Akufo-Addo, President or leader?
In many parts of Europe, they are achieving zero tolerance for littering through science – that is recycling, among other methods.
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Indeed, in some European countries, recycling is so revolutionary they are importing waste from other countries to keep their recycling plants going.
“Ah,” I can hear someone say, “That is Europe!”
Wrong: Zero tolerance for littering is happening right here in Africa. Only five years ago, Kigali, the Rwandan capital, was like Accra – very filthy. Today, this city is being described as one of the neatest capitals of the world. It is in Africa. It all began when its President, Paul Kegame, decided one day that plastics constituted a serious threat to the nation. He went ahead and banned plastics, full stop.
The difference is one word – leadership. It doesn’t take a President; it takes a leader! It doesn’t take money; it takes a policy.
Welcome, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. My advice to him is that, four years is enough to turn presidency into leadership. We definitely need one-district one-factory, but anybody can do that, with donor grants and loans. If by 2020 we have stopped littering, openly urinating and defecating, selling and eating cooked rice close to public toilets, and the chaos inflicted on other road users by taxi/tro-tro’ drivers in our cities, we would have had a leader.
The only way to do this is through ministers of state who are thinkers. But how much time can a minister of state devote to thinking when three-quarters of the day, he/she is in class pursuing university degrees? This is one of the evils which this nation has tolerated since 1992. Why should we pay ministers in excess of GH¢10,000.00 a month only for them to spend the time in school, and top it up for them with incredible amounts in ex-gratia after four years? It is obscene. We are leaderless.
The thing about ministers in school is that they easily gain protocol admission. The fees are chicken feed for them. My worry is not that somebody is acquiring higher knowledge; it is the precious waste of the state’s time and money.
How many of Nana Addo’s ministers will double as students in Law schools and other university faculties? The answer will show what type of leader we have voted for.
Leaders deal decisively with corruption. If Nana Addo is not corrupt, then by 2020, we should not hear of the case of any of his ministers applying to buy their bungalows! Why Ghanaians allowed this to happen still beats my mind. That case involving Jake Obetsebi Lamptey (RIP) should not have been pursued in the law courts; it was purely a case for the court of human conscience. President, Kufuor let us down.
If you think people are brewing a storm in a tea cup over the issue of corruption, just consider the following: Ghana needs $1.8 billion to solve its water problem once and for always. Corruption costs exactly that per year.
Talk about leadership. I love the decision by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) side of the transition team to forgo their sitting allowances. Big deal? Yes, for me, it is. Of course, one swallow does not make a summer, and it may be too early heaping congrats on anybody’s head at this stage. Nonetheless, I am of the opinion that a good market is predictable from the very dawn of day. Come to think of it; why do our market women slash prices of products for the first customers of the day? Full mark for now NPP.
I give full mark because when the leadership of a country shows, by deed, that money is not everything, it is sending powerful signals to the citizenry. Doubt me? Remember Ghana in the mid-1980s - the Acheampong era when the chant was, “Fa wo to begye Golf.” Everybody was chasing money. Thank God that when corruption smelled to high heavens, heaven intervened with the General Akuffo-led palace coup.
I would have thanked God for the intervention of Jerry John Rawlings but I will not because he himself has turned out, with time, to be one of the country’s most corrupt Presidents – what with the self-confessed Abacha money (be it US$5 million, US$2 million or even US$5.00), the Norway cement money and the acquisition of Nsawam Cannery by his wife’s non-governmental organisation (NGO).
This era of greed and make-money-at-all-costs descended upon this country again over the last five years or so. I don’t think it was perception; it has been more tangible than that.
I maintain that to be listed favourably in the leagues of the world, Ghana will not be judged by the number of factories in districts; it will be judged by the ability to take greed away from us, not a country where everybody is in a rush to make money, mostly illegally.
All in all, I want Ghanaians to help me thank God for Election 2016. If for nothing else, this election will put a stop to the shameful misconduct of chiefs who, with bribes dangling before their eyes, open their mouths and spew out endorsements born not from their head but from their bellies. That is what I have been driving at today – anybody can be a chief; only a few are leaders.