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The past eight years have been a disaster for the people of Ghana. Governance standards have slipped and the economy has struggled, making life more difficult for every Ghanaian. Our country, once held up as the gold standard, has fallen markedly behind our peers.

The government has mismanaged the economy and taken on loan after loan, increasing Ghana’s debt burden to an unsustainable level and mortgaging the country’s future. The result is slowed business growth, the loss of jobs, and higher prices of everything from bread to medicine.

A growing number of expert reports from African and European nonpartisan sources are showing with hard numbers what ordinary Ghanaians already know: that the NDC has done a terrible job governing this country, that their mismanagement, incompetence, and corruption has brought down a once rising economy.

Failure of Governance

According to the 2016 Mo Ibrahim Index report, “A Decade of African Governance,” Ghana has had the most significant decline in good governance over the past decade of any country that is not currently experiencing conflict and instability. Over the past ten years, Ghana’s overall score on the index has declined by 2.1 points, which i s the eighth largest deterioration on the continent.

With the exception of Mauritania, which is struggling to contain terrorism, all of the countries that have declined equally or more than Ghana – Libya, Madagascar, Eritrea, Central African Republic, Mali, the Gambia, and Burundi – are classified by the World Bank as Fragile and Conflict-Affected States.

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation notes this trend as “concerning,” pointing to the “potential fragility” of Ghana’s previously strong democracy.

Multiple reports also indicate that Ghanaians are increasingly frustrated with government corruption. In a December 2015 Transparency International Report, Ghana had the second highest percentage citizens among African countries saying they felt corruption has increased, with 76% Ghanaians citing the troubling trend.

The third highest was Nigeria, with 75%. According to Afrobarometer surveys conducted several times over the past ten years, Ghana saw one of the largest declines on the continent in public satisfaction with how the government is handling fighting corruption, dropping 51.1 points over the past ten years.

The perception of the corruption of elected officials has also increased sharply: in 2014, 83% of Ghanaians perceived at least some presidential officials to be corrupt, compared to 56% in 2005.

According to a report by the nonpartisan IMANI Center for Policy and Education, between 2012 and 2014, a total of $1.6 billion (5.94 billion GHS) was officially reported missing or misused between 19 ministries, departments, and agencies.

This is only one small part of the cost of corruption. Everything the government builds – whether a new road or a power plant – costs many times what it should, lining the pockets of the NDC government at the expense of the people.

A Mismanaged Economy

The NDC government has mismanaged and plundered the country’s economic resources, with the result that more and more Ghanaians are out of work and feeling the effects of higher prices for electricity, housing, food, and other necessities.