Ghana, a failing state - Enimil Ashon writes
Like democracy, a “failed/failing state” may have more than one meaning; so many, indeed, that its use may be limited by the pictures in the user’s mind.
For me, it is a country where the laws exist only on paper - something close to a Banana Republic, in one sense or another.
In a failed or failing state, sin (or crime) is pleasurable because it is profitable; profitable because it is not punished. In a failed state, you are punished only because you have no patrons or godfathers.
In Ghana, you are punished only because you are foolish enough not to remember to flash your party ID, especially if you can prove you are NPP or NDC.
In a failed state, the PURC can disregard a Presidential fiat and spend GHc100,000.00 on Christmas hampers (per the 2016 Auditor General’s Report) in a country where the production and distribution of utilities are challenging.
Where they are available, they are unaffordable.
I am talking about a country where a company’s electricity bill jumps from 20,000.00 to 75,000.00. In such a state, the PURC’s GHc100, 000.00 becomes an issue.
Did the death of Atta Mills signal the death of the Christmas Hampers decree?
Whatever one’s answer may be, the next question to answer is: Does that expenditure make sense?
Has the PURC ceased to have a social conscience?
Spending so much on hampers is not necessarily a sign of failure. A failed state is when such a socially reprehensible act can be committed in the confidence that “no-one can do anything” or that “no-one will be punished for it”. It breeds or it is called, IMPUNITY.
In a failed state, a district or metropolitan assembly can buy hundreds of computer monitors when it does not have a CPU or a keyboard! It is possible because nobody makes any effort to trace the problem to the source; that is, to question who originated the expenditure in the first place.
It will always be done because the worst that can happen is to blame the “assembly”, not the human being.
Nobody questions the M/DCE because by the time the report comes out, they would have been out of office.
In a state that has not failed, being out of office will not be an excuse, unless the offending public servant or politician is dead; they will be called to account.
Not in Ghana!
Nothing will ever happen – they know it.
They also know that the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament will sit and its hearings will be live on GTV.
There will be a lot of hue and cry, but that is about it.
They know Ghana; they know that after two weeks, it will blow over.
No one will be prosecuted; no one will go to prison.
It is only in a failed state that a company will be paid in full for a contract it has not started.
With that type of capital, who cannot succeed?
In a failed state or one about to fail, the Chinese can enter the country, take over the land, carry out illegal mining, pollute water bodies with mercury, and face nothing worse than deportation.
Who will not grow bolder and bolder when the state seems so helpless against Ghanaian galamseyers?
Rawlings waged war against galamsey in the early days of the revolution and succeeded.
Do we need a revolution to decide to push the military into those concessions to protect the interests of investors?
What signals are we sending to potential investors: that we have become a Banana Republic where anyone can get up one day and jump onto a legitimately acquired investment?
What does that say about Ghana as a haven for investors?
In a failed state, the people are reduced (or reduce themselves) to the level of sub-humans: what other description fits a people who buy cooked food sold near a public toilet overflowing with excreta, worms and slime, not to mention the stench of putrefaction?
We not only buy from that spot: we actually eat it there.
Dear reader, I pause here knowing that you can continue the list.
We are failing the people of Ghana. Ghana is becoming a failed state.
What is frightening about our situation is that it is happening in a country where the mosques are filled on Fridays and millions of Christians listen to mind-changing sermons in church on Sundays.
Every Friday and every Sunday, we vow (like a New Year's resolution on December 31 watch-night) to drop off all sins.
A failed state is like the man in the Christian Bible who is described in James 1:23 as “a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror… goes away and at once forgets what he looks like”.
How can he ever take the first steps to undertake the necessary corrective measures needed to make his face look good?
