Asks Nkrabeah Effah Dartey
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Pastor Mensah Otabil is one of the most respected forthright Men of God in this Country. You can see from his handiworks that he is NOT gold digger. He has built a highly successful church from the scratch, he established a very successful private University and still struts about merely as Pastor Otabil instead of the accustomed ?Archbishop? ?Apostle ?General? ?King Pastor? and those high falutin but really meaningless ego centric empty titles.
He has this regular column on radio in which he delivers the Word, and he constantly hammers home practical living truths. The man is unbeatable.
I bought Daily Guide on Saturday and the front lead story was astonishing: ?OTABIL DROPS BOMB???? my God! Which bomb?
Because of my military background I get sticky anytime I hear of bullets, bombs, missiles and weapons because I know the lethal effect of these destructive arsenals.
A whole Pastor has dropped a bomb? Reading on slowly, I got the picture. From his observatory, the Pastor has noticed that the ship of state is SINKING in the middle of the ocean.
Reader let no serious Ghanaian joke at all: this is a very grave warning, and in the security circles one would describe it as a ?Call to arms? because danger is looming.
But let us detach ourselves from polemics, and take a very dispassionate look at the evidence on the ground: is it really true that the ship of state, MV GHANA is sinking?
What indicesshould we use to show that we are afloat or that in actual fact we are SINKING?
On the surface, all seem normal ? the President and his Ministers are all over the place. His DCEs and Regional Ministers are all at post.
Parliament is in session, Judges are at work, soldiers are in barracks, training the police are on patrols, Nananom sit in their palanquins celebrating Homowo, Asafotufian, Hogbetsotso and Aboakyer festivals??? so why do you say we are SINKING?
That in my view is the problem. Our elders say that still waters run deep. Empty barrels make the most noise. Cow dung looks dry on the surface but full of mess beneath.
Our surface thing look normal but underneath there is TOTAL decay, and that is what gives cause for concern.
On the eve of NPP handing over to NDC, in 2007, the cedi was I dollar to I Ghana cedi. All lecturers, doctors, nurses, students were at post. Ghanaians abroad were bringing heavy doses of money home for all manner of projects. Investors were knocking at our doors and the banks were chasing customers to give them loans for business.
MV Ghana was sailing, smoothly.
Then the captaincy changed, and new handlers took over the helm of affairs.
First of all the old man himself was not physically fit so he spent his quality time keeping himself alive while relying on technocrats and aides majority of whom were more interested in fattening? their pockets rather than keeping the ship of state on course.
Cracks began to occur, and leakages started developing. A cursory glance at the ground will show that truly all is not well at all.
I have said it several times before and I keep saying it ad nauseam that there are three ways of making money to spend: whether at the personal level, company level, group level or national level ? and these are GIFTS, or DONATIONS or GRANTS; then LOANS or OVERDRAFTS or BORROWING and finally INTERNALLY GENERATED FUNDS or self-reliance.
Reader, you CANNOT conduct your life on the basis of GIFTS or grants or DONATIONS. Nobody will give you ENOUGH gifts to build your life. Forget it.
And, NOBODY has an obligation to help you, so when you go for LOANS, it comes with STRINGENT CONDITIONS, regardless of your desperate situation. Don?t be happy going round borrowing, because it is the future of your children that you are mortgaging through reckless borrowing.
The only solid sustainable way of raising money to organise your life to build your company or your association is through SELF-HELP, through INTERNALLY GENERATED funds.
Who told you that Ghana is a POOR country? A nation of 25 million souls how many of us pay TAXES? All those customs duties, imports levies, export taxes, all those market tolls, toll on the roads, DVLA licences and so on????..WHERE ARE THEY?
The first signal that the ship of state was having a problem was when Government announced that they cannot continue to do what all Governments since President Nkrumah have been doing ? paying allowances to nursing students and teacher training college students. Immediately this was cancelled, I said trouble is looming.
Go to the Ministries, and you will be told that budgetary allocations for running the Ministries have not come. The other day we invited a Minister to a programme and we were told that we had to pay the cost of petrol and also accommodate the Minister because the Residency had no money to host the Minister!!!!!
The common fund is in arrears for almost a year and staff salaries in several months arrears. Statutory payments are not being made, because the internally generated fund is at its lowest ebb, traceable to MASSIVE CORRUPTION going on in the system, UNCHECKED, UNBRIDLED !!!!
As one Supreme Court Justice noted recently, it appears that now the norm is to CREATE, LOOT AND SHARE, and so the kitty is literally EMPTY. There is no fuel to keep the ship of state on? the waters.
The negative reality then is to go to the snake and borrow, IMF, with all its very harsh conditions, and other countries, like China and Malaysia and you think they love you so they are coming to help you? They are coming with only ONE aim, to MAKE PROFIT at your expense!!!!!
Reader, the situation is very serious.
Right now, Polytechnic teachers have been on strike for so long that one full academic year looks frustrated, can you count the cost? It is colossal.
University teachers have joined the fray, and reader, it is terrible. Amidst this chaos, creditors have no money at all, so we have to pay interest on loans that have accrued and certain basic costs. As it all this is not enough, the looting continues ? believe it or not, 600 million dollars disappears from the vault of Central Bank, and no arrests, no prosecutions ? it is business as usual.
So many local businesses have collapsed and are collapsing by the day, many workers go unpaid by their companies because there is no money, and those thieves raping the economy change the cedis into dollars and send them out to buy property in London and New York. They won?t even spend it here for the crumbs to fall on us.
Reader, the situation is not just critical, it is HORRENDOUS. Is it any wonder then that a whole Police Inspector will be caught stealing electricity cables?
What then do we do? We cannot afford to allow the ship of state to sink. We cannot afford to live anywhere else. Even our neighbours are all francophone, so we cannot migrate there to live.
We have to fix the problem and save the nation.
The very first problem is that President John Mahama must sit up if he is sleeping. He must know that he is being described as the WORST Leader Ghana has ever had, and that is not good at all.
He should check his Ministers. He should put his foot down. He should wipe out corruption or at least control it heavily.
Unfortunately for him he is relatively young, so if he fails as President, he will live for over 20 years as Ex-President or former President, in disgrace and obscurity.
So, Mr President, SIT UP. You are the Captain of the ship. Let all your Ministers know that when you hear of corruption you will sack the person and deal with him.
If you do that, it will descend downstairs, right to the market toll collector ? and, overnight, cash will flow into the Consolidated Fund, and with prudent management, things will turn around.
The next step is to look INWARDS for solutions, not outside. Let us live within our means. Excess government spending is the bane of our economy. If there is no money, that is the truth. Small country like Ghana, with almost ONE HUNDRED Ministers!!!!
How come? And the number of Districts, and DCEs!!!!! Pastor MensahOtabil was very right: the ship of state is SINKING. NPP left office with 4 months international reserves. I hear it is now as low as to two weeks and it might even be less than that. When the year began, it was 2 cedis to the dollar. In mid-August it is inching to 4 cedis to the dollar.
President Mahama, are you reading me?
