Editorial: Prez Mills Had Every Right To Be Angry At CEPS

Last Friday, many Ghanaians saw another side of their President, His Excellency Professor John Evans Atta Mills, when in the early hours of the morning, he was heard, walking through the Tema ports, in an angry mood.

The report that accompanied his unedited voice, loudly indicated an incensed and outraged President Mills, who was barking at the many corrupt officials at the Tema Ports, through whose misdeeds, the country is losing billions of cedis meant for the national kitty.

Seen all these years as a gentleman’s gentleman whose calm nature, founded on his Biblical principles, has characterized his persona to the fullest, the Atta Mills that Ghanaians saw and heard, was the one who was ready to grab a cane and whip a student for acts of insubordination.

Facing the corrupt men and women wearing uniform as Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) officials, President Mills chastised them for letting down the nation they so swore to protect its resources. The President’s harsh criticisms came, followed by a defining threat to ensure the mass transfer of CEPS officers stationed at the Tema Port.

Last Friday’s visit was the second, following an initial one he made to the same port, last year, to complain about the huge revenue losses the state is recording through acts of collusion on the part of the revenue collectors.

President Mills’ interest in ensuring that all taxes meant for the state are paid, has been given a stronger reason and support, following the announcement that the taxes collected by the state, is what is being used to finance the construction of the two universities taking off in the Brong Ahafo and the Volta Regions of Ghana, concurrently.

It therefore stands to reason that should the state ensure that all revenues are collected by its institutions charged with the responsibility to do so, Ghana would have been a better place by now. Should former governments had taken the business of collecting revenues as seriously as the Mills government is doing, Ghana would have stopped chasing the Bretton-Woods for peanuts to support our national budget.

We would have taken our destiny into our own hands and would have done better without their inimical conditions and harsh terms.

If for the first time in the history of our beloved Ghana, the state is solely financing the construction of two universities at the same time, through taxes, then the President deserves every right to charge on corrupt CEPS officials at the ports, who are putting their selfish greed at the expense of the state, higher on their minds, and as such are denying us the much needed resources for more universities, more industries, more roads, more hospitals and more incomes.

The Informer newspaper is therefore throwing our weight, fully behind the President’s decision to be furious and display that anger as such and further threaten to shake-up CEPS, and stop this leakage. We wish the President well in his bid to cause some reforms at our ports and rake-in the expected revenues. Well done Mr. President, you deserve the right to be angry at the economic saboteurs. Now let’s flush them out.