Yes, those for whom change is threatening, yesterday is more comforting than tomorrow but those of us who welcome change have faith in the change that is happening. In fact, our faith is like a rock amid shifting sands. Very solid. In a matter of ten months, the change that we wished for is happening and people are threatened because they hate change. They never dreamt that the pendulum could swing left.
There was this guy who once asked me how I manage to get a topic to write every week and I told him that so long as the NDC remains as a political party in this country, I will get a topic to write every week. Communicators of the NDC always give me bullets to fire. As long as they continue to provoke confrontation, I will continue to write. After all, why am I Angel Gabriel? What encourages me is that majority of readers of this column are NDC supporters. Anytime I open my email they try to screw with me and that is what I like most. Nobody screws with me and goes without getting his fare share of my angelic pie.
The President Akufo-Addo administration was given four years to deliver the campaign promises but the NDC apparatchiks want to see things done at a go. How can that be possible? The NPP campaigned on the wings of seven flagship programmes and in ten months three of them have kick-started. The nursing trainee allowances have been restored and SHS is FREE. Half of the huge debt incurred by the John Mahama led administration at the National Health Insurance Scheme has been cleared and the scheme is back on track. Even though not all the districts have a factory, strategic investors are fervently preparing to hit the road while others have started. You don’t expect factories to start sprouting in all the districts like mushrooms on ant hills in a matter of ten months.
Recently, the President went to Equatorial Guinea to sign a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU). The President of Equatorial Guinea has agreed to supply LNG for fifteen years. When that happens, Ghana will have enough gas to power our thermal plants. That is when the NDC will realize that the cost of electricity has come down. Good governance is about planning and Nana’s team is made up of astute planners. What NDC communicators have failed to realize is that building a dam in a village is not done during rainy seasons. It is done during the dry seasons and so the promise of one village, one dam will surely come to pass, by the grace of God. As for the teacher trainee allowance it is a matter of time and the NDC will know that the country is in able hands. From the way things are going, I am sure by the time the four-year term given to the Nana Addo administration to deliver the promises ends, everything will be done and the NDC will have nothing to complain about.
The NDC communicators seem to be wearing wooden spectacles because they do not see anything that is happening in this country. They do not know that anytime they destructively criticize the new administration, they become a laughing stock. People have wised up and discerning enough to read between the lines. Dr. Bawumia and his Economic Team are revving up the economy and people know and admire what the gentleman and his team are doing. When the government introduced the paperless transactions at the ports recently, NDC communicators jumped on the neck of the government, saying it won’t work and when the system started yielding results they kept mute. The government is plugging holes here and there and that is not good for the NDC because their people who used to milk the cow dry are no more milking the lean cow and the cow is putting up weight having been well fed by the Bawumia team for the past ten months.
Come to my holy village and see how the Planting for Food and Jobs are working. All what a farmer has to do is to prepare his or her land. Agric Extension Officers will then visit the farm land and ascertain the number of bags of fertilizers the farmer may need. Fertilizers which are being sold at GH¢100 a bag at the open market is given to the farmer at half the price. Even then the farmer is made to pay GH¢25.00 and goes away with the fertilizer. The farmer is required to pay the balance of GH¢25.00 after harvesting his or her crop. It was the NDC government under the Mills/Mahama administration that killed the Fertilizer Subsidy programme introduced by the Kufuor administration. Today, the Akufo-Addo administration has brought smiles back on the faces of farmers and they are very grateful. One interesting thing is that a farmer’s political leaning has nothing to do with the acquisition of fertilizers. Ask farmers in the Volta Region where the NPP can boast of only one seat in parliament! They are all full of praises for Nana Addo.
There is an old saying that if you don’t have problems, then you don’t have a job. President Nana Akufo Addo knows there are problems and as such a job to be done. He also knows that being a president is a patriotic duty. You see, one cannot prove his merit on quiet waters. You need to focus on your goals, not your problems. Accomplished achievers do not go where the path may lead them but instead they go to where there is no path. And this is exactly what our president is doing. Those who are pessimists should hold their breath because we all have different ways of accomplishing things. Some people may deliberate over a matter for a long time and then move quickly and some people make a quick decision and then take a long time getting around acting upon it. President Akufo Addo belongs to the former. That is why the sages say ‘to each his own’. At the end of the day results are what matter. The problem is that we usually only see the end result and not the process. The bottom line is clearly the bottom line. Those who continue to whine can continue to do so but what they should understand is that a galloping horse has no time to lose.
THE MADNESS IN THE STOMACHS OF VIGILANTE GROUPS
The inspector General of Police (IGP) and the Ghana Police Service in general are not doing the country any good. Heads must begin to roll to serve as a deterrent to other officers who will sit down for vigilante groups, irrespective of whatever political groupings they belong to, to take the country back into the wish-to-be-forgotten revolutionary days when impunity was the order of the day. Yes, it is true the NDC vigilante groups like the notorious Azoka Boys did worse things when the NDC came to power in 2009 but should we allow this madness to continue? The leadership of these vigilante groups eventually become fabulously rich while their followers, the ‘yoo yoo boys’ continue to wallow in poverty. Mr Sofo Azoka became a contractor when the NDC was in power and made huge sums of money and built mansions while the boys who were following him continue to suffer. Today, Mr. Sofo Azoka, a former truck pusher was sponsored to go to Mecca to acquire the Alhaji title and now this rubble-rouser is the Northern Regional Chairman of the party. The winner can take it all without hurting the loser. There are many ways of killing a cat. (Apology to Dr. Kwabena Adjei, for NDC National Chairman).
The boldness that the president is using to fight galamsey should be applied to vigilante groups as well. I am aware he has instructed the police to act swiftly and decisively against vigilante groups but he should go further to discipline any district or municipal police commander who will fail to arrest any member of any vigilante group operating in their areas of jurisdiction. What is most annoying is that some of these hooligans operate in broad day light. These vigilante madness will never stop until the police put their feet on the ground and act ruthlessly. I am waiting to see the day a member of a vigilante group will serve time in prison to send a signal to other colleagues that times have changed. I am aware during the days of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, we had vigilante groups like Action Troopers but the multimillion Ghana Cedi question is: Should we continue to live with the madness? The answer is a big NO! This time around the buck must stop on the table of President Nana Akufo Addo.
Anytime I hear the vigilante groups say they fought for the party to come to power I laugh. People lost their lives during the struggle. Others lost limbs and yet others lost fortunes. Everybody played a role for the party to come to power. Where I cast my vote during the last general election, something very sad happened which I will never forget in my life. I had gone to the polling station to queue around 3.00 AM and I saw three very old ladies already at the Polling State to cast their votes. In the course of a conversation I had with the old ladies, one of them who was about seventy five years told me that her son, a staunch NPP supporter who is living abroad warned her to go early to cast her votes for Nana Akufo Addo and that if she failed to vote he will never send any money to her, hence her reason to wake up at dawn to queue. After casting her vote she fell in a gutter just near the polling station as she was about to cross it. The old lady died instantly. And you tell me you suffered for the party to come to power? Absolute nonsense!! Let any vigilante group strike again and I your irrepressible Earth Angel Gabriel will prove to such fools that the pen is mightier than the sworn. I rest my case for now but as sure as the NDC will lose election 2020, I will be back. Today I am going in for Tusker for Men. (Some of you were born too late to know that brand of cigarette. Ask Alhaji Gomda!)
By Eric Bawah