Ghana: a Time to Heal & Renew the Nation

© 2007 Kwame Afadzi Insaidoo. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 8/2/2007

ISBN: 978-1-4670-9064-3 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4343-1068-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4343-1069-9 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007905191

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

Introduction

1.

The Pain

2.

Did The Nlc Coup Heal The Ghanaian Society?

3.

Did Dr. Kofi Busia And His Progress Party Heal Ghana?

4.

The Ghana Armed Forces, Culture Of Coups, Destruction And Suffering Of Ghanaians:

5.

The Political Kingdom

6.

Bringing Government To The People

1.

A Case For Bi-cameral Legislative Assembly:

2.

Electing Attorney Generals & District Attorneys:

3.

Electing the office of National & Regional Comptrollers:

4.

Decentralization - Bringing Government to the people:

7.

Healing The Public Sector: Enhancing Government’s Productivity:

1.

Competitive Bidding System:

2.

Public Sector & the socio-Economic Development of Ghana:

8.

Emerging Drug Culture & Increased Lawlessness In Ghana:

9.

Healing The Northern Sector Of Ghana

1.

Other Development projects

10.

Procurement Of Foreign Exchange For Ghana

1.

Creation of Foreign Exchange Securities’ Commission:

2.

Foreign Exchange Procurement For Ghana:

3.

Crimes against the people of Ghana:

4.

The Issue of Ghana Embassies and Consular offices abroad:

5.

Ghanaians in Diasporas & Foreign Exchange Procurement.

6.

On Implementing These Policies:

7.

Foreign Currencies From Fishing Industry:

11.

Designing a Workable Health Insurance System:

12.

The Cocoa Politics In Ghana

13.

Taxation, Revenue & Development

14.

Epilogue

Appendix

This book is dedicated to the memory of our forebears, who fought to free we the people of Ghana from colonial bondage, and to all patriotic Ghanaians at home and in diasporas who are yearning to change the current trend of affairs and build a better nation for our people, and to the youth who will inherit the monumental task of building Ghana tomorrow.

And to our military brass, please desist from making coups, because they only set our country back, retard our progress, and demonstrate to the world that we are not matured enough to govern ourselves.

OTHER BOOKS BY KWAME A. INSAIDOO

Can the Black Man Rule Himself?

Is the Bible a Woman’s Enemy?

The African Meets the Black American

[With Roxanna Pearson Insaidoo]

Anansi and Other African Trickster Tales

[With Dr. Donald Holliday]

You will need more patience and tolerance with opposing views in discussions than Africans generally display. You still tend to regard differences in opinion in purely personal terms….Hence; you tend to break friendships with those who think differently.

Issues are confused with personalities. This is what makes African politics so bitter and warlike. You generally attack the individual more than the issues.

…It is your generation that must make the marked advance in political maturity and the democratic process of solving problems through give-and-take in discussions.

…Other dictators are the better educated who in meetings expect everyone to yield to their opinions as though they were newly given on Mount Sinai.

CHANCELLOR WILLIAMS: On the Rebirth of African Civilization

Introduction

Almost half a century ago, many African nations stood up and appropriately demanded self-government for their oppressed and colonized nations. There was a great fanfare from Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Kenya, Uganda and powerful political leaders emerged out of these struggles to govern their newly independent nations. They made all kinds of promises that they will build their societies to become shinning nations on the hill that will give inspirations to all their citizens and the world beyond.

Most of our leaders promised that our suffering and economic poverty would be minimized, because we were told that Africans are quite capable of governing their nations, and would be able to develop their impoverished and exploited nations in the shortest possible time.

Let’s realistically cast a critical retrospective glance at what our leadership and political elites in Africa have done to convince their brethren and the international community that they are quite capable, and competent to govern their nations, after almost half a century of independence.

Look at Nigeria, the most populous and the richest nation, the eighth leading producer and exporter of petroleum, and the humiliating mess they have made in their nation, so much that, despite their enormous wealth about 60% of all Nigerians live below the poverty line. The life expectancy at birth today in Nigeria is estimated to be a mere 46.74 years! Most of their leadership class has squandered and destroyed their nation’s wealth.

Again go with me to the Ivory Coast, the most economically developed nation in West Africa with annual per-capita income hovering around US$770, and what has become of the nation? The political elites of Ivory Coast have torn the nation into congeries of squabbling entities, and everyday life for the vast majority of the people has almost grinded to a screeching halt.

In Sierra Leone, the kleptomaniac native politicians have turned their society upside down in turmoil in search of diamonds to steal and enrich themselves. We sincerely hope that the current pause in violence will last long enough for ordinary citizens to attempt to rescue their nation from these evil black leadership elites.

Look around again on the African political scene and cast one more critical look at the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Somalia, Central African Republic and recently Zimbabwe and you see the senseless mayhem that the black man had and continue to heap onto his countrymen.

Again, let’s search our collective hearts and vehemently condemn the brutal and insane dictatorship of former freedom fighter now a maniac, Robert Mugabe and his imposition of essentially one party state on the peace loving people of Zimbabwe. Instead of proving to the world about the great humanity and spirituality of the black race after fighting hard to declare independence from the racist regime of Ian Smith, Robert Mugabe has turned into a brutal monster, who is harassing, intimidating, and murdering citizens that challenge his odious regime. On March 13, 2007 Robert Mugabe’s thugs targeted the main opposition leader Mr. Tsvangirai with savage and barbaric beatings which made him had eight stitches to his head. The Wall Street noted: The reality of Robert Mugabe’s rule in Zimbabwe has taken many forms: the theft of farmlands from white property owners, the bulldozing of thousands of homes occupied by poor black opponents, the steady ruination of a once prosperous nation. Now there’s the battered face of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. He and other members of the Movement for Democratic Change were beaten by Mugabe’s police thugs Sunday as they tried to attend a prayer meeting to protest the government’s ban on political rallies. One protester was shot dead. Wall Street Journal: 3/17-3/18/2007; Vol. CCXLIX No.63 pg. A8].

Many Africans have become refugees and many others have left the continent in exodus proportions for the safe havens of Western European countries and North America.

The typical intellectual response from many people on the continent and some in Diasporas is a mixture of hypocrisy and self-denial. We have the penchant to lump most of the blame of our political ineptitude on the evil machinations of Western imperialism and their intelligence networks.

We love to absolve our politicians and policy makers from their failed political and economic policies, and the dysfunctional institutions they have created which in most cases have resulted in the current havoc and mayhem on the continent.

We cannot and must not blame all the failures of our dysfunctional institutions, the kleptomaniac behavior of our leadership class and the criminal destruction of our nations at the doorsteps of western intelligence networks. Talk to many African intellectuals about their problems on the continent, and the first thing that comes out of their mouths is the diabolical machinations of the CIA, the British MI5, and the French Secret Service undermining and collaboratively penetrating and, sowing the seeds of political and social instabilities in their nations.

What we have to ask ourselves, in Ghana is whether the CIA physically invaded Ghana to overthrow the regime of Kwame Nkrumah or whether the peace and freedom loving people of Ghana were fed up with the dysfunctional and autocratic regime imposed on them by Nkrumah and his CPP henchmen, which eventually led to his demise, and the subsequent destruction of our nation?

Once more, we ask again; did the CIA or the British MI5 or the Israeli Mossad create the bitter war in Liberia? I say unequivocally that it was the Americo-Liberians that instituted the oppressive apartheid-like regime in the nation, which led the oppressed native-born Sgt. Samuel Kanyon Doe to violently overthrow the odious, and the oppressive hegemony of the Americo-Liberian and the subsequent ensuing bitter civil convulsions that engulfed the nation.

Much has also been made of the diabolical activities of the CIA in the Congo during the height of the Cold War, as the Economist’s review of one of the first CIA Station Chiefs in Congo, Larry Devlin’s book, ‘Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone’ revealed. The Economist noted: Mr. Devlin plotted with country’s army chief, Joseph Desire Mobutu, a recently promoted sergeant, to have the prime minister arrested. When Lumumba continued to cause problems and Congo collapsed into civil war, President Dwight Eisenhower personally ordered his assassination, according to Mr. Devlin. A CIA agent, a chemist codenamed ‘Joe from Paris’, turned up in Kinshasa with poisons, including one concealed in a tube of toothpaste, with which Mr. Devlin was to perform this act. He never did. Lumumba was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in 1961, by his Congolese rivals. (Emphasis mine). [Economist; Feb. 24-March 2, 2007; Vol.382 Number 8517, pg.95].

It is my contention that these foreign secret agents in Africa could never operate and cause havoc and chaos, if the Africans, in this case the Congolese people refused to cooperate and collaborate with them. Indeed if the Congolese were patriotic and wanted their nation developed, they could have blown the cover of these agents, and exposed them to their people, much like the Americans and the British are correctly doing to expose and arrest dangerous terrorists in their nations, to prevent them from causing mayhem, and repeating the barbaric and inhuman destruction visited on innocent civilians during the September 11, 2001 attack.

We ask again, did the CIA and the British intelligent networks initiate or sowed the seeds of the Nigerian Civil war, and the subsequent instabilities and thefts in the nation? No, because it was a group of young brash, and ambitious Ibo military officers led by Major-General Aguiyi Ironsi who laid the foundation of the bitter Nigerian civil war with their fiendish coup de etat against the constitutionally elected government of Sir Abubaka Tafawa Balewa, and the subsequent retaliatory coup by Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, and the intransigence of Lt. Col. Ojugwu on breaking away from the Nigerian union that sparked the hostilities which ended with over a million casualties.

Of course, we cannot bury our collective heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich and exonerate the western nations from the negative effects of the twin evils of slavery, colonialism, and the continuing insidious practices that undermine our economies. As the World Bank correctly ‘estimates that agricultural products face a practically insurmountable global average tariff of 62%,’ which exacerbates our poverty if one, recognizes that about 62.5% of our people are still engaged in agriculture that accounts for 30% of our Gross Domestic Product.

Despite this, we Africans continue to be our own worst enemies as the Wall Street Journal adroitly pointed out that, Intraregional trade in Africa was only 5.3% of GDP in 2002, in part due to self-destructive trade barriers between African countries. [Wall Street Journal; Vol.CCXLIV No. 38, Feb. 15, 2007].

In Ghana, the mighty hand of providence guided his people from the mayhem and carnage that have engulfed almost all of black African nations.

Of course, we did not entirely escape the storm clouds of violence as one military coup and counter coups after the other claimed the lives of innocent men and women in our nation. There were numerous human rights abuses as countless men and women were executed in secret, arbitrary imprisoned, tortured, and endured all kinds of humiliations at the hands of our mean-spirited military dictators. In the name of settling political scores, and intimidating members of the judiciary some innocent Judges were paraded and marched out of their homes in the middle of the night where they were senselessly and barbarically murdered, and their charred remains left to rot in our bushes.

In our bid to clean our nation of corruption, many Ghanaians cheered, and sadly, some even asked for ‘more blood to flow’ as we marched three of our former heads of state and other military accomplices to the infamous Teshie Military Range, where they were put to death by firing squad; but did we actually clean our nation of corruption? Or are the endemic corruptive practices in our nation, a symptom of the deficiencies inherent in the institutions we inherited from our colonial masters?

Be as it may, we thank the almighty God for the wisdom she bestowed on our current leadership class in eschewing vengeance, and instead created the National Reconciliation Commission to attempt to heal and renew our nation. We must remind ourselves that Ghana is not the exclusive domain of some selected group of people, or tribes or professions, but the nation belongs to all Ghanaians, and we must be patriotic enough to design institutions and policies that will enhance the growth of our nation for the benefit of all Ghanaians.

Furthermore, it behooves us to eschew dogmatism in our various political ideologies, and practice the policy of inclusion, which will reduce bitterness and polarization in our society and increase maximum co-operation and bi-partisanships in the formulation, evaluation and implementation of policies designed to benefit our people.

Above all, we should critically examine the usefulness of our inherited colonial institutions; particularly how these institutions constrain the goals and policies we are striving to attain. Should we as a people endeavor to make bold fundamental decision to change our current inherited political institutions, or continue to make incremental additions to these alien political institutions, and continue to nurse our victim-hood mentalities by perpetually blaming our problems on the western nations? In this regard we must eschew our dogmatic and intransigent political ideologies, and organize a national referendum to address what I have cogently argued throughout this book, and what the current Minority Leader re-echoed in his ‘True State of the Nation 2007 address when he enunciated that, Ghana needs a strong and independent legislature that is well resourced to carry out its constitutional mandate. Parliament as it exists today is weak and subject to the authority of the executive. It may be necessary to review the constitutional provisions that allow the majority of ministers to be appointed from Parliament in order to remove the carrot that the executive uses to create a docile majority that are subject to its whims and caprices. [www.ghanaweb.com Feb 14, 2007].

With the dire necessity for independent legislative assembly, replete with built in checks and balances, there is an urgent need for the institutionalization of an independent bi-cameral legislative assembly in our nation, partly because the present unicameral legislative system is inherently chaotic, and needs the backbone of the upper house filled with stakeholders and custodians of our nation, whose term exceeds the duration of the government in power to become a stabilizing force to anchor the nation on a firm political foundation.

It is an undeniable contention that most societies evolve and develop their own political institutions based on, among other factors, their people’s historical responses to problem solutions, the cultural and traditional beliefs of their societies, and the prevalent political culture of their nations. It is also important that we not blindly or haphazardly copy the British or the American political systems and willy-nilly transplant them to our nation, and expect them to create the political stability that we so desperately need in Ghana to economically develop, and remove many people from the grinding poverty that has become their lot. It is important for us to create or evolve our own home grown Upper House, as I have argued throughout the book, and decentralize our political institutions to allow each region the semi-autonomy to grow and develop their local economies that will lead to the much needed political stability which is the sine-qua-non for the economic and social development of nations.

Let me reiterate that though we must not blindly copy foreign political institutions, it is instructive that we critically examine the political structures and institutional arrangements of modern Western democratic systems to determine their compatibility with the traditional, cultural, and societal values of our people, and how they can enhance our own domestic political institutions.

On this issue, it is instructive to observe the most cautious and conservative Britons, who in the 21st Century still retain the trappings and grandeur of monarchical institutions beginning to inject more life into their Upper House by mimicking the American Senatorial System after almost 712 years since Edwards I conjured up the politics of representation. The Economist noted, The House of Commons voted by a majority of 113 on March 7th for a fully elected House of Lords…. A big step towards real reforms of the second chamber has been taken.[The Economist: Vol. 382 No.8519, March 10-16th 2007 pg.51].

It is my fervent belief that decentralizing our political institutions and empowering our oppressed people in the various regions to experiment with the art of governance will lead to maximum participation of our people in the political process and thereby assist them to gradually learn the art and science of government, instead of our present dog-eat-dog chaotic and inherently unstable system.

Moreover, we should remind our people that the election process is the traditional democratic mechanism for selecting our leaders, but once our leaders are selected, there is a need for the implementation of structural democratic systems that will curtail their abuses of power, and prevent them from using the very powers conferred on them to terrorize their opponents and cow down the populace into total submission, but instead use these powers to enhance to enhance of all citizens in the nation.

We should never forget that Adolph Hitler won a legitimate election in Germany, but shortly after his victory, he began to impose raw and hostile dictatorship on the German people, and systematically began to use the institutions of state to oppress, arbitrary imprison, and eventually annihilated his opponents, the so-called undesirables from the German society.

Salvador Allende was voted into power through the election process, but once in power he arbitrary sought to abuse the very institutions that brought him to the presidency, by dismantling the Chilean democratic institutions, and imposed his confused brand of socialism on the Chilean people who elected him to power.

Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is craftily, though sadly, pursuing the same undemocratic march to impose dictatorship on the Venezuelan people, who elected him to power.

Ironically, even Sadam Hussien could make a mockery of the democratic process by organizing a sham election, which he easily won by 99% to justify his odious and tyrannical grip on the people of Iraq.

Lest we forget that it is painful, hypocritical and dangerous for elected officials in our nation to use their awesome powers entrusted on them by the populace, and deliberately employ the legal systems in the nation as a weapon to intimidate, harass, terrify and in most cases destroy their political opponents or former political leaders. Let’s remind our leaders that such unconstrained exercise of their powers is invariably unhealthy and inherently chaotic, and give politics its bad name of ‘dirty game’, because these undignified behavior of politicians in power become cyclical, as newly elected politicians gain power, and begin the cycle of vengeance against their opponents, by setting up Kangaroo courts to prosecute, and harass their opponents into oblivion. These awful practices must stop, and we must use the powers in our hands to set up and maintain, independent legislative assemblies to strengthen the independence of the judicial system, and guarantee protection of the liberties and properties of all our people.

Throughout this book, I have called for the establishment of District Attorneys in the nation with prosecutorial powers, who must be elected on non-partisan basis to serve a duration exceeding that of the administration in power.

Additionally, it is imperative that to prevent political abuses, all cases both imaginary and real involving former politicians must first be thoroughly investigated by these independently elected District Attorneys to examine the merits of the cases, whether they are politically motivated, and whether they are even worth the tax payers money to institute legal proceedings against the perceived defendants.

It is my hope that the transparency and non-partisanships of these District Attorneys would serve to minimize the insidious prevalence of political witch-hunts, character assassinations, unnecessary prosecution of political opponents, and the infantile harassments of former political leaders.

It is significant that we as a people fight vigorously to stop the unnecessary harassments of public officials who are no longer in power, because this is a slippery road to anarchy as the rest of Africa has clearly demonstrated to the world with their incessant bickering and ensuing mayhem, carnage and anarchy.

It is also true that politicians of all political parties can make and actually do make all kinds of promises to excite the electorate about their best intentions, new development programs, the dynamism of their ideas that will help make life easier for the masses; and their many years of experience in government which they promise will help bring progress to the nation.

However, the dynamism of their ideas and experience notwithstanding, it is a monumental task for the national government alone to be able to fully satisfy the electorate by successfully developing and implementing appropriate economic and financial policies that will be suitable for our cities and towns where the bulk of the electorate resides during their short term in office. It is therefore imperative for the government to amend the constitution to empower the people in the various cities and towns to exercise their God given rights and freedoms to elect their own mayors and town managers in competitive elections, and hold them accountable for the development of their respective cities and towns. It is unacceptable for our elected presidents to assume the role of emperors and appoint the mayors and town managers because this gives our elected presidents dictatorial powers over our people in the cities and towns, and woe-betide a city or a town that is not the favorite of the president and his cohorts, that city or town is doomed to neglect and mediocre development during the tenure of his presidency.

Ultimately though, for our nation’s economic salvation, we must mount a gigantic effort to challenge our deplorable petroleum situation, because as petroleum prices zoom to stratospheric levels the shock is reverberated in all sectors of our nation’s economy, which brings unnecessary hardships to our people. To heal our nation of its economic woes we must seek alternative sources of energy to supplement our petroleum needs.

There are varieties of alternative energy sources ranging from solar to ethanol, as the Wall Street Journal of March 7, 2007 pointed out:

"As the price of oil has risen in recent years, along with fears about how fast existing oil supplies can grow, ethanol has gained more attention as a potentially cheaper option, and as a renewable fuel that won’t ever run out.

Ethanol can be added to gasoline to help extend supplies, or used in so-called flex-fuel cars that run on either fuel. Sugar-cane ethanol, which is basically fermented sugar that gets distilled into alcohol, is cheaper than ethanol made from corn, and Brazilian government policies mean ethanol now makes up more than 40% of fuel used in automobiles here." (Wall Street Journal; March 7, 2007; Vol.CCXLIX No. 54 pg.A2).

The table below shows the top ethanol-producing countries for 2005, in millions of gallons:

Table 1

Top Ethanol producing countries.