Aberration Not A Norm

News reports regarding a planned shake-up and even compulsory retirement of officials of the Lands Commission and Lands Title Registry, especially those in charge of managing land title documentation, made weird reading last week in the Daily Guide.

There could not have been a worse presentation of the prevalence of bad governance in the country than this piece of worrying information.

While shake-ups and even retirement of officials when their times are due is a norm, it becomes an aberration when the underpinning motive is political and even tendentious.

We have for a long time, alongside other media organizations and indeed civil society groups, harped on the need for good governance to be the hallmark of political parties which assume the leadership of this country but this remains Utopian ideal of a sort, unattainable under the present government.

We have watched with utter disgust as politicians in public offices, in a bid to achieve their parochial interests, employ so-called shake-ups to get away with inappropriate governance conduct. This way, they are able to remove human stumbling blocks in their way.

Impeccable information reaching us and the news story which triggered this commentary, have it that there is a frenzied land grab exercise by politicians in government.

Some civil servants manning the Lands Commission and the Lands Title Registry, especially a certain lady, are said to be insisting on the doing of the right things, refusing to allow the now peeved politicians to acquire lands in breach of laid-down procedures.

Try as we did, we are unable to determine the lady’s name but she is obviously one of the few ladies in the country who have risen to the positions they are holding today and who should be encouraged rather than sanctioned for merely doing their work. She, in particular, we have learnt, has incurred the wrath of a lot of “big men” because of her refusal to play ball.

When she is axed, as we hear some diabolic politicians in the corridor of power seek to do, the number of women holding influential positions would have dwindled further.

The need for the building of strong state institutions has for the umpteenth time been emphasized since US President Barack Obama mentioned the importance of such a virtue during his first official visit to Ghana.

It is worrisome to observe that rather than adhere to this call, we have consistently abused it.

The judiciary, the police and many other state institutions which must constantly pass the integrity test given the fact that they are permanent state structures regardless of which party is in power, are losing their shine through political interference in their operations.

Let all well-meaning Ghanaians stand up and be counted regarding this fresh attempt at weakening a state institution because a group of politicians think it is in their interest to do so.

Dr. Wordsworth Odame Larbi, Chief Executive Officer of the Lands Commission, did not leave any trace of doubt regarding the happenings at the Lands Commission in his reaction to questions posed by the Daily Guide.

If there is nothing wrong in allocating state lands to individuals for the purpose of development, as he put it, that was not the case a few years ago when a group of Ghanaians was demonized for availing themselves of such opportunity in fact through the laid-down procedures.

Whether such lands are being doled out as it is to ruling party functionaries, was an area he wisely evaded because it is a landmine which could obviously cost him enormous trouble. Stating that he was not ready to confirm or deny the allocations or even the shake-up, speaks volumes about the stress career civil servants are enduring in the course of insisting that the right things are done.

These are restive times and we entreat President Mills to ensure that such arbitrariness is not entertained so that another entry is not made in his bad governance log.

Source: Editorial (D-Guide)