Paying people to talk

Every morning, you will see them in the television studios doing their job --discussing newspaper publications.  Interestingly, their topics do not dwell on the development challenges confronting the country, which is so well-endowed in terms of resources, but very deprived in almost every sector of national development.
Whatever they discuss must be propaganda in nature -- praising their masters and condemning all others.

Sometimes the discussions turn violent and acrimonious ending with insults of personalities.  The nation does not benefit from these discussions even though their masters applaud them, feel comfortable and satisfied for the exercise and excite the foot soldiers.

The exercise is repeated on other radio and TV stations.  It is a daily routine.  In many cases, people get rewarded in various forms -- it could be monetary, in kind or ministerial appointment for a job well done.

So lucrative is the exercise that even those holding ministerial appointments must wake up early in the morning to exercise their jaws by discussing mundane issues that do not bring any good to the country except hatred and disunity.

Nobody cares to talk about why almost 60 years after independence, we cannot travel from Accra to Kumasi, the nation's two major cities in comfort and safety.  We do not care about the collapse of the rail system bequeathed to us by the colonialists, to the extent that many of our children and their children would not believe that there was once a vibrant rail system in this country.

There are many people in Ghana today who may not believe that years ago, there was an Accra-Kumasi-Takoradi-Accra rail service, forming the golden triangle.

We do not care that our educational system which was one of the best on the continent and beyond has become so bad that some students parading as graduates of our universities do not know the difference between 'temporal' and 'temporary'.

Ours has been summed up by Bob Marley, the legendary musician and philosopher, who said, "In the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty."  How is that?  Are we not thirsty even though the waters of River Volta flow wastefully into the sea at Ada?

The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) was one of the utility companies that had their demand for tariff hikes approved with the justification that their inability to deliver satisfactory service was due to low tariffs.  The truth is that portable water is still a luxury in majority of homes in this country.

We have still not been able to make use of the waters in our rivers and the mighty Volta Lake for irrigation.  Every year, we lament poor rainfall when Burkina Faso, our northern neighbours who have a smaller share of the Volta, crop all year round and supply us with vegetables and fish.

Thanks to Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, our first President, we still have certain things to boast of.   Call them past glories.  Beyond them, all that we have are leaders who are making daily promises, many of them they repeat without any sense of shame.  To make matters worse, they are prepared to use our money to pay people to talk for them on radio and TV as if that is where the solutions to our problems lie.

Thanks to Dr Benjamin Kunbour, the Majority Leader in Parliament, we know that not all politicians subscribe to the idea of using praise-singers on radio and TV to solve our national problems.  His views, coming from within government, means the information mercenaries, called members of communication teams, are not fooling everybody.

This country can do better without these noise-makers, who, though benefiting from their trade, are only postponing our doomsday which is stalking us.

India has launched its own satellite.  It has built an aircraft-carrier which in our part of the world is a distant dream.

We are on our knees begging Cuba for doctors.  We have put our hopes in Brazil to finance our projects and over the past four or five years, our hopes as a nation has been hinged on a US$3bn Chinese loan.

This is a country that is sitting on vast deposits of bauxite, gold, manganese, diamonds, iron ore, hydrocarbons and many more.  A small country with so much.  Instead of thinking of utilising these vast resources to transform the lives of our people, we are busy rewarding those who spend all their time talking, not making sense but preaching hatred and propaganda.

Very soon, we may see countries like Korea, Brazil, India and China too far away from us and begin to target countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Vietnam as our next line of benefactors.

What we lack in thinking and acting, we have in abundance in talking and fantasising.

By Kofi Akordor/Daily Graphic/Ghana
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Kofiakordor.blogspot.com