Election 2024: Bawumia's dishonest economic data and voodoo talk amidst multinationals folding up

The Vice President, His Excellency Dr. Alhaj Mahmudu Bawumia, a Cassandra-cum-Casanova who may also be referred to as our nation’s economic fallen angel, judging from the flash in the pan he has achieved with his incessant play of subterfuge, deceit, and lies in government seeking to beguile further the gullibility of many Ghanaians, has done it again!

Taking a dim view of his recent economic Cock and Bull narratives usually presented in the darkness of cooked-up and dishonest data, it's becoming increasingly apparent that no amount of subterfuge can ever be deployed successfully by the Veep as far as the manifested economic mess of the country is concerned under his watch.

Thus, the deception of Dr. Bawumia, motivated by narcissistic economic wet dreams, has reached such a crescendo that it no longer washes with even the kindergarten pupils, unless the country’s uneducated elites and formal thieves.

Under Akufo-Addo today, Ghana has both formal and informal sectors of criminality. The formal sector thievery is in government offices and other public offices where comfort and peace have been found in the pursuit of filthy lucre in cutthroat corruption.

Whereas the informal sector remains the conventional chicken and goat thieves market. Fellow Ghanaians, say what you like, right now, as it stands, Ghana has been in what the former minority leader, Hon. Haruna Iddrisu, described as the “witches’ dance floor” – we are in a survival quandary in between the devil and the deep blue sea. Ghana and Ghanaians are simply in a state of hopelessness.

Our future has been mortgaged in exchange for “popcorn” by our nation’s enemies masquerading as leaders. And for a very long time to come, unless a miracle, we shall continue to labor laboriously in vain.

And as if a pact between dishonesty and desperation, President Akufo-Addo and Dr. Bawumia have been quite relentless in flogging a long-dead horse amidst the unfolding economic exodus of foreign multinational companies out of the country, in record numbers.

The GhanaWeb has reported recently that the Societe Generale Bank, Jumia Foods, Nivea, Glovo, and a host of other multinational operators who have been operating in Ghana for decades, have suddenly realized the need to flee for their very existence from the country due to the bankrupting economy of Ghana.

Not only are these giant corporations embarking upon this mass “hijra”, but at the individual level, both citizens and denizens alike are vacating the country with immediate effect as if the gates of hell have been flung open before a sinful people.

According to Dr. Atuahene, a banking and financial expert, no multinational company or entity would prefer to continue operations in a failing economy like Ghana's where every economic indicator is bowing to the unfortunate events of mismanagement. Instead, they would find other countries where their exchange rate is relatively stable like our neighbor Cote d’Ivoire and others.

However, with recent comments by both President Akufo-Addo and Vice President Dr. Bawumia, despite the drugged and dragging economy, it's obvious they have either lost touch with reality or they have been taught by voodoo practitioners to speak in such a most irresponsible manner.

As a student of religion, I know that mostly, after some evil and demonic "sacrifices" have been carried out, the MalLam or the native doctor (voodoo practitioner) tells their clients (victim politicians) to come out and make statements in order to cast the evil spell done upon the people and nation. Personally, I believe it was in that vein both the president and his evil Malam-infested vice president made their recent statements. Very disrespectful and insulting.

But are we really going to blame them? Didn’t our elders say that a man on the back of a high horse can’t tell how hot the ground is? With both milk and honey flowing from the proceeds of unprecedented corruption, why won’t Dr. Bawumia, in the figment of his imagination, envisage that his economy has improved the lives of Ghanaians more than the Mahama administration?

Is it not mind-boggling to realize that Dr. Bawumia can still try to continue to mystify, obfuscate, and hoodwink Ghanaians when both citizens and denizens are fleeing the country in record numbers due to the hardship triggered by mismanagement of the economy in a proportion never seen in the annals of our history by the vice president?

An economy that was ranked as the worst and second only to Sri Lanka which became a Banana Republic, and with our currency adjudged the worst performing currency in the whole wide world, could suddenly be conveniently compared to the nation's period of Eldorado, Silicon Valley, and Aladdin's cave put together, in 2016? At least, compared to the current hell Ghanaians are going through.

For me, this latest goof by the vice president is certainly going to be the last straw that would ultimately break the camel's back of his gross incompetence and expose his diligent deception and dishonesty for all to see.

After more than seven years of a lack of Midas touch and the wherewithal to at least keep the economy at where the NPP took over, our economic Lucifer has peddled a blatant but smart falsehood that the cumulative average depreciation of the cedi under the National Democratic Congress, NDC, from 2009 to 2016 has been worse than the New Patriotic Party's 2017 to 2023.

And I think it's imperative to draw the attention of all honest economists and analysts to, in the first instance, whether those figures have been accurately captured. Apart from the blistering dishonesty the Veep displayed in his summation of those percentages in general, the figures too might have been doctored like the 2020 election pink sheets.

The Doctor of our economy, which is in shambles and has been wobbling in the last eight years, has perched the cumulative percentage depreciation under the NPP at 64.6% while 71.1% has been allocated to the NDC. By the way, did anyone realize where the vice president attempted to throw dust in the eyes of Ghanaians with his fabricated data?

Pay attention to the nation’s grand deceiver’s deception. Now, you see that Walewale Adam Smith carefully and artfully took out 2024 percentage depreciation in his calculation of the cumulative depreciation under the NPP. He is simply making a comparison between apples and oranges here, and sought to play the devil's advocate with the whole comparison having in mind the mess Ghana has been engulfed in, especially in recent times as the cedi keeps climbing up now at 14.18 to one dollar.

Basically, Dr. Bawumia has willfully compared eight years against seven years in this latest misinformation in order to as usual hammer home a cheap political point in the eyes of unsuspecting Ghanaians.

Before now, somewhere in March this year, Citi News reported an average depreciation of the cedi to be 6.2%. The Africa Report projected it to be 8.4% at the same period. Bloomberg also perches the depreciation at 7.8% two months ago. As at the beginning of this month, May, these figures have been contested as the cedi keeps depreciating.

For example, the Business & Financial Times has decried the worsening situation of the collapsing cedi which has depreciated from 6.8% in March to 14.11% this month, May. On their part, MyJoyOnline has reported the depreciation of the cedi this year beginning of May to be 13.45%.

And Citi Business also projects it to have depreciated by 9.37% and perches the depreciation rate at roughly 10% as of the first four months of the year last month, April. What this means is that roughly the cedi has averagely depreciated by more than 10% this year 2024 since January.

Now, the deception the vice president sought to engage in with this latest comparison is embedded in the deliberate disregard of the current galloping cedi in its depreciation this year 2024. And all the above latest reports of the depreciating cedi against the dollar by Citi News, MyJoyOnline, and B&FT have been disingenuously brushed aside by the Veep.

Had this year's current depreciation been considered, the cumulative depreciation would not have been 64.6% under the NPP as the vice president wants us to believe. Instead, the cumulative depreciation under the NPP would have been 78.71%, 78.05%, and 73.97%/74.6% from 2017 to 2024, according to the latest reports by B&FT, MyJoyOnline, and Citi News respectively.

But the vice president as usual was very dishonest with the data and had manipulated and distorted it to suit their deceitful and doctored narrative about the economy.

With such a level of untrustworthiness, does it beat anybody's imagination to hear the president bothered about the destruction of his legacy? The question is, the legacy of what? Corruption and deception? You see, when many Ghanaians tag our dear president as our national enemy, some citizens still can't see how dangerous and ruinous the president has been to the country.

I mean, this is a man who has destroyed everything Ghana has ever built in the last 67 years. This is a man who has literally sold Ghana for peanuts for the sole benefit of his kitchen cabinet – friends and families.

Should there be any legacy Akufo-Addo would ever leave behind as president, it's empty slogans, fraudulent projects, unprecedented borrowing, a bankrupt central bank, general financial sector turmoil, unspeakable corruption, and general economic mess at its zenith.

How can a president who has abandoned schools constructed by his predecessor and decided to run a shift system, have the nerve to talk about the destruction of legacies? Today, if Akufo-Addo could ban the use of the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange, the Kejetia market, and all roads the Mahama administration built, he would have done exactly that.

This is the psychopathic political criminal Ghana is faced with who treats us with utter contempt for our collective intelligence and common sense, dignity, probity, and accountability. But there’s one thing he fears the most: prosecution. The president is on record to have hallucinated that he can’t hand over to former President John Mahama.

He is certainly seeking to protect his eight-year-long loot. Nonetheless, In Sha Allah, Nsawam would soon be the next home of Akufo-Addo and his most careless accomplices. The battle is still the Lord’s. And the Lord is the most just and fairest in the dispensation of justice.