The Agony And Prayer of Mother Ghana

I am mother Ghana, affectionately known as, the land of gold, diamond, cocoa, and countless other natural resources. Recently, I was given much applauds for exhibiting the capacity to produce crude oil in commercial quantities (even though this is no news). In addition to that, I can boast of being the mother and producer of some of the finest and intelligent human resources the world have been blessed with.

However, in the past, I was taken captive, colonized and exploited by forces, which lie northeast of the North Atlantic Ocean. For so many years, I endured humiliation and inhuman treatment at the hands of my captors.

Through divine providence and determination, one of my beloved sons Kwame Nkrumah, with the support of his contemporaries, restored my soul, freedom and independence. With my own approval and support he became my shepherd and first born of my sons and daughters.

By sheer jealousy, envy and selfishness, his own siblings allowed themselves to be manipulated by the same old enemies across the Atlantic Ocean and their allies who saw Kwame as being overly and exceptionally ambitious, and a threat to their hidden agenda of promoting white supremacy. They succeeded and overthrew him into the valley of the shadow of political death. Since that time, shepherds have come and gone. Some with the rod and others with the staff, By virtue of their Excellencies, they have tried their very best to comfort my soul.

And so came the time of my shepherd John Agyakum Kuffuor, whom I chose not because he was the excellent one then, but because I felt that there was the need for a change. In addition to that was the array of promises, and pledges he bestowed upon my throne.

But my- oh- my! Mother Ghana declares in prayer, six and a half years with Kuffuor as my shepherd, I am still in want than he came to meet. He maketh me to vote for him, and his party, on empty promises, falsehood, and baseless accusations against his senior shepherds.

Having won the presidency, he turns around and plays the blame game. Blaming everyone for the presence of every unpleasant thing and the lack of anything desirable. He leadeth me to the lowest standard of my presidency and practices vices while preaching virtues.

After declaring zero tolerance for corruption with his lips, he uses his hands to collect kickbacks. Even though his wife was upset and nearly had a heart attach, he saw nothing wrong with extra marital relationships between him and any woman (whether a minister, journalist or a secretary). He affirmed this by stubbornly maintaining his ministers and MPs who were identified and exposed by verifiable evidence. People who were known to have sacrificed morality and sexual decency on the altar of lustful desires and inappropriate pleasures were those he admires.

He maketh my sons and daughters to lie down on empty stomachs and tightened belts, while he fills the bowls and pockets of his families, friends and cronies with escalated contract fees and bribery. He satisfies himself with kickbacks, hotels and per diems accumulated from uncountable number of foreign travels. He leadeth me to total darkness as a result of indifference towards maintenance and lands me to still and shut down factories.

He allows his men to selfishly, dishonestly and unscrupulously amass wealth so much so that they all have more than enough to compete for my greatest throne (the presidency) with impunity even though they lack the competency and the political, social and human capital to ascend to my throne. After spending millions of dollars of the tax payers money on training, courses and seminars,all aimed at preparing them to serve in government, President Kuffour has allowed so many of them to leave without rendering services that are commensurate with the investment made on them.They are now pursuing selfish ambitions at the peril of my land.

Surely, by rewarding mediocrity and sacrificing excellence for myopic performance, Kuffuor has restored my doubts in the NPP party as a non-performing party. Instead of admitting his failure, he is as usual blaming his stepsiblings (NDC) and accusing them of scoring higher political points. Instead of retaining competent people like Osarfo Marfo, Kofi Konadu Apreku, and Alhaji Alhassan, he has rather neglected them.

Further more, instead of appointing competent people to do the job, he rather appoints people like Kwamena Bartells who has spent millions of dollars paying people to just spin lies and falsehood against the opposition parties. Instead of appointing and retaining people like Christian Churchil, Edumadze and Paa Kwesi Induom whose roots from the central region highly influenced his narrow wins for the presidency, he has shamelessly disgraced them by striping them off their ministerial portfolios without any tangible excuse.

Even though there is substantial evidence against his own party members and government officials for drug trafficking, corruption, immorality, fraud, ill acquired wealth, and vote riggings, he has failed to take action and rather tell my sons and daughters to do their own investigations. In deed the NPP is a failed government.

Surely, for almost seven years, my people have lived with disappointments and disillusionments because of many, many unfulfilled promises. But the time of reckoning is drawing near. Come December 8 2008, the wonderful thumbs of my people will pass the judgment and announce the verdict. This time, my people will not tolerate any vote buying and preemptive announcements of results even before they are tabulated. This time my people will not just vote for change sake but they will vote for a change based on disappointments, unfulfilled promises and unsubstantiated allegations on the part of the NPP government

By Ghanaman Ba jr.

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.