President Akufo-Addo
“There is one thing stronger than all the armies of the world, and that is an idea whose time has come” – Victor Hugo
The speed at which the President is moving is just like a pilot about to lift his plane at the runway at full throttle. Barely three months after his swearing in, the man has completed the appointments of his ministers and their deputies. When he was delivering his first State of the Nation address at the parliament house, he told the world that he was in a hurry and truly he has proved that he is in a hurry. Many things become easier with experience and momentum is one of them. This is a man who has been at the thick of events as far as politics in Ghana is concerned and he knows what he is doing.
The President has refused to be distracted and he seems to be doing everything to maintain his energy flow. The man has found his momentum and nothing can stop him from moving. For now, he seems to have struck his mental delete button and only highly focused on delivering his promises to Ghanaians. He has the right mindset for the job and surely he will deliver if he continues this way. When a leader maintains his momentum like the way the president is doing, what remains is for the citizenry to move along with him for the good of the nation. From all indications, this regime will leave behind all those who will not move along in its attempt to bring smiles onto the faces of Ghanaians whose expectations are so high that failure has no place in the national lexicon.
What many Ghanaians have not realized is that for the past two months the Akufo Addo-led administration was working with the 2016 budget until last week when the 2017 budget was approved by parliament. In no time, the doubting Thomases will realize that there is nothing that one cannot accomplish with determination and hard work, coupled with the mighty hand of God, He who delivered the Israelis from the hands of Pharaoh.
One person in Ghana who has on his shoulders a huge burden to carry is the Vice President, Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia. This is a man who mesmerized Ghanaians with his vast knowledge of the state of the economy. This economic whiz-kid was a thorn in the flesh of the NDC in the run-up to the 2016 general election and surely the NDC apparatchiks will be on his neck. They may try to distract him but I am sure the man will also stay focused like his boss. Look at what Alhaji Bature’s “Alhaj” newspaper tried to do recently. This NDC newspaper tried to fly a kite but sadly Ghanaians are smarter. They treated the publication with ordinary contempt. How can Dr. Bawumia fight against Mr. Addai Nimo over who should be the Presidential Candidate of the NPP in 2020 when there is a job to be done and done well? Such an absolute nonsense and trash!
The last time I saw Alhaji Bawumia, I pitied the gentleman. He looked so tired and when I looked into his eyes I could see sleeplessness. The man is working past exhaustion for the sake of mother Ghana. Like President Akufo Addo, the Vice President knows very well that he can not disappoint Ghanaians who have put their trust in him. Ghana was on her way to the house of success when the NDC took over power but turned the apple cart upside down. Hard work, creativity and enterprise were the true strength of our economy under ex-president Kufuor and they should be our strength today. We must come together to take active steps that would strengthen the economy and put the youth back to work but not on the streets as we are seeing today. Under the Akufo Addo administration, Ghanaians should prove to the world that together, we can salvage the tattered economy that the NDC left behind. We as a people must not tire. We must not falter and neither should we fail.
AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME
If successive governments had copied the Operation Feed Yourself Programme and Backyard Gardening introduced by the late General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong in the early 70s, this country would not have been importing cocoyam leafs, onions, pepper, cabbages, plantain, tomatoes etc from sub-Saharan countries. I have had cause to write in this column sometime ago that I love historians because they always look back. When General Acheampong overthrew the Professor Busia regime, he told the world that Ghana was not going to pay all the debts that we owed foreign countries. In response, such countries too refused to give Ghana any loan.
General Acheampong did not put guns on the heads of Ghanaians to force them to accept the Operation Feed Yourself Programme. Acheampong’s regime started to advertise the programme in the media and composed a song to that effect. In no time, Ghanaians bought the idea and before one could blink an eye, everybody, from the bank manager to the accountant and the poor farmer in the villages got involved. Those in the big cities chose to contribute their quota through the Backyard Gardening. In those years wherever you passed in Accra and other big cities, people planted onions, tomatoes, pepper, plantains, cassavas etc at their backyards. It was fashionable to see ladies and gentlemen as well as their children tilling the land at the back of their houses to plant crops. Those who could not get space at their backyards to plant went to the outskirts of towns to acquire a piece of land to plant one crop or the other.
I remember a certain cartoonist who drew a cartoon of a bank manager sitting in his Mercedes Benz holding his hoe and cutlass and saying goodbye to his family and asking the lady to wait till night fell because he would not return home early since he was going to make two hundred mounds to plant yam. In less than one year, after the introduction of Operation Feed Yourself, Ghana became self sufficient in the production of food crops. I became enthused when Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto said the NPP government was going to introduce what he called Planting for Food and jobs like what Acheampong did in the early 70s. We have large hectares of lands lying fallow in almost every town and villages which will make it easier for the programme to succeed. Now that the rains have started, the government should as a matter of urgency start the campaign so that the idea will sink into the minds of the people for their total involvement. Chiefs should also play their part by giving out lands for the youth, in particular, to join the programme.
If Dr. Owusu Afriyie wants to succeed, he should make agriculture very attractive to the youth. My father owes a very large acreage of land in my holy village and I am ready to move there to farm but there is a condition. If I can acquire a tractor and plough at highly subsidized price and also have easy access to subsidized fertilizer as well as other farm inputs, I will never hesitate to join the programme. After all, today in Ghana, wherever you go there is electricity and potable water. If I move to my village I will not have any problem because I can still use my refrigerator, air condition or fan, television set, computer and other gadgets. Above all, I will have the peace of mind to write since the noises that we experience in the big cities are becoming unbearable. If you, my cherished reader happens to stay in my holy village for one week, you will regret the day you decided to locate to the city where you are now living.
In my holy village we do not know anything called armed robbery and there is no traffic jam nor filth. We inhale fresh air and the environment is clean. Unlike the scorching sun that you experience in the city where you live, my holy village is surrounded by tall, trees with green leaves which subdue the sun and makes life very comfortable. Our people live longer because they eat fresh food and fishes that we get from our rivers. Now that the rains have started falling we have easy access to mushrooms, kontomire and other nutritious diets. We know nothing about take away rice which is laced with oil and other artificial ingredients. In fact, we seldom get sick and life is fine, very fine. Anytime the clouds become dark we pray to God to open the heavens for the rains to fall but you, who live in the cities pray to God to shut the heavens so that the rains would not come to kill you and destroy your house. We are at peace with God but you defy God’s will. If Dr. Afriyie is able to make agriculture attractive, I will visit Accra, Kumasi, Tamale and the other big and noisy cities once in every ten years. After all what do I need from the cities when I can get whatever I want in my holy village?
Do not think about the education of my children in good schools because if I get the money, the children can be in boarding schools while me and my lady will feel comfortable in our holy village where there are no mosquitoes and if even the mosquitoes decide to relocate from the big cities to our village we have treated mosquito nets to fight them. So you see why the Planting for Food and Jobs will surely become a success story? You are welcome to my holy village called ‘Ehia ma nkyene’ ( You only need salt)
Eric Bawah