Public Agenda: Woyomegate is a developmental issue

Development has been variously defined, from the standpoint of infrastructural development; enhancing welfare; freeing the human spirit; and unleashing the potential of citizens.

But according to modern thinking as has been constantly espoused by the United Nations in its annual Human Development Index Reports, the focus of development is maximizing the welfare of citizens. And for a developing country like Ghana with large sections of our population bending beneath the yoke of strangulating poverty, the provision of social services such as education, water, health facilities and housing becomes one of the practical and effective ways of salvaging our unfortunate compatriots from the claws of deprivation. Accordingly, any act of commission or omission that leads to the illegal siphoning of huge sums of money from the state kitty, which monies could have been judiciously used to provide the basic needs of the masses, becomes a matter which should engage the attention of all well meaning Ghanaians.

It is thus becoming increasingly worrying to hear highly reputed citizens of the land making assertions to the effect that the issue of Woyomegate has been over flogged and that the media in particular is giving it undue attention at the expense of developmental issues. Initially, we of Public Agenda decided to ignore those comments because we felt they were coming from persons who lacked both the ability and capacity to appreciate the gravity and complicated nature of the issues at stake.

But we are now compelled to depart from our earlier position because the comments are now emanating from people who are held in high esteem by society, occupy influential social space and whose views have far-reaching impact on the direction of the country.

Contributing to the national broadcast network current affairs programme, GBC Radio's 'Behind the News' recently, a veteran journalist and political historian, who happened to have tutored many of the practising journalists of today, submitted that the media was giving too much airtime and space to the Woyome scandal, and in the process neglecting important matters like development. "The media has failed the nation," he trenchantly contended. After him, came in the views of a seasoned media researcher who espoused the perspectives of the political historian. In sum, both of them argued that the media should rest the Woyome scandal and zero in on what they termed as development, for instance, ongoing infrastructural projects.

We are still finding it difficult to come to terms with such opinions coming from such well placed personalities in the society. We deem their position as one of intellectual dishonesty and not being sincere with Ghanaians.

Come to think of the staggering amount that was paid to Alfred Agbesi Woyome as judgment debt, a little over GHC 51 million, and the alternative uses to which it could have been put. According to students of Economics, the same amount could purchase about 500 Metro Mass buses which could have contributed immensely to improving transportation in the country or to drill 6000 boreholes to provide water to many towns and villages or construct quite a large number of health facilities across the country.

If the provisioning of such facilities is not development-based that will improve the living conditions of our people, then the word 'development' has lost its true meaning. Additionally, many personnel of the National Youth Employment Programme are owed salary arrears; University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) is threatening strike action over remunerations, all these mean taking monies from the national coffers. The Woyomegate money could have been used to solve some of these problems.

In the face of all these developmental challenges, we find it mind boggling for the nation to be told that too much premium is being paid to the Woyomegate. It is a scandal of gargantuan proportions and a developmental issue as well, hence deserves all the media attention and prominence.