By David Zekpah, Executive Director, The 1957 Group
Sorry, this is not a review of the 2015 award-winning Abraham Atta and Idris Elba movie of the same title.
It is a short piece out of an early 1970s newspaper publication that carried a lamentation of the then Prime Minister Dr K.A. Busia, who bemoaned deep-seated bribery and corruption as the most difficult task facing him.
Dr Busia had dissolved the Management Committee of the Kumasi City Council for corrupt practices centered on enriching themselves with stores and stalls at the expense of the poor to whom they owed a fiduciary responsibility.
Sadly, Dr Busia led this country some 50 years ago, and it is horrifying how this well-fed monster continue to slither and comfortably wrap around the fabric of Ghanaian society.
Couple of years before Dr. Busia’s regime, the wife of a cabinet minister in Kwame Nkrumah’s government imported a gold-plated bed from England at the cost of $8400.00.
A time and period when many citizens still slept on “tsatsa” and “apetor agoo or apetor woezor”. In the 1990s, a senior government official acquired a Jacuzzi when women still bathed in roofless bathrooms.
Recall large-sum corruption cases such as the $22 million Quality Grain Rice scandal in the late 90s, the Police HQ cocaine to cassava flour saga, the incessant scramble for state property and state institutions for private use, and the countless deliberate profiteering from judgment debts on the taxpayer for mischievously crafted contracts and agreements.
Ex-President J E A Mills wept when he visited the Tema office of the GPHA and eye-witnessed the handiworks of fellow Ghanaians.
From unexplained wealth, alleged state capture agendas, collateralization of our mineral resources, unbridled supply of liquidity to government unbeknown to Ghanaians, to the $12 million preliminary expenditure on a contract(agyapa deal) that did not even pass the ratification process of parliament, it is clear the frequency and levels of these nation-wrecking deeds perpetrated by fellow Ghanaians know no limits.
An even more dangerous element in our society today are the people who provide the fuels of blind, uninformed and sycophantic support for individuals and political parties in the face of contrary evidence.
Dangerous because it legitimizes and emboldens further plunder to our collective hurt. We certainly cannot build a nation or make any such progress with a zero-sum us-against-them posture.
Our anti-corruption institutions and instruments must be robustly designed for purpose. The Office of the Special Prosecutor has no single success story of prosecution and conviction to show after seven years of its establishment.
Having followed the recent efforts of the OSP, it is heartbreaking to see fellow countrymen and women, whose taxes were either stolen or misappropriated jubilate when corruption suspects aided by “the technicalities of the law” hop away from being held accountable.
Just as Dr. Busia’s experience, ex-President Mahama in one of his exit speeches lamented the dearth of patriotism in Ghanaian society. The 1992 constitution provides a generous remuneration for office holders far above average living conditions.
Therefore, to intentionally hurt your country for personal gain or hegemony advantages and then grin to the sounds of applause from your kin and kith is not smartness. Rather, a distinctive badge that says, “I am a Beast of No Nation”.
There will be no nation for us tomorrow if we continue to drain Ghana through inward-looking self-service. Like Canaan, the Ghana that flowed rich with minerals, oil and gas, timber, cash crops, food, etc., will soon begin to eat its own inhabitants.
