Twooooboi...57 Years Of What?

Twooooboi, yee, twooboi, yee, twooooboi, yee, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, and the voices receded, the noises died down, the echoes became very distant. It was time to work. We began with the deportation of our colonial masters, who had exploited us for their own benefits, back to their own country. Kwesi Broni became an enemy. We replaced Kwesi Broni with the black man or the black woman to show all Kwesi Broni anywhere in the world that the black man is capable of managing his own affairs. Instead of taking good care of the bungalows bequeathed to us, we reared goats and chicken in them. We improved the quality of official vehicles he, Kwesi Broni, used to drive and bloated our expenditure on them. The doors of Ghana were opened to all black people from the world over. In line with �our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent,� a University for the Liberation of Africa (ULA) was established in Ghana and fully funded by the taxpayer. Some of the surviving alumnae are Robert Mugabe and Kenneth Kaunda. Not only did they excel in the liberation struggle, but were also very good students of Nkrumah in terms of political and ideological orientation. Many post independent African nations were socialists who took control of the commanding heights of their economies until they crushed down and left their citizenry very poor. Opposing views were not tolerated; one party system was the order of the day. Ghana�s open door policy saw the influx of Africans migrating into this country to seek greener pastures. Ao, Ghana, do we still have the pastures green or they are as brownish as the grass at the Flagstaff House in Accra. Nkrumah established so many industries to create employment for its citizens and foreigners alike. Education was a priority for him. The health needs of the people of this country never played second fiddle. Roads and other economic infrastructure needed to accelerate the nation�s development were put in place. In doing all these, Nkrumah did not take into account the Ghanaian axiom that �aban edwuma wo tweeu na adze na won nsua� to wit, �what belongs to government is dragged down and not carried high�. In the end all government industries were dragged down and torn apart by the very people for whom they were established. Ghana was in motion, but the politics of Nkrumah was very detestable. He was intolerant of opposing views. He used the organs of the ruling party to detain his political opponents and even some innocent citizens of this country. A few prominent politicians died in jail without trial while many more went into exile. His one party-state idea, shut the door finally to all forms of divergent political, social and economic views and made it impossible for alternate political party to win power through the ballot box. This and the ailing economy at the time eventually led to his overthrow and exile as well. Since then, Ghana has gone through serious political, social and economic metamorphoses all aimed at ensuring that the black man is capable of managing his own affairs upside down. We have largely succeeded in doing so. In the process, liberators, redeemers, revolutionaries and provisional defenders who defended us the longest aborted our efforts at using a more civilized means of governing ourselves in this country. The liberators succeeded partially since other set of the citizenry also lost their liberties in the liberation process. The redeemers enticed us with very sweet toffees and enslaved us in the end, the revolutionaries in their senseless revolt, unleashed brutalities without compare unto us within a three-month period. The most foul of murders in this country is recorded in the era of the revolutionaries who did not change anything fundamentally. The defenders treated the good people of this nation like pigs, they did not respect us a bit, like their revolutionary forebears, they killed under quiet, seized legitimately acquired private property, curtailed our liberties and inflicted the most painful era this country had endured�hunger in the midst of plenty. The resilience and tolerance of the Ghanaian towards dictators and incompetent looters got to their elastic limit and so agitations for a return to civilized democratic governance began. The unwilling blood thirsty and power drunk government of Jerry Rawlings had to cede to the agitations of the democratic forces and sail in the direction of the global political wind. Thus was born the Fourth Republic. There was a sigh of relief. A sham election was organized by a match commissioner who was the referee and the player at the same time. Ghanaians accepted the outcome. We crawled slowly from 1993 gradually and had the opportunity of changing a government for the first time in the independence of Ghana in the year 2001 through the ballot box. Bad though the economy was, the new regime was pragmatic and focused enough to steer the affairs of this nation in a manner that became the envy of many other African countries. A centre right government of President Kufour identified the major social challenges confronting his people and put in place practical and workable policies and programmes to address those challenges. For the first time, Ghanaians could walk into hospitals and be taken care of without having to pay there and then�the National Health Insurance Policy. A capitation grant which ensured that children in basic schools all over the country were catered for in terms of fees, a school feeding programme which gave one hot meal a day to children in basic schools was introduced, children had free ride to and from schools in public transport buses. Pregnant women had free maternal care in the hospitals. The economy was so robust that within the eight years of the Kufour administration, 18 foreign financial institutions, among other financial operators established in Ghana. This is in clear contrast of two state banks winding up in the first eight years of the NDC administration, namely, the Bank for Housing and Reconstruction and the Cooperative Bank. Another change of government under the banner of a �Better Ghana� was ushered in 2009, and that change has worsened the plight of this nation the more. In our 57 years of independence, the last six years has produced the most technologically advanced corrupt leaders this nation has ever had. In fact, their level of corruption is the envy of the Mobutu Sesesekos and the Obiang Nguemas. Tweeeea, when it comes to corruption, who is Ghana�s co-equal? This is a nation where a businessman, I mean Roland Agambire, who derives huge sums of money fraudulently from the tax payer can afford to import an American musician of questionable mental stability and pay him US$1million to perform publicly and smoke wee publicly and get away with it. If Agambire had genuinely made that money, he would not have spent it that irresponsibly, particularly when his home region is classified as one of the poorest in the country, where some of our countrymen drink from the same source of water as cattle do. A borehole costs less than GH�8000.00 to build, he could have built more than 250 bore holes to provide water for his people with that money. That is what stolen monies do. And Woyome; he flew hundreds of NDC foot soldiers to South Africa for the World Cup tournament. Ill-gotten money come for cheap spending all at the expense of the tax payer. This is the WASSCE Results of Ghana at 57 sent to me by a Chief Examiner: Electricity E8 Education D7 Prostitution A1 Good Roads D7 Stealing A1 Creativity D7 Telecommunication E8 Security F9 Corruption A1+ Leadership E8 Job Opportunity F9 Water E8 Missing Children C6 Cash Embezzlement A1 Ghana needs to write a Nov-Dec in 2016 and pass by all means; else it cannot make any further progress. Two shots of mahogany bitters to wipe away my tears for Ghana under Mahama.