. We thought there cannot be bad managers of the economy because the NDC has at its disposal the crude oil from Jubilee oil field in addition to all the tradition sources of revenue. Ghanaians were made to believe and it was true that the NDC had unprecedented revenue inflow than any government before it. With the help of the media, corruption and mismanagement were cited as the reasons why the NDC had to borrow such a colossal amount in less than a decade. The decision of the NDC to go to the IMF for what they called policy credibility was the last straw that broke the camel’s back, what it meant was that, the NDC admitted that the investor community had lost confidence in their ability to steer the affairs of Ghana’s economy. Especially after Dr Alhaji Mahamoud Bawumia had predicted that the trajectory of the economy was being driven towards the IMF and ultimately it landed there. It was therefore difficult to remove tag of incompetence ably posted on the NDC government with the help of civil society especially in the midst of corruption allegations leveled against some key members of the NDC government by the NPP and their media Cabal. From this amount the NDC build the cape coast stadium, Terminal three at the kotoka international airport, facelifted the Kumasi and Tamale International airports, the kejetia terminal, the sofoline interchange, circle and kasoa interchange, the ridge hospital the university of Ghana medical school, the sewua hospital, and a plethora of capital projects including sawla/fulfulso road, the cocoa roads and a major part of the eastern corridor road. The NPP in government has borrowed GhS 49bn in less than two years in office plus the three oil wells (TEN = Tweneboa, Enyira and Ntome) that has been added to the jubilee field in addition to all the traditional sources of revenue. The NPP has now displaced the NDC it displaced politically as the Government with unprecedented revenue stream in the history of this country called Ghana. But with this unprecedented revenue, they have also exhibited an unprecedented abysmal performance. Not only has their revenue been unprecedented, their borrowing has also been unprecedented within the spat of time they’ve been in office and with no single capital investment of their own to point to. The question on the minds of many a Ghanaian is what did they do with the money? If we described the NDC as incompetent, now there is not adjective to describe the NPP in government. The irony is that it is the NPP government that is seeking to borrow US$50bn from the Chinese in what they called the century bond, from their two years of flagrant display of legendary incompetence in government is there a doubt in the mind of anyone that it would be used for consumption? When nations are leaving infrastructure and wealth as legacy, the thinking in the governing NPP is about leaving a legacy of debt for the future Ghana. May be we need a National Cathedral after all to sing bobolibobo.

Petition Against the Creation of Additional Regions

From : Yakubu Musah Seidu (A private Citizen) To : THE CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION OF INQUIRY FOR THE CREATION OF NEW REGIONS Date : 14/12/2017 I Yakubu Musah Seidu a private citizen wish to petition your commission against the creation of additional regions in Ghana. Mr Chairman, while there may be some pockets of demand for the creation of new regions I believe that demand is not substantial and there is no real need for them and these are my reasons for stating so 1. The decentralization process that we are implementing in Ghana today does not see the region as a fulcrum of development, the region is seen as a way of de-concentration of the national Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), One can call them outpost or annexes of the national MDAs. It has no policy making power, it is setup to coordinate and harmonize district level policy for the various national level MDAs. 2. The district level is the real fulcrum of development, it is the level of devolution, where decentralization in its true sense of the concept is played out. Section 4 (1) of the Local Government Act, 1993, Act 462, provides that “Each District Assembly shall be a body corporate with perpetual succession and a common seal and may sue and be sued in its own name”. Section 4 (2) states that: “A District Assembly shall have power for the discharge of any of its functions to acquire and hold movable or immovable property, to dispose of such property and to enter into any contract or other transaction”. The District Assembly (DA) is the policy making body with legislative and taxation powers. The DA has its power derived from Article 241 (3) of the Constitution which states that: “Subject to this Constitution, a District Assembly shall be the highest political authority in the district, and shall have deliberative, legislative and executive powers”. The regions have no such powers. 3. The law also made provision for the creation of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF), which we can call the national cake, this cake is distributed among districts not among regions. So if anybody wants to ensure that a particular area gets more of the national cake, she should be thinking of getting them more districts not regions which does not bring any "cake" home. 4. The creation of a region is not as straight forward as creating a district, it might have to go through difficult and expensive processes such as a referendum, only to create an entity that adds no real value to the lives of the people, except further deepening of the tribal and ethnic divide 5. The argument that having a region near you could bring development in not convincing to say the least because the proponents have not adduce even a single reason why that can spur development. There seem to be some underlying tribal currents for the call for additional regions, of course no one wants to live in "compound house". But at what cost? can we set a precedence of given people additional regions as and when they call for it? 6. The creation of additional regions would be an attempt to re-centralize government instead of deepening the decentralization process. If we deepen our decentralization process, the call for additional regions would become a mute, for example people would not need to travel from the districts to acquire passports and other services because those services would be readily available in the districts. 7. The resources that would be expended to put up the infrastructure and to staff the additional regional capitals could be better applied else where. Students are dying in our schools of diseases emanating from overcrowding because we do not have the resources to decongest our schools, and in another breath we are contemplating spend money we do not have to create additional bureaucracy that adds no additional value to our socio-economic development. For these reasons, Mr Chairman I hope it is clear that there is no need for the creation of additional districts at this time in our national life. I am grateful for the opportunity to send this petition. sgn Yakubu Musah Seidu (0201616123) yakubumusah31@gmail.com

CREATION OF NEW REGIONS IS PUTTING PLASTER ON A DIRTY WOUND

I am amazed at how a flight of thought on a political platform suddenly metamorphosed into a policy decision in Ghana without it being subjected to any policy analysis, while those who knows better sits in silence (Make us cherish fearless honesty). One such policy is the reorganisation of regions promised by the two major political parties during the 2016 electioneering campaigns. The NPP promised to split the western region into two ostensibly because some chiefs complained that it takes them 7-8 hours to travel to the regional capital Secondi. Not to be outdone the NDC promised to create 5 additional regions. The NPP won the election and have started putting in place measures to create those additional region(s). This is a good approach if the solution to the problem were to be well thought out, which in this case is not. The reason why it takes 7-8 hours to travel to the regional capital is not a fact of distance it is a matter of very bad roads and the western region have so many of such roads. The northern region with equally bad roads is the largest region in terms of land area but with good roads one could traverse the region from Bole to Bunkpurugu in five hours or less. Now let me explain why the creation of additional regions is a bad idea which the policy analysis process would have weeded out had it been subjected to it. 1. The decentralization process that we are implementing in Ghana today does not see the region as a fulcrum of development, the region is seen as a way of de-concentration of the national Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), you can call them outpost or annexes of the national MDAs. It has no policy making power, it is setup to coordinate and harmonize district level policy for the various national level MDAs. 2. The district level is the real fulcrum of development, it is the level of devolution, where decentralization in its true sense of the concept is played out. Section 4 (1) of the Local Government Act, 1993, Act 462, provides that “Each District Assembly shall be a body corporate with perpetual succession and a common seal and may sue and be sued in its own name”. Section 4 (2) states that: “A District Assembly shall have power for the discharge of any of its functions to acquire and hold movable or immovable property, to dispose of such property and to enter into any contract or other transaction”. The District Assembly (DA) is the policy making body with legislative and taxation powers. The DA has its power derived from Article 241 (3) of the Constitution which states that: “Subject to this Constitution, a District Assembly shall be the highest political authority in the district, and shall have deliberative, legislative and executive powers”. The regions have no such powers. 3. The law also made provision for the creation of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF), which we can call the national cake, this cake is distributed among districts not among regions. So if anybody wants to ensure that a particular area gets more of the national cake, he should be thinking of getting them more districts not regions which does not bring any cake home. 4. The creation of a region is not as straight forward as creating a district, it might have to go through difficult and expensive processes such as a referendum, only to create an entity that adds no real value to the lives of the people, except further deepening of the tribal and ethnic divide 5. Had it been established that the people working at the Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs) are overwhelmed with their work load, we might consider additional regions, even with that we could expand the existing RCCs. The creation of additional region(s) looks to me like putting plaster on a dirty wound, it does not bring any healing (Development) to the injured (Electorates), it could actually mask the real problem from a good solution. In this country if an institution is not efficient we don’t find out why, we only add to it only for the new creation to suffer the same bottle necks. My view is that let’s subject the creation of new regions to simple cost effectiveness and efficiency analysis and made same public before embarking on this project. Parliament as it is currently constituted might not be able to block the appointment of the designated minister because both sides made the promise to increase the number of regions.

Why NDC Lost Part 1

Why the NDC lost the Election. Since the declaration of the 2016 election results, I have heard so many arguments about why the sitting president and the ruling government lost the election. Now I will explain why the NDC was trounced at the pools. The meat of the problem is the Economy, Yes the economy. It doesn’t lie, the party embarked on this massive infrastructure which is good except that it was financed with debt. With our external debt pilling up we had to run to the IMF which imposed their favorite tool on us, austerity – increase revenue through tax and other means, full cost recovery for public utilities, reduce spending including freeze on public sector employment etc. Government was also borrowing locally through the issuance of treasury bills and banks were rather comfortable with the T-Bill rate they were not interested in taking any risk by lending to businesses except to those sectors that could turn such loans around quickly unfortunately these sectors are the import sectors. So things that could have been produced locally end up being imported. So very few jobs were created if any at all. In an attempt to reduce expenditure, promoted nurses and teachers were not being paid their due, if it finally comes mostly after one year, they are paid three months. Plus, the freeze on employment of newly trained nurses and teachers. To cap it the government decided to abolish the allowances paid to trainee teachers and nurses. Some of these students settled for these institutions because they assumed that employment is guaranteed for them after competition. So if you are a student in these institutions, you are denied your allowance and you chance of getting employment after completing is reducing by the day, so if someone comes promising to restore your allowance and ensure employment for you, what would you do? The NDC lost that constituency plus their parents and siblings. Hundreds of thousands of young professionals are being churned out of both the public and private institutions with no job openings to absorb them. These are people with high hopes. Businesses were being overtaxed in addition to their inability to get affordable credit, there was no way they could grow and create jobs. Throw in the high profile corruption scandals such as the bus branding, Woyome, GYEEDA SADA which the NPP hyped as much as they could and you have a fertile ground for the NPP to plant their change message. In addition to all these the party decided to run a flamboyant campaign which rather angered most of the youth. Of course with only one message which is the infrastructure, it was more convenient to spend more money to propagate their message which they had very little to begin with. It was therefore not surprising that the second defacto message then became the attack on the NPP’s candidate. Running an economy is balancing game more like dealing with a hydra headed monster, if you focus on one you will be killed by the others and that is what happened to the NDC. I will pause hear, but I would be back to explain why the NPP did not win but rather it was the NDC that lost, watch out.

The Ghana Heritage Fund; Hurting the future with good intentions

It has been six years since Ghana started commercial production of crude oil, in the run-up to commencement of production a lot of preparations were made including the enactment of the relevant legislation to ensure prudent management of the resource. To avoid the pitfall that have befallen other countries that have found the “black gold”, the Petroleum Revenue Management Act 2011 (Act 815) was promulgated. Act 815 adopted the Norwegian model which splits petroleum revenues into pools with substantial parts invested offshore. In Ghana Act 815 established the petroleum holding fund into which all revenue from the resource are lodged. This funds are then allocated to three main accounts based on a formula to be determined by parliament, these accounts are the budget, heritage and stabilization funds. Act 815 was designed to remove those pitfalls associated with the commercial oil production in other countries. These pitfalls include the Dutch disease, inflation (overheating of the economy), increased risk of corruption and investment into projects with low economic returns. According to a Bank of Ghana (BoG) semiannual report for Jan-Jun 2016, the total revenue that have accrued to the country is US $3,285,248,838.84 out of which 43.22% (US$1,420,140,861.30) have been allocated to the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA), 30.18% (US$991,575,834.69) have been allocated to GNPC the whiles 18.81%(US$617,816,104.68) was disbursed to the Ghana Stabilization fund (GSF) and a paltry 7.78% (US$255,716038.17) was disbursed to the heritage fund. The Heritage fund which is to ensure inter generational equity in the benefits of the finite resource and the GSF are supposed to be saved offshore. These are to ensure a steady flow of dollars into the economy to prevent the cedi from becoming too strong and hurting the country’s exports of other commodities. It will also allow the smoothing of expenditure across the business cycle. For all intent and purposes, this should have been a good law but in reality it is not and I will explain why. During the first half year of 2015 the yield on the heritage and the stabilization funds were -0.54% and 0.33% respectively and 0.74% and -0.01% for the second half year of 2015. This means that Ghana was paying the fund managers for keeping the heritage fund in the first half year of 2015 and the stabilization fund for the second half year of 2015. In 2016 the yield was somehow better it was 4.93% and 0.33% for the heritage fund and the stabilization fund respectively for the first half year https://www.bog.gov.gh/privatecontent/Public_Notices/Semi%20Annual%20Report%201st%20half%202016%20FinalV1.1.pdf What makes it bizarre is the fact that whiles we were paying the fund managers for keeping our fund in 2015, the very same government was borrowing by issuing sovereign bonds at a coupon rate of 10.75%. Does it really make sense to put the heritage and stabilization fund outside the economy knowing very well its potential impact on the local currency which is declining? Again in 2016 the government have issued another sovereign bond at a coupon rate of 9.25% for another 750 million USD. http://citifmonline.com/2016/09/08/ghana-issues-fifth-eurobond-at-9-25/ The rationale behind Act 815 was to prevent Politicians from pursuing their short term political interest at the expense of the long term development needs of the country by preventing disruptions in the business cycle and the economy as well as ensuring inter generational equity such that future generations after the resource have been depleted would also have their fair share of the resource. The question now is with the rate at which government is borrowing would these objective be achieved? The very generations we are paying fund managers to keep the money for are the same generations we are busily accruing loans for them to come and pay. To add salt to injury we are accruing more debt and at steep interest rate than we are saving for them. This defeat all forms of logic and common sense. Unless we are able to enact a law that puts a ceiling on government borrowings, the very mischief Act 815 was enacted to cure will be our lot.