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Opinions of Wednesday, 18 August 2010

Columnist: Thompson, Kofi

General Mosquito’s Diatribe Against Former President Kufuor!

The General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr.
Alex Asiedu Nketia, is reported by Ghanaweb.com to have made a number
of accusations, to counter those made against the Mills regime by
ex-President J.A. Kufuor: who recently accused the present government
of being corrupt. The report was carried in the ubiquitous (at least
on the computer monitors of Ghanaians who go online, i.e.!) Ghanaian
website's general news web-page of Tuesday, 10 August 2010, in a story
entitled: “Kufuor Is The Most Corrupt Leader In Ghana’s History – Gen.
Mosquito.” Amongst the many statements attributed to Mr. Asiedu
Nketia, include the following two quoted here: “Kufuor is the first
president of this country who requested to be the chairman of a state-
owned enterprise as a sitting president. He insisted he wants to be
the Chairman and it went to Parliament and it was passed. We have
taken over from him and we discovered to our amazement that the first
six months that Kufuor was the Chairman, not a single sentence by way
of minutes of all the meetings they have attended. All the decisions
that were made were done arbitrarily and implemented in a very
haphazard manner.'' End of quote.


Quote: ''President Kufuor told Ghanaians that they were going to build
a Bui City with a University and Airport as part of the project.
Indeed they made a pictorial representation of how Bui City looks
like, and then we took over and realized there is no single word about
the Bui City in everything that is being done there. There is no
pesewa meant for Bui City and you told us that you have brought money
from China to build the dam and build a city. If it were any other
person, he would have called that person to account for that, and very
soon we would have to invite President Kufuor to come and show us
where he lodged the Bui City money because we are taking over from a
former board, and we have the right to invite the former Board and
their chairman to account for their stewardship.’’ End of quote.


Ghanaian politicians are such a strange breed, are they not, dear
reader? What, precisely, is the National Democratic Congress (NDC)
regime of President Mills, going to do about this shocking revelation
concerning ex-President Kufour and meetings of the board of the Bui
Dam Authority, during the period he held power – and why has the
present regime not merged that opaque entity with the Volta River
Authority (VRA), in any case? Perhaps the question that all honest
Ghanaians, who actually care about their homeland Ghana, ought to ask
Gen. Mosquito, is: Has it never occurred to him and his colleagues in
the NDC that it was precisely to avoid enabling such accusations stick
like dried mud to their government that some patriotic Ghanaians
advised that the Mills regime ought to follow the shining example of
Nigeria’s late leader, President Yar’ Adua – by publicly declaring the
net worth of all its members, as well as that of their spouses? If
they had done so when they first came into office, today, our former
Hypocrite-In-Chief would not have the temerity to accuse their regime
of being corrupt, would he? Luckily for General Mosquito, it is
actually still not too late, for the NDC government to do so: and reap
its many benefits in December 2012.


The benefits of such a move are so self-evident that many patriotic
Ghanaians are puzzled by the continued refusal of the Mills regime to
do so. Would their party not occupy the high moral ground in Ghanaian
politics if that were done? Saying that the constitution does not
require that of the president and his appointees is a very lame excuse
– as there is also nothing in the constitution that bars them from
doing so. If the NDC wants to retain power after the December 2012
elections, they had better publish their personal net worth pretty
quickly (whiles there is still time to do so!), before it becomes too
late. Thus far, they have neither been vigorous about bringing the
crooks who engaged in corruption during the Kufuor era to book – nor
have they acted decisively when it has occurred within their own
regime, to the disappointment of many patriotic Ghanaians, if truth be
told. Consequently, amongst many ordinary Ghanaians, there is the
feeling that all the talk about massive corruption in the Kufuor
regime by the NDC, during the campaign for the December 2008
elections, was just hot air by opposition politicians desperate to win
power at all costs.


There is also the feeling amonst some Ghanaians that the NDC is not
prosecuting corrupt members of the previous regime, simply because
there is also corruption within the present government. Both
perceptions are probably wrong and unfair, as the government is doing
the best it can, given the dearth of lawyers of the right calibre
available to the Attorney General's Department. Still, we cannot deny
the fact that this regime appears to be a tad hard-of-hearing.
Why did the government not listen to Alhaji Bature, for example, when
he said that Mr. Fred Segbefia, the Deputy Chief of Staff at the
presidency, ought to resign, because his position had become
untenable, after the dismissal of Carl Wilson from both of the jobs he
had at the heart of government? What have they done about the
astonishing revelation that Mr. Micheal Owusu Darko Bonsu, the son of
Mr. Kojo Bonsu, made hundreds of thousands of dollars off the backs of
those sent by the government to South Africa to support the national
team? Why have they not forced that young man to pay back all the
money he made in that disgraceful rip-off of our country to the sports
ministry?


What did they also do to clear the air when that self-same Alex
Sebgefia was making mealy-mouthed excuses about the unauthorized use
of a plane belonging to the Ghana Air Force (GAF) – to fly sundry
spongers and regime hangers-on to watch the national team play in
Abidjan early in the life of the Mills administration: the genesis of
Alhaji Muntaka's kebab–diapergate scandal? Why, when they knew what
fuss they themselves made about the use of state funds to renovate
President Kufuor’s principal private residence, did they go on to
allow the use of state funds in renovating Mrs. Nana Kunadu Agyemang
Rawlings’ mother’s residence? How inept can one be politically, I ask,
dear reader? Have they not heard the most uncharitable of her critics
asking if the "grasping" Mrs. Rawlings "has not had enough of the
generosity of the Ghanaian nation-state?" Do they not know the
resentment felt by many small NGO’s that struggled to survive whiles
the whole machinery of state was put at the disposal of the NGO she
controlled, and which though ostensibly set up to empower poor women
in both urban and rural Ghana, actually served as a political
powerbase for the ambitious wife of a serial coup-making husband, who
held unfettered power in Ghana for over a decade after overthrowing
the regime of President Limman, in the December 1981 military coup?


If the General Mosquitoes of this world want their party and
government to be taken seriously by the independent-minded and
patriotic Ghanaians who chose to vote for President Mills in the
run-off of the December 2008 elections, rather than let the
greed-filled NPP return to power again to destroy Nkrumah's Ghana
(despite their personal loathing of the NDC because its domineering
so-called "founder" still insists that democracy is not right for
Africa – although we all know that the yearning for freedom is no less
strong in the hearts of ordinary Africans than it is in that of the
members of other races on the planet Earth!), then they had better
revise the notes for their party's December 2012 election battle-plan
very quickly. They must start by getting rid of all the greedy
self-seeking rogues in their party, who seem to think that Ghanaians
are going to sit unconcerned and allow the nation’s oil and natural
gas revenues to be fritted away, by carpetbaggers in clever little
schemes – such as the one to do with the “Muzinda Residence” scandal,
which enriched that young get-rich-quick magician son of the clever
Mr. Kojo Bonsu, during the World Cup tournament in South Africa.


Why does General Mosquito think the knives are out for the current
hardworking female sports minister – is it not because there is a
greedy cabal in the NDC that sees sports as a super-lucrative business
arena, which wants to get one of its own to head that ministry: so
that they can grab as many opportunities to enrich themselves as they
possibly can, when that happens?
Some of us used to quote this famous Ghanaian saying to the greedy
Kufuor & Co (who thought they were invincible during the period that
they held power in Ghana!) – “No condition is permanent.” There are
far too many people in the NDC who seem to have forgotten that wise
saying too, now that they are also in power, and driving around in
luxury sedans and cross-country vehicles (all fueled at vast expense
to taxpayers’!). Well, they had better get wise quickly: and let that
wise Ghanaian saying guide them henceforth, in all they do – and if
Vice President John Mahama is half the wise man he is said to be (and
wants his government to be returned to power again in December 2012!),
he had better, in the absence of the vacationing President Mills,
order every soul appointed to a ministerial position by the president,
to quickly declare his or her net worth publicly: and that of their
spouse too. A word to the wise…



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