We know now Ghana is run by Nana Akufo-Addo and the ruling NPP, and for that reason the “buck stops at the desk” of the current president and his government. By the same token, a persuasive case can be made that the across-the-board inefficiencies and economic decays that were swarming like angry bees during the former President Mahama administration are finally coming back to haunt the country’s current economic wellbeing. Amid these well-known facts, it is puzzling why the ruling NPP in particular, sometimes appears faint-hearted in regard to communicating clearly and strategically to average Ghanaians about what is actually happening on the grounds and the tip-top measures this regime is pursuing. The NPP as a political party has the most effective growth-oriented ideas in Ghana, but the party’s seemingly Achilles heel tends to be its struggles to project timely and clear-cut communication while in power.
It is been stated that what goes up must come down, eventually. Looking at the economy today, it is apparent the “escaped guinea fowls are coming back to roost.” Some of our frustrations, therefore, relate specifically to the NPP’s often “too gentle or timid” approach as regards to coming out boldly to explain the cold socioeconomic facts to impatient and forgetful Ghanaian public. Sometimes it looks as if the ruling party is too busy that it has ceded the information terrain to the main opposition party to peddle its desperate lies. All the biases aside, Ghana under this present government has embarked and implemented wide-ranging polices in relatively short period of time, yet all the programs have been missing in action regarding the party’s communication outreaches.
As the president has frankly pointed out, Ghana is facing some socioeconomic challenges but they are not full-blown, uncontrollable crises. It was far worse in the Mahama’s time; let whoever wants dispute that fact. Before the president came out here in our backyard in U.S. to talk plainly about the hard times in Ghana, the NPP’s strategic communication enclave should have been out there long time ago, breaking down things into layperson’s languages to help remind Ghanaians that their economic anxieties are understandable. In the same vein, they should also be a little patient because the ongoing difficulties are simply a matter of the “guinea fowls which fled to Burkina Faso are now coming back to roost.”
Perhaps Ghanaians haven’t forgotten the media probe into the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) concerning the guinea fowls project at Sumbrungu in the Upper East Region. The media inquiry into the project resulted in the discovery of widespread corruption and incompetence culture existing there. The aftermath of the investigation at some point led the CEO of SADA, Mr. Charles Abugri to retort or claim infamously in 2015 that the “guinea fowls have begun returning home after fleeing to the neighboring Burkina Faso.” Whether the “guinea fowls escape incident” actually occurred or not is another question that needs to be explored later.
The simple message this writer is trying to restate is that nothing in this earth can be properly understood in a vacuum. The SADA’s guinea fowls story happened some years back in one tiny part of this country; and, it seems unrelated to the present economic problems Ghanaians are facing. Nonetheless, whichever way the “guinea fowls joke” might have come across, the parallels or the powerful metaphor the story evokes against the backdrop of the systemic corruption and the open looting from the state under the NDC at the time cannot be overlooked. That is to say, the guinea fowls’ narrative in many ways was emblematic of corrupt activities that were going on during ex-President Mahama’s leadership.
To that end, this government/NPP should be telling Ghanaians this is not a blame game in that as the ruling party it clearly understands it “owns” the economy now; but the fact still remains the nation’s economy Nana Addo unknowingly inherited was already in advanced stage of sickness. Let not NPP entertain any reservations in conveying to Ghanaians that it may take some time to heal the severely sick economy back to normalcy. At this point, the NPP cannot always stay defensive or reactive to the constant disinformation campaign waged by the NDC, especially. Rather, the party’s messages must be on the offensive, proactive, and precise in terms of telling all the far-reaching programs and policies the government under this current president has put in place to help the country recovers as soon as possible. Good democratic governance also is about communicating to the sovereign citizens on timely basis without any shred of timidity.
The people should be reminded that like cancerous cells that take pretty long time to spread everywhere in the body, entrenched state corruption and poor management do not bring an economy down on its knees overnight. The prevailing socioeconomic hardships in the country predate Akufo-Addo administration. Several factors accounted for these developments. Foremost among them were the establishment of the so-called microfinance and saving banks whose shady activities were unregulated under the previous government, but were allowed to mushroom all over while those banks were taking gullible customers’ deposits with impunity without investing them productively. This is not your proverbial chickens this time but the guinea fowls the Mahama-led government wasted millions of Ghanaian taxpayers’ money on are the ones coming back to roost as manifesting in the economy now.
Conventional wisdom reveals to us how an individual with guilty conscience behaves. Unsurprisingly, the so-called Mahama Boys or the ‘communication team’ of the NDC gets over-sensitive and starts making ear-splitting noise on the media platforms when ex-President Mahama’s gross mismanagement of the economy is raised. To say the economy under Mahama was a messy mess isn’t overstatement. Hopefully, the good people of Ghana have not forgotten their nightmarish experiences so soon under Mr. John Dramani Mahama seeking to become president again to complete his unfinished state business of looting.
By Bernard Asubonteng