Scepticism among a section of Ghanaians is growing into cynicism about the direction of the economy and the conduct of public affairs. And in a political season, NDC elements have misled some traders and food vendors to increase prices to absurd levels claiming President Akufo-Addo has caused the economic difficulties.
Yes, Akufo-Addo is the President of the Republic and the Commander in Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces, but all of us are in the ship of state with him.
We either sink or stay afloat depending on our individual and collective contributions to nation building. We have carried politics to nonsensical limits, especially in this election year, to the extent that NDC has empowered some of its supporters in the name of campaigning for votes to engage in Goebbelsian lies.
What do these enemies of the state do; they have been deployed to food joints, trotro stations, markets and communities to poison the minds of the people against the government. They have taken these endeavours beyond the boundaries of common sense that “koko” sellers tell their customers that the price of the breakfast item has gone up because of the depreciating value of the cedi. So groundnut sellers, kenkey sellers, fruit sellers and others have joined the NDC bandwagon.
What crassness in knowledge and enlightenment. We know the situation in Ghana that some staples like maize, tomatoes and onions are imported from neighbouring countries, despite the vast tracts of arable land.
In spite of these limitations, it does not make sense for “koko” sellers to peg the price at three cedis, groundnut sellers at five cedis, and kenkey sellers at five cedis.
What is nauseating is the attitude of vendors of vegetables and fruits who change the prices like changing sanitary pads.
The unbridled liberalisation has driven us to the state where prices of goods and services change by the hour. And customers, especially of eateries must settle their bills immediately they are served so that they are not slapped with new prices in the name of the falling value of the cedi.
Amidst all these challenges, there is hope in the horizon. We recall vividly, what President Akufo-Addo said in his famous “Fellow Ghanaians” broadcast because we do not suffer from short memories.
He took us back to memory lane recently by asserting that, “If you will recollect, I did say, at the height of the pandemic, that we knew how to bring the economy back to life, but did not know how to bring people back to life.”
Mr. President, how prophetic, you did everything within your powers to save lives during COVID-19 to the extent that the international community acknowledged you for the visionary leadership during the pandemic.
Ghana was among the very few countries that managed to keep the death toll very low, whereas developed countries were at their wits end to understand how to deal with the devastating effects of COVID-19. Today, the effects of COVID-19 on the human resources of the advanced countries are unprecendented, hence their search for nurses and doctors. None of the politicians including John Mahama who are making loud noises have been able to prescribe ways by which they would have managed the economy better than the NPP government.
Unless we are suffering from short memories, we know the pain that John Mahama subjected us to during his tenure from 2012 to 2016.
During that period when external shocks were not devastating as COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine war, Ghanaians slept in dumsor for more than four years and John Mahama had to run to the IMF for policy credibility not just for bailout, but to use the intervention to assure the international community that Ghana was still conducive for investment.
We do not understand the debate about whether to go to the IMF or not. Again, the politicians are using our request for support to equalise records when in actual fact going to the IMF is routine in case of economic challenges.
After all, the countries of the global north also go to the IMF for bailout. We also need to educate our people that we are members of the Fund and contribute to its purse, thus there is nothing wrong for our governments to rely on the IMF for bailout.