Good evening Mr. President. Let’s do some straight talk. I am not amused at all tonight.
Your Excellency, earlier this afternoon, over lunch, I had remarked to my colleague, that ‘like joke like play’, you and your NDC government seem to have gotten at least one thing right. Yes, just one; over the past five years. This is an achievement nobody can take away from you. It was a headache not even Kufour could address in his eight years. For this, I salute you. Even if I don’t remember anything at all after your departure from office; and I’m pretty sure I won’t; I will tie this nugget of success firmly to my left knee. I score you A-1 for the successful execution of the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj. Since your government came into office, the myriad of problems which characterized this exercise, particularly under the Kufour administration with a Moslem vice president, gradually disappeared into thin air. Well done, Sir.
But Your Excellency Sir! Beyond this, you have done nothing else worthy of compliment. I mean, both you and your predecessor have failed at literally everything. There is no point belabouring this issue. I can catalogue several failed initiatives here. But that won’t be necessary. It won’t serve any purpose to remind the tax-payer that since ground was broken in the Police Training School at Tesano, to begin the affordable housing project for the security services, till date, not even profile boards have been laid at any site, let alone any foundations stones. Whether we ever got the money for the said project, till date, remains a mystery. Only the heavens know whatever thinking went into that to begin with.
Mr. President, not even the huge judgment debts thoughtlessly accrued by the Kufour government, that some elements of your team colluded and paid wrongfully, have you been able to retrieve for us. When an individual managed to drag the looters to court and obtained a judgment against them; even that, neither you nor any member of your squad seem to be interested in retrieving our money for us. You are all dragging your feet as if is some trivia we should all forget about.
Your Excellency, street lights from Tema Motorway Roundabout to Tetteh-Quarshie have NEVER functioned fully. That one sef, you no fit fix; and to think that we pay so much money in tolls on that stretch every day. The National Health Insurance Scheme, the School Feeding programme and many such programmes are but a pale shadow of the purpose for which they have been initiated. The list goes on and on and on and on.
As if that is not failure enough, you and your government re-christened the Kufour-led youth employment programme from NYEP to GYEEDA, ostensibly to create the impression that you were making it any better. You and I know that that turned out to be the biggest scam of our time. The least the tax-payer expects from you is to put your balls on the line and ‘chop’ off some heads. Sadly, the closest you came to the guillotine, was to make rhetoric of ‘restructuring’ GYEEDA. That is grammar and nothing else. Thankfully you have the likes of Felix Ofosu Quakyi and Ibrahim Muritala to ‘speak English’ in your defense, so it’s business as usual.
Then this afternoon, Your Excellency, in a faraway land somewhere, and at your eloquent best, you were telling some people who cared to listen, that here in Ghana, we were initiating another youth employment project???? You see, if you don’t consider this as a blot on your own conscience, at least, do spare us the insult. Yes, we know we are dumb as a people and oftentimes, we are wont to swallow all the debris you politicians fling at us, without as much as blinking an eye. Be that as it may, do kindly be reminded, that it hurts us when we pay taxes. If your kingpins, AGAMs and co, have not been made to vomit all the cash they took from us for which no work has been done, what moral justification do you have to even contemplate a new scheme?
Mr. President, would you sincerely put your own son or daughter in any of the so-called jobs you create under these initiatives? Say, Youth in Road Maintenance or Youth in Basket Weaving?
Did you also say to the UN that Ghana will be processing cocoa? You think the guys sitting there seriously care about what we should have been doing some 50+ years ago? Shaking my head.
Your Excellency, you know what? We have endured enough insult to last us till the end of your tenure. We have stomached sufficient mediocrity since the days of John Kufour to John Mahama. Our simple plea is this; that for once, just once, do take the attention off yourselves and see the suffering of the masses. Please tell the bunch of sycophants around you to stop the ‘better Ghana agenda’ chorus for a brief moment and listen to the cries of the many young unemployed, unsheltered and unfed people all over the place. Just then, I am sure, they will have a change of heart.
An angry observer.
