In the early 1960s, the people of Goaso in the then Brong Ahafo Region voted for a gentleman as their Member of Parliament. Before he went to Accra to assume office, the chiefs of Goaso invited him to the palace for a meeting. They told him that as he was very much aware, the road from Sunyani, the regional capital to Goaso was in a deplorable situation so if he went to parliament he should table the issue on the floor of parliament so that the government would be aware of the situation and come to their aid. He was warned that if he was not able to fix the road by the time his tenure of office ended, he should forget being a parliamentarian again.
And so to Accra he parked bag and baggage and went. The moment he was sworn into office as the Parliamentarian of Goaso he started looking for an opportunity to speak about the deplorable road of Goaso. One day when parliament was in session he got asleep. He slept so soundly that by the time he woke up, parliament was about to rise. In fact, all parliamentarians had stood up for the Speaker to walk away before they sat down. The Goaso MP hurriedly stood up and asked rhetorically: What about the Goaso road? There was uncontrollable laughter by the Members of Parliament. Don’t wet your pants yet!
The truth is that the NDC communicators are winning the propaganda war and the NPP communicators are beating about the bush. NPP communicators are dazed and unable to counter the vile propaganda of the NDC who are bent on telling lies, believing that Ghanaians are docile and will swallow everything, hook, line and sinker. In the beginning, even before the NDC was born, Rawlings and his PNDC junta took many young men and women to study the art of propaganda in Cuba, Libyan, Bulgaria and other communist countries. Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda during the reign of Adolf Hitler made us to understand that if you are telling lies, you must repeatedly tell the same lies and people will believe in it. This is exactly what the NDC communicators are doing, and they seem to be succeeding for now.
When the Cedi was struggling to stand up in the face of the world economic meltdown, the NDC communicators did not give the government a briefing space as they went to town on a daily basis to beat the drums of economic doom. They used Dr. Bawumia as their chewing stick and took the fine gentleman to the cleaners. Dr. Bawumia and the Minister of Finance, Mr. Ken Ofori Atta kept their cool as they worked to solve the problem. Today, do you hear the NDC Communicators talking about the Cedi again?
The Nana Addo-led administration promised to build one factory in one district but did not give any timeline but before the first sod could be cut for the beginning of the first factory, the NDC communicators did not rest a day on their oars as they started calling for factories to be built in every district within the first year in office. They speak of building a factory like the way a container or kiosk is built. When factories started sprouting up in the districts, they have kept quiet. You see, these guys think we are all fools and do forget easily the history of factories in this country before the PNDC (NDC) was born. We used to have more than six factories in Takoradi alone not to talk of the Bonsa Tyre Factory in Tarkwa, the Samiraboi Plywood factory, the Aboso Glass Factory, the Rubber Plantation which fed the Bonsa tyre factory and many more in the Western Region alone. It was the PNDC (NDC which came to sell more than three hundred and fifty factories in Ghana without building a single one. Today the NDC has the guts to comment on factories. These nation wreckers have no shame in their lexicons at all.
Gradually, villages in the northern regions are getting dams and the people are happy. I am expecting Sammy Gyamfi, the NDC Communications Officer to go to the place again as he did in the run-up to the 2020 General Election to take videos and show to the world. They have kept silent on this issue too. What they have now taken upon themselves to propagate is the issue of insecurity. They passionately talk of it as if Ghana has turned to Afghanistan or South Africa. Our security agencies are now a punching bag for the NDC communicators. They do not respect them a hoot as if all the soldiers and policemen were enlisted by the NPP government. To them, they foolishly believe that when NDC was in power under Mr. Dramani Mahama, we had no arm robbery cases and no policeman was killed by any arm robber. They see all soldiers and policemen as criminals in uniforms and that the soldiers and policemen are out there to kill and maim Ghanaians.
In the face of all these vile propaganda and misinformation by the NDC communicators, I blame the NPP Communications Directorate and other Regional and Constituency Communication Officers of the party. Next time when such officers are going to be appointed, the party should look for sharp, smart and hardworking communicators. This group has failed woefully. They wait for the NDC to pollute the air before they go to defend instead of taking the battle to their doorsteps and call them to dare. The NPP communicators are acting like the Goaso MP. He will sleep until parliament is about to rise before he will ask about the Goaso road.
Instead of the communicators blowing the horns of the performance of the government in the area of infrastructure, security, education and others, they are waiting until election year before they start to make ugly noises. Do you hear the NDC talking about the Double Track again? It is because school blocks are being built in all the districts to accommodate students. The Ghanaian voters are now wide awake so if you have something to tell them, tell them now. If you wait until election year, they will ask you: Why now? The NPP lost many parliamentary seats because things which should have been done earlier on were hurriedly done during the electioneering campaign. That angered the electorate. They wondered why the party should wait until election year before they did what they did for the people. The sages say once bitten twice shy. The leadership of the party should rise up and do the right thing before 2024. Ghanaians will not forgive the NPP if they become complacent and allow the NDC to come back to power again to turn the apple cart upside down.
The country was cruising to the promised land under Mr. Agyekum Kufuor when complacency led to the unfortunate loss of power to the NDC. Ghanaians are living witnesses to how things were messed up by the NDC in power. The Free Maternal Care Programme, the School Feeding Programme, the National Health Insurance Scheme, The Metro Mass Transit and many laudable initiatives were jettisoned by the NDC and today, Nana Akufo-Addo is faced with the task of fixing what they destroyed. Do we want such a bitter history to repeat itself? No cigar today because I am down with malaria. You can now open your nostrils and breath fresh air!
By Eric Bawah