Ghana has lived through the pain of election promises that have in the end proven to be scams. Even where politicians have chalked a modicum of success with their promises, it has turned out to be populist stunt than qualitative demand. And so, President Akufo Addo in the run-up to the 2016 elections made a number of promises with the Free Senior High School project being the most revered flagship programme.
There were others with many firsts of a kind: One District, One Factory; One Village, One Dam; One District, One Million Dollars; One District, One Ambulance and many others. The promise craze cannot only be restricted to the Akufo Addo regime alone. Successive ones like the regimes of Rawlings, Kufuor, Atta Mills and John are all guilty of what looks to be a scam than spot-on delivery of campaign promises.
Our leaders often provide a semblance of delivering on promise, but when one delves deeper, one is confronted with the expose of the real intent of these politicians. For instance, the current administration promised One Village, One Dam in the Northern Regions; in the end, dug outs came to replace the much-touted dams. In the case of the One District One Factory project, it’s nothing short of regular one-man shops being cladded as government sponsored factories.
Every administration that Ghana has had boasts of building roads, yet the deficiency in the transport and road sectors keep soaring by the day. Two things account for the road phenomenon. One, for political reasons the roads are not robust enough to stand the vagaries of the weather and other human conditions; and so, the tars peel off in less than three months or even less, after completion of construction. Governments skillfully put uncompleted roads into the speeches of president, during the State of the Nation Address (SONA) and the addresses also, gleefully read out to Ghanaians.
Often people don’t bother checking the authenticity or otherwise of the road’s sermon in the address, so most of us consider what we are being fed by government to be the gospel truth. The stated have given rise to serious concerns about the way and manner, NPP folks, the President of the Republic and his finance minister are celebrating the approval of 3Billion loan facility made available to Ghana by the IMF. Celebrating successful access of loan?
Then what would the President and his assigns have done, if Ghana reached the level of self-sufficiency that she would not rely on any country for borrowing like China has achieved? It’s part of the usual populist machinations that have taken the centre stage of our governance structure. The likes of Gabby Otchere-Darko, the President’s cousin has on many occasions prepared the minds of Ghanaians that without the IMF loan, Ghana will grind to a stand-still. It has been re-iterated by the President himself; not least the finance minister.
The President is even on record to have said that with the success chalked in the IMF loan deal, all abandoned projects were going to kick-start immediately; our deteriorating cedi is also going to bounce back in grand style. They are being supported on that nonsense on-stilt, by NPP propaganda apologists —the party’s communication team, led by Richard Ahiagba. Meanwhile the IMF loan is going to come in tranches. The first release is $600 Million and that is supposed to service our budget deficit; meaning it’s going to fix a major depression in the economy. What’s is joyful about this?
Usually, we borrow huge sums of money with a visionary planning that will yield value and profit for even for our children who are yet to be born. In our case, we are borrowing to pay or fix our deficit somewhere. Just like “robbing Peter to pay Paul”. But the poor Ghanaians who is further impoverished by the warped analyses by the so-called experts in such instance, is made to believe that with the IMF loan, all of our financial problems are resolved. Seriously? What is this farce about the IMF loan?
The latest IMF loan represents Ghana’s 18th attempts at the Bretton Wood institution. The country’s romance with the IMF Really came alive during Chairman Rawlings’ Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) military junta. So, the deduction here is that at the time that the comity of nations had jettisoned Ghana to the diplomatic dustbin, because of human rights abuses of the regime as we were told by the West, the IMF did business with us.
The impression here is that the IMF treats it loan portfolios based on its internal economic and financial structures. After that, other Ghanaian governments that followed have all accessed IMF loans without much problems like that which confronted Akufo Addo in the days preceding the IMF loan agreement. To the extent that the Paris Club, a group of rich European countries to plead with the IMF on Ghana’s behalf.
This is because the IMF knew how Ghana’s economy had been balkanized by this administration and therefore needed a third party to stand-in for Ghana in the hope the presence of a foreign agent in the process, will offer a burden of proof of how to put the money to judicious use, without a blink. Still none, should be clouded in judgement of how history of such loans hasn’t brought us the joy that we yearn for, but for political expediencies. Often watch when we go for such loans: Is it not closer to elections?
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