Of heritage fund, cruisers and prados
“One of the dangers of power is that those who are entrusted with it begin to make its preservation their primary concern” – Emmanuel Baba Mahama (former CEO of Vanguard Assurance Company).
Advertisement
Why would citizens of any country ask their retiring Head of State to amend the Constitution to extend his stay in office? I know that in Africa, such “popular requests” can be ‘organised,’ tele-guided from the Office of the President. We saw it in Ghana in the mid-1980s when our chiefs trooped to the Castle every day to “beg” General (later, Mr) Acheampong to implement Union Government. When Nigerian military leader, Sani Abacha visited Ghana in October 1997, I wrote asking Ghanaians: “Mark it on the wall: very soon the chiefs and some other Nigerians will start issuing communiques and addressing press conferences ‘begging’ him to stay in office.”
Less than two months after the visit, the Nigerian media was awash with news that Nigerians had appealed to Abacha to contest in the upcoming Presidential election.
I know all that. But with respect to the Cape Verde example, I sense a sincerity in the request by the citizens to President Pedro Pires to amend the Constitution at that time to enable him to continue in office. Pedro Pires refused and handed over power. This is what earned him the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Leadership.
So again I ask: why would citizens show so much love? In Cape Verde, the answer was obvious to all who had followed that country’s progress, having transformed the economy from Third World to a middle income status. More noteworthy was his frugality and simplicity of his lifestyle.
Frugality means cutting one’s coat according to the size of one’s cloth. Frugality is dictated by a recognition that until the poorest citizen has the basic necessities of life, the President/Prime Minister finds no reason to live like a lord.
So why, in a country battling so much poverty, unable to afford a drop of potable water for whole sections of the population who do not know where the next meal is going to come from, would the state assign to our First Lady eight 4x4 vehicles (Prados and Land Cruisers) and six of the same to the Second Lady, in addition to fleets of Mercedes Benz saloon cars?
I could not believe my ears when the list was first released by Citi FM on Eye Witness News. But if my ears could play tricks with me, I can at least trust my eyes. When I laid hands on the document, I found that my hands were shaking.
Apparently this is the norm. The immediate former Deputy Minister for Information, Mr Kwakye Ofosu, said so in as many words. When Richard Sky, the Eye Witness News anchor got him on the line and presented this scenario to him, I said to myself, “Aha, the NDC has got the NPP where it hurts!” But the NDC man confirmed that allocating eight vehicles to the First Lady and six to the Second Lady was not unusual! On another station, a State Protocol officer confirmed it.
Fourteen 4x4s, each with an insatiable appetite for fuel (at state expense) and drivers paid by the state. What for? Of course, who does not know that First and Second Ladies undertake assignments? But I cannot conceive of any assignment anywhere that SHOULD require either the First or the Second Lady to travel in a convoy of more than two vehicles, carrying a medical team (how many doctors and nurses!), ladies-in-waiting and personal assistants.
Am I jealous? You can say so, but it does not make sense that Ghana should spend so much on fleets of vehicles when psychiatric nurses cannot afford gloves to clean the vomits and faeces of patients. No, not in a country where schools cannot afford CHALK for their teachers to teach (common chalk!). I am told that two of those 4x4 vehicles can build a community school.
It’s a recipe for social implosion (God forbid, though) at a time when the government has just announced that it may have to touch the Heritage Fund to finance Akufo-Addo’s ‘Free SHS’ vow.
By the way, I personally do not see why the Heritage Fund cannot be touched. If the fund is being kept for “future generations,” I operationalise “future” to mean “any time our back is to the wall and borrowing becomes unsustainable.”
However, as citizens of the Central Region pointed out to Dr Busia when he made his “Kafo dzidzi” speech, “Kafo dzidzi naaso onndzi abenkwan” (to wit, even the debtor must eat, but certainly not palm soup), I think our leaders need to be reminded of this truism.
Even as Veep Bawumia, as head of the Economic Management Team, brainstorms with Ken Ofori-Atta, Osafo-Maafo and Akoto Osei for a way out of the woods, I see too many bowls lined up at the Flagstaff kitchen waiting for palm soup. Someone, please let them know that with what we have in the coffers, light soup – with a few snails, mushroom and dried herrings - is what the state can afford for now. Our children must go to school; the nurses and teachers need their allowances and a few taxes need to go. This is no time for palm soup.
Fourteen 4 x 4s and sleek Mercedes limousines for our First and Second Ladies are excessive.
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been. Henry A. Kissinger.