The Joke at the Food and Drugs Board and Democrat's Shameful Article

When I left Ghana after my first degree to continue my education in the United States I made a decision never to waste my time on the frequent 'big men' fights that seem to take all the space in our newspapers and airtime on radio. This is because the three years I stayed in Ghana after my first degree taught me to be very cynical about Ghanaian society and its big men and women. I had been totally disillusioned about this society's values.

I strongly believe that *most* big men and women in Ghana are selfish, myopic, no substance time-wasters. Because most of us have not realised this and some of us are happy to be used because we had rather be well-fed slaves than hungry freemen Ghanaians allow these biggies to lead us around on leashes. We take sides in their stupid public fights and waste our ears listening to their selfish noises day in and day out. They pretend they give a damn about this country but at the least opportunity they hoard money abroad and fly their wards out. Out of the wickedness of their hearts they can't even die in their own country anymore. With these people still very much in charge there is not a chance in hell that Ghana will go anywhere.

Development? Forget it. The country is the joke that it has been for the past 40 years. Usually I stay in my corner of the USA and try to improve my own life as well as abide by the values my beloved mother instilled in me while I was growing up. What more can I do?

Today I am going to break this rule of staying out of stupid *big men fights* in Ghana. This is because by chance I happen to have come to know about this particular fight so well that I think I can stay true to my suspicion of most big men even as I take sides in this particular fight. While most big men in our country are nothing more than hooligans who in any decent country should ordinarily be in jail a few are real gems that we must treasure. I think I will not be staying true to myself if I don’t contribute in my own small way to stopping the many wicked, lying, big men from chewing the few good ones to pieces.

I am talking about the fight between Dr. Opuni of the Food and Drugs Board and one of Ghana’s finest pharmacists. I was convinced to enter this fray because of a shameful article I read online that is supposed to have been written by the daily democrat, a paper that claims to be the voice of socialists and those who care for the downtrodden, about a person I came to respect by chance.

How this paper that is supposed to be on the side of those of us who detest the injustices of the big and powerful of our society managed to transform itself into a mouthpiece for lying, cheating, bigtime crooks beat my imagination. Is this the same paper that made its name fighting against the rot in the system? When you read the story in the Daily Democrat it becomes clear to you in an instant that this was a hurriedly planted story to benefit Dr. Opuni who is now the Chief Executive of the Food and Drugs Board of the Republic of Ghana. Apparently Dr. Opuni has succeeded in hoodwinking people into believing that he is the victim of some antigovernment conspiracy. The story was calculated to damage the reputation of a man Dr. Opuni believes is his rival - Dr. Dodoo. It is one of the most abominable acts of character assassination that I have come across outside the mad politics of our country. We are after all talking about the medical field where people are supposed to show professional courtesy, are we not? To have a retired surgeon, who is now head of the most sensitive medical agency in Ghana, planting stories about a very distinguished pharmacist in a newspaper tells all of us what Ghana has become, a land barren of any decency, where the wicked get their way using diabolical machination and the good are spat upon and trampled underfoot.

If your own father had died from the longterm effects of an industrial accident and the neglect of wicked profiteers like mine did you will understand why it is hard for some of us to stand by and watch a good man torn to pieces by cynical men who believe in nothing and use their wealth, positions, and connections to those in power in society to grab for themselves the little that is to be shared among all of us and to use these same undue advantages to destroy all who stand in their way. If you had grown up in the Ghana that I did where merit counts for nothing and connections are all that matter then you will understand why some of us cannot stay quietly when a politically connected, insecure, fraudster like Dr. Opuni wants to use his friendship with the sitting Minister of Health and other political connections to undermine a professional who has never reaped what he has not sown. I used the term *fraudster* without apology because since beginning this investigation I have come to know the imposter who think because he was an executive of the ruling party he can get away with lies, murder, and corruption. Little does he know that there are people in the party who won’t stand for such wickedness.

I left Ghana and have chosen to stay abroad for the first phase of my career because as a highly skilled professional I know what know-nothing big men do to those who try to be presumptuous because of their superior skills and specialist education. They show you where power lies. Ask Uncle Kofi Annan why he left Ghana Tourist Board. Ask Kwame Pianim why he did not return to public service. Ask the many Ghanaian professionals living outside and they will tell you what they have had to go through at the hands of clueless big men like Dr. Opuni.

I will tell you what my beef with Dr. Opuni is but first of all let me emphatically say that I don't know Dr. Dodoo in a personal capacity. I don't even have his telephone number. I have made the painstaking investigations that have led to the conclusions I am sharing in this article of my own free accord because of my experiences in Ghana and a coincidental chain of events that have made me very knowledgeable about medical regulation in Ghana.

My last dissertation was substantially based on finding out the cost of malaria to Ghana's economy. A few years ago while I was researching this matter from sources I tried to get some data from the public health division of the Ghana Health Service but as usual no one gave a damn about some Ghanaian graduate student in America who couldn’t rattle big names on request. That is Ghana for you my sister. I sent several emails and made calls to the Ministry of Health to obtain data but I was ignored. Out of frustration I decided to rely on internet research. Then the news of the horrible side effects of the anti-malarial policy hit and I became aware of a field called “pharmacovigilance”. Apparently the costs of malaria to the economy could come from not only the disease but also the effects of getting your national medication policy right. Can you imagine how pleasantly surprised I was when I found out that Ghana had its own expert in this area who was considered an authority by the World Health Organisation? Can you imagine how I felt when I started to use research by this authority after the frustration I felt on learning that neither the Food and Drugs Board or the Ministry of Health has published a single paper on medical regulation in almost a decade?

The man I am talking about is Dr. Alexander Dodoo. After successful studies in Ghana, this young man had gone on to the prestigious Kings College in London and then returned to teach at Korle Bu. He rose to become Acting Director of the Centre for Tropical Therapeutics and one of the WHO’s most regarded authorities on medical regulation. I found out how as a consultant to the WHO, DFID, and several other international organisations his expertise had helped countries all over Africa to achieve their goals in medical regulation. Even Dora Akunyili who is said to have won more awards than any public servant in Africa used Dr. Dodoo’s expertise during her campaign against fake drugs in Nigeria which made her famous all over the world. I learnt all this simply by using google. So I am very sure everybody involved in policymaking in Ghana’s health sector also know all this and more. I am sure the big men now plotting to destroy Dr. Dodoo with the support of politicians like two-faced Dr. Kumbuor also know this. They must know that Dr. Dodoo who has sat on the board of the international federation of pharmacy and been recently elected President of the International Society of Pharmacovigilance is a respected professional of who Ghana should be proud of.

So why are they trying to destroy this young man?

Actually, they have been trying it since 2006 when Dr. Dodoo started to campaign against the way medical regulation is done in this country and the way medicines are prescribed in our hospitals. Senior doctors, big businessmen who import medicines and other selfish people ganged up and tried to gag him, but they failed. Now Dr. Opuni is the new leader of the “destroy Dodoo” gang. His motivation is simple – he is a typical insecure big man and he is afraid Dr. Dodoo will expose him for the fraudster he is.. There is no doubt in professional medical circles in Ghana as far as my investigations have shown that Dr. Opuni did not get that job on merit. The sitting President, whose integrity nobody has ever questioned, in his wisdom had sought to create some sort of balance between the hardcore professionals and the party loyalists by making Dr. Dodoo Chairman of the Food and Drugs Board and Dr. Opuni as Chief Executive. While Dr. Yankey was at post as Minister of Health things were stable. But as soon as that untypically hardworking and principled big man resigned because of some alleged misconduct from a decade ago and the opportunistic Dr. Kumbuor, of whom I had always had my doubts, was brought in, a draft audit report was pulled out from nowhere with the purpose of damaging anyone who is better qualified than Dr. Opuni. Names that were mentioned in that document read like a who’s who in medical regulation in Ghana. Emma Agyemang Ofori, Reverend Jonathan Martey, Mr. Ben Botwe, etc. etc. These are names that all you need is a google search to appreciate the quality of their owners.

Dr. Dodoo is also mentioned in this draft report. He is accused of taking per diem from the FDB while on foreign travels despite not being staff of FDB. While this is a wholly bogus and stupid charge what is surprising is that in violation of every principle of public administration Dr. Kumbuor sent a letter to the media announcing the interdiction of Dr. Dodoo as Chairman of the FDB Board. No preliminary referral of the matter was made to the Public Services Commission, other members of the FDB Board did not meet to discuss the matter and the Ministry of Health’s own Advisory Board was not consulted. Dr. Kumbuor acted solely in concert with Dr. Opuni to go about this nefarious activity to undermine the chairman of one of Ghana’s most important agencies. Dr. Dodoo expressed ignorance and great surprise about even the interdiction when he was called by Joy Fm not to talk about the supposed misconduct.

Just think of the accusations being made against Dr. Dodoo. The charge is that he took per diem to which he was not entitled. There is no evidence that he solicited for this per diem. The payment of per diem itself presupposes that a person is involved in a travel assignment to the benefit of the payer of the per diem. But in Dr. Dodoo’s case what is even more absurd is that he was indeed affiliated with the Food and Drugs Board. He was the Head of the Center of Pharmacovigilance at the Center of tropical therapeutics which was established as a collaboration between the Food and Drugs Board and the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. Is Dr. Kumbuor saying that when consultants to the Ministry of Health travel on official assignments they do not take per diem? What hypocrisy! What wickedness! Should this young man whose services are in demand around the world have travelled on national business with his personal funds? Those technical consultants to the Ministry of Health, do they use their own money for national business? I am very surprised at the way the President has allowed this matter to drag on. Is he the leader of the party that championed the cause of Hodari Okae? Does he come from the tradition that was born to fight injustice? Are there no good “big men” in the NDC that can call Kumbuor to order? This is shameful to say the least.

You can tell from the tone of the Daily Democrat letter that Dr. Opuni is a man who couldn’t give a hoot about basic decency. This is a man that in less than a year at post has already procured accommodation at the whopping cost of nearly $4,000 a month. This is a man who has used his connections to Kumbuor to grab a brand new land cruiser when the Ghana Health Service continue to struggle with shortage of vehicles for senior executives.

What is inexcusable is that Dr. Opuni does not even have command over the job he is supposed to be doing. A new multicountry report is out and we will be putting extracts from it out there to show how the Food and Drugs Board has been run down under Drr. Opuni’s watch.

Every single major decision taken by Dr.. Opuni since he took over at this sensitive agency shows someone who has no clue about what he is doing hence the insecurity. He ordered the withdrawal of medicines through press announcements when he had not undertaken any prior market study to determine the distribution of the affected medicines. He chose to use the media and “national security” during the contaminated rice saga rather than professional exchanges with the Ghana Standards Board and Port Health Authority and nearly created a safety hazard for Ghanaians. Without consulting the Traditional Medicine Practice Council he is walking around arrogantly issuing orders to herbal medicine practitioners when he knows nothing about the key issues in that industry. He closes pharmacy shops without consulting the Pharmacy Council which has the mandate in order to be properly schooled about licensing requirements. He can’t stand the representatives of pharmacists in this country – the President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana – the same Dr. Dodoo that he is busy victimising and he believes he can manage medical regulation in Ghana without their professional support? The man is the exemplar of all that is wrong with Ghana as a result of the “Big Man Syndrome”.

A cursory look at the planted story in the daily democrat with its many errors (including getting Dr. Dodoo's title wrong and his name misspelt) shows the shoddiness with which he is doing his job.

Let me make it clear that I have never in my life spoken to Dr. Dodoo. I am sure the renowned pharmacist is too busy advising WHO, DFID and his many public clients around the world to be spending time or losing sleep over this matter. But I felt strongly that Ghanaians as always are going to be the ones who suffer from this kind of stupidity and I have kept my mouth shut for too long.

I am doing my bit to renounce the big man madness destroying this country. You can help by writing to the Parliamentary subcommittee on health if the big men there are blind to what is going on.

If everything fails God is the supreme judge.

By Maxwell Nkansah, Fairfax maxkansah@yahoo.com