The Avoidable Debate

Tuesday 30^th October 2012 was another landmark in the development of our democratic process. On this day, in the northern regional capital, Tamale, the sitting president squared off with three other ‘perspirants’ for the right to occupy his seat for the next governing cycle in the IEA Presidential Debate (I). Millions of Ghanaians had the chance to assess the candidates as they were pressed to take off the propaganda veil from the beautiful manifestos.

The alumni of University of Cape Coast (UCC)  must have been proud on the day that the presidential debate was moderated by two of their own, Professor Naana Opoku Agyemang, a former Vice chancellor of the university, and Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the host of Joy FM’s flagship super Morning Show. The Prof wielded the big stick to whip organizers, candidates and   sometimes unruly audience into line, and Kojo brought his experience interviewing subject experts on radio to bear on the discussion with great follow-ups. It doesn’t look like the UCC is exploiting the marketing value of the occasion as there is no mention of the event and the role played by their alumni on their website seventy-two hours after the debate.

Beauty they say lies in the eyes of the beholder, but I also discovered that a debate lies in the colour of the party flag. It is easier to convince a London health inspector that grass cutter meat has nothing to do with rats than to get party people to accept that their candidates didn’t fare well in the debate. The only un-contested outcome of the debate is the abysmal performance of the PNC candidate, Hassan Ayariga. In fact, some party people have sought to ridicule candidates of rival parties by placing them squarely in the Ayariga bracket.

 I do not believe there can be any impartial ranking of candidates’ performance by sampling views from Ghanaians. Many minds have simply been made up, their candidates won before the debate began. Ironically, the only winners in this debate are the small minority of Ghanaians who approached the debate with no winner preconceived. Even among this group, there cannot be unanimity on who won the debate, because different people seek different outcomes in such contest.

For me, it is lamentable that the candidates for such high office do not accord facts and figures, their proper place in such an exercise. This failure makes the debate “avoidable” (apologies to Hassan Ayariga)

Not surprisingly, President Mahama was the best candidate in the numbers department. He provided solid numbers in answering questions on debt financing, education, and the economy. It is a peck of incumbency that he would have access to all the nation’s numbers, but he still had to put them together to make his points. However, the mess with how much it costs us to train doctors in Cuba is yet to be resolved conclusively. But that is the great thing about putting the facts out in figures- we can always interrogate your ideas and hold you to account. The President also failed to give projections when he stated how much they will invest in agriculture. The investment is only justified by the outcome, and it is only proper to give us the expectations underpinning the investment. Again in the area of Agriculture, he seemed to have misunderstood what percentages represent. He attempted to justify the fallen growth rate in agriculture by providing nominal figures that didn’t help us to appreciate the decline, a fact that was pointed out by Dr Sakara. In any case, the President told us not to get worried about the decline, because it is a fishy matter. Perhaps we will adjust by switching from fish to bush meat but unfortunately the other negative contributor he mentioned is forestry, which may suggest that we may have problems with bush meat. , Blaming God for the energy crisis rather than poor strategic planning took some shine out of the eloquence with which he delivered the work in progress to fix the problem.   

My biggest problem with the NDC campaign strategy is that they spent too much time scrutinizing NPP’s free SHS promise that they forgot to market their own message. The message that free SHS is impossible is louder than any message they have put out. So great was his focus on free SHS that president Mahama at a point in the debate confessed that he believed in free SHS, while debunking its usefulness.

 The NPP’s Nana Akuffo Addo made perhaps the most audacious promises, but he must pay a little more attention to the numbers. On BBC Hard Talk program, he would not mention the number underpinning the free SHS promise because it was an epiphany whose glory can only manifest in Ghana to Ghanaians. Since then he has failed to make the numerical revelation glow as bright as the eloquence with which the promise is delivered. At the debate, he claimed the money for the program will gash out of the oil fields in the western region of Ghana. I’m beginning to suspect that Nana was a reluctant student who was dragged to the Math class kicking and cursing, but that would be quite strange for a graduate of economics. What is even more curious is why an astute lawyer of his caliber will place such low premium on referencing. When the President questioned the source of some of his figures, he said they were caught in the global web called the internet. He failed to tell us the source of his unemployment data that suggested that one –sixth of unemployed people have stopped looking for jobs. With the right figures and proper sources, he would have made the debate between him and Mahama on NHIS and Cuba funding for doctors more exciting. On a couple of occasions he wandered away from the questions seeking solace in the failure story of the NDC government. 

To many neutrals, Dr. Abu Sakara won the debate, but he has seen enough spectacular failures of his beloved CPP at the polls to understand that at these debates, he must far out-perform his brilliant viva voce that earned him his PhD  if he will make any impact in this year’s election. He was forceful with his ideas and particularly brilliant on agriculture, but on the other hand, he sounded naïve. He has so far proven that he is a fine academic with great theories about the social contract that lack practical foundation.  He blamed the frequent changes in democratic governments for slowing down the pace of our development, and attributed Malaysia’s success story to continuity in government. For that reason he wants the NDPC entrenched in our constitution to ensure continuity. He seemed to have forgotten that around the period of Malaysia’s development, Ghana also had one government for almost twenty years but it didn’t reflect in our development. He almost swore that Ghana needed free education but here again, the numbers were missing and the sources of finance taken for granted. He is not a fan of the maxim, “private sector is the engine of growth”, and seemed ready to rebuild state enterprises all over again but said little to convince anybody that they will work this time round. He eloquently expressed what we should have done with regards to energy in the past years, but here again, the figures were locked out of the debate.  I would have been impressed with some background research that would explain why we failed, and some ingenious plans to energize our energy supply and distribution system and more importantly how much is required. Such detail will make him a more credible candidate, especially because there is a suspicion that small parties like his, lack the expertise and people to run the country.   If Mahama or Nana wins, Dr Sakara will be a great addition to their cabinet with responsibility for agriculture. That will also fill the practical gap for Sakara for the future.

If Hassan Ayariga intended to make a case for the youth in our politics, he failed woefully. When it was pointed out to him that he performed terribly at the earlier presidential encounter, he reserved a few choice words for the critics and awarded himself 85 %. I hope the mega flop  in Tamale has now convinced him he is not yet ready to be president of Ghana. He simply hasn’t got it, at least not yet. If he still insists that he is good enough, then the problem is bigger than I thought. He has a part to play in Ghana’s development, but not as the president, that would be “avoidable”. At least we know he hates free education with a passion, even though that is not what his party stands for. I am still at a loss why the PNC replaced Dr Edward  Mahama with Hassan Ayariga. Change for the sake of it?

On numbers and facts, my personal ratings are as follows:

President Mahama:        B

Nana Akuffo Addo:         B-

Dr Abu Sakara:              B-

Hassan Ayariga:             NG (Not gradable because he didn't turn up)

These grades don’t flatter our efforts to join the true middle income economies, but it will not matter too much.  The Ghanaian president is like a parent who cannot fulfill a grandiose promise to his son, so he goes to the neighbor for support. Just take note anytime some ambassadors from the other worlds visits our presidents. You won’t miss the phrase, “we hope you will continue to support our development…”. To dignify this begging process, we call the neighbors development partners. With these performances, we have put the Japanese ambassador, Chinese ambassador, British high commissioner, India high commissioner (how far will we beg?) and the others on notice. We are not sure how much we need, but with the gargantuan nature of the promises we will soon knock on your door, not cup in hand but basin on head, because these promises, they are big ooo.

PS: The IEA must think of limiting the debate to the two biggest parties in parliament. It will give candidates more time to explain their choices and the moderators more opportunity to draw attention to spurious claims. I don’t think the candidates had to stand for all those hours, they should have the liberty to stand or sit to connect to the audience.

Stinky Accra Sports Stadium, the Proverbial Gyan and the Ghanaian Flavor

WASS   ‘ayↄↄↄ’ was the usual refrain from colleagues when one questioned the absurdities of the conditions in West Africa Secondary School (WASS) in the mid-eighties. In pigeon English, the expression translates ‘WASS we dey’  to wit, this is the WASS way. Until 1988 when it was relocated to Adenta, the school was located in Accra New Town. When we enrolled in 1984, the place was good for anything but a school. The disjointed shacks that passed for classrooms had seen better days. The notorious Texaco boys who had in their fold some of the most dreaded armed robbers (some of whom were executed by firing squad ) of the time were not only our closest neighbors but also shared classrooms, dormitories and any of the scarce free space around the school with us.  Our classrooms were their sleeping place and the ware house for their staple- marijuana -which they stored in the broken ceilings. On many occasions, when nature called, they responded right there in the classroom. Because of the latter activity, students and teachers alike will abandon the classroom for days until some of us felt we’d missed our lessons long enough, so we will spread some ash on the excreta and sweep out the abomination in order to get a few teachers back. Thanks to those days at WASS, some of us witnessed ‘action’ beyond what was created in Hollywood.  On a couple of occasions soldiers  we believed were commandos, stormed the place during school hours and played ‘dzulo ke police’ with the Texaco boys. We ran and ducked at the sounds of the guns and enjoyed the cowboy stories when the raid was over.   I have come to realize that it was not just the WASS way, but to a large extent it is the Ghanaian way.  I still can’t explain why parents didn’t put any pressure on the politicians to get the school moved many years before a students’ agitation forced the issue, but if you need convincing, there it is, Ghana  ‘ayↄↄↄ’ – it is the Ghanaian flavor, the politician’s haven, where the applause for mediocrity is so loud nobody can hear the cries of neglect.

When Ghana hosted the African Nations Cup final in 2008, game tickets were sold in advance and tied to seats. Imperfect as the system was in those days, I was one of those who thought it was a great first step and that civilization had arrived. How wrong I was. On my way to watch Ghana vrs Malawi at the Accra sports stadium on the 8^th of September 2012, I heard some sport commentators lamenting the seeming lack of interest from Accra fans as seen from the empty seats in the stadium thirty minutes to kickoff. Ironically, when I got to the stadium less than fifteen minutes to kickoff, there were hundreds of fans outside the gate looking for tickets to go watch the match. Officially, tickets had run out. A friend of mine managed to get us VIP gate GH₵20 tickets. After paying for what is supposed to be a luxury seat, we watched the entire game standing with many others because there were no empty seats. We ran from the eastern to the western section with the same results-no seats. The VIP tickets sold outnumbered the seats available. Incidentally, the VIP section was the only section in the stadium that didn’t have empty seats. When we finally took our stand to watch the match, we had to endure a nauseating stench from the toilets that stayed with us for the duration of the match. No body warned us that the toilet cleaners had joined the popular single spine strikes, so it must be for shortage of Dettol and other cleaning materials on the market. A couple who were bold enough to bring their less than 6 months old baby to watch the game swapped seats to no avail.  I couldn’t help laughing at the sight of a couple of radio commentators running Twi commentary with mobile phones pressed to their heads as they struggled for space and view. They stretched their sentences to make up for un-sighted actions on the field. The next time you hear an incoherent commentary drowned in the stadium chants, just understand that it is part of the Ghanaian flavor. Perhaps the radio station was not accredited to use the commentary box leaving the commentators to jump over spectators to bring you what they can see. 

Fifty-five years after independence, we make ticketing for a football game look like rocket science. I recall a day in the eighties when a red-eyed rough looking guy walked up to a spectator at the chair-less popular stand of the Accra sports stadium, and insisted that he owned the spot where the latter stood to watch the game, because he always watched his game from that spot. When the spectator refused to give up the spot, he ended up with a cracked skull. It seems we haven’t moved far from such madness. There are those of us who wish that the stadium will be made family friendly so we can comfortably watch games with the whole family. We will love to buy tickets and be assured of our seats before we head to the stadium. We will love to walk through the gates without harassment, get into the seats that we have paid for without contending with matadors and enjoy the whole atmosphere at the stadium. It is not fair that we are estopped from enjoying a stick of kyikyinga (kebab) during recess by the lack of good cleaning program at the toilets. There is no value in messy queues at the gate that enrich pickpockets.  It seems there is greater demand for the sheltered   seats at the VIP stands; can someone stretch the shelter to cover more sections in the stadium? Wishful thinking, Ghana ayↄↄↄ, we’re doing just fine, who cares?

On the match itself, it was difficult to miss the fitness of Asamoah Gyan or the lack of it. The baby jet seems to have lost his speed and sharpness. He tried to conceal his lethargy with needless appeals to the referee for assistance. There were many, especially in England, who could not fathom why a 26 year old talented striker will abandon the highly competitive English premier league for the less glamorous league in the Emirates. But most of those guys do not know what it means to grow up in Africa.   They will never understand that for most Ghanaian talents, your short football career is also your one shot to rescue not just you, but your family from poverty. They know nothing about football age.  Over here, for lack of a meal, many former football greats perish, so when presented with the chance to play in an obscure league in the Middle East for three times  what he was making in the glamorous English premier league, Asa ,as the English love to call him, had a decision to make. He could choose to gamble on his talent to make him both famous and rich in good time, or he could choose to grab the riches immediately and risk getting lost on the radar of world football, and he chose the latter.  It is for good reason that many great players only choose to play at the emirates at the twilight of their careers, but for Gyan, he abandoned the challenge of the great leagues, the dream of conquest, and attempting to upstage the very best in the greatest theaters of the game. He may have made a great economic decision , but it seems the decision is already having a toll on his game. He must find ways of keeping his game at the top in the absence of true competition, or risks becoming a proverb. If he continues to flop like he has done of late playing for the national team, the Sheiks may soon change his status from a footballer to Liaison officer for Africa Affairs, and the next time the Sheiks approach a talented player in a high flying league,  his manager will call on the proverb- remember Asamoah Gyan.

Gyan has had a great career so far in the shirts of Ghana but there is still a lot for him to achieve. Almost a goal every two matches, two world cup appearances, BBC Africa player of the year and an African cup final are enviable achievements. But he is yet to win a cup or the CAF Africa footballer of the year prize. His penalty miss also denied Africa its first semi-final place in the world cup, a record he must be hungry to correct. Soon, an African country will make it to the semifinal and the final, and nobody will remember the nearly men of 2010. Realistically, Asamoah has only one chance to correct this in 2014. But the question is, is he hungry for these and more? Asa could just have told himself , "Onipa beyee bi, na w'ammeye ne nyinaa”  to wit  “Man came to accomplish a part, not the whole” when he embarked on project Middle East. He might have looked at his CV and assured himself, “kitiwa biara nsua”, no achievement is too small. Politicians get applauded for commissioning KVIP in the 21^st century, he has done better than that, “Ghana ayↄↄↄ”. No one can begrudge him for choosing the millions, but Ghana must look for our goals to take as to the next world cup, and it seems we must look beyond Gyan.

The Grave craves our Saints- Fare thee well, President Mills

I have seen a few funerals in my few decades in the land of our birth, but one thing stands out at these solemn occasions- Only good people die in Ghana. Tributes, Biographies, and other narrations eulogize the spirit that once occupied human jacket lying in the casket. But the praises and genuine grief expressed by Ghanaians after the death of the third President of the fourth republic, Professor John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills, I dare say, are unprecedented. This is the man whose performance as a president was hailed daily by his supporters as much as it was berated by his political opponents in his three and half years in office. But the voice of the critics has suddenly fallen with the demise of the man. After his death, even his fiercest critics have something good to say about the man Prof. Mills. The glorious tributes to the fallen President do not suggest that he was infallible, neither are they hints of hypocrisy.  Our tradition has rather bequeathed to us wisdom that has bubbled up to the fore with the departure of the King of Peace in Ghana politics. There is no perfection in man, but there is great goodness in all Men that we can celebrate daily and reap great benefits as a nation. It seems our ancestors didn’t want anything to do with Shakespeare’s line in Julius Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”. No, in Ghana we don’t bury the good with the man, we sing it at his funeral, because that is the meaning of tribute.

For a man I only knew through the scenes and acts of public office, I think President Mills broke the myth that our political space is a preserve of tough-talking firebrands. He has proven that humble men can win the applause of the people without wearing a false cloak of machismo. Many have come to assume that because of our past, one can only win an election by throwing tantrums and making a nuisance of all that is decorous.  He kept the arsenals of vile tongue darts far from his public discourse. He proved that soft power can be used to devastating effect when he ignored all the public insults and disrespect shown him by his former mentor, President Rawlings, and his wife, but crashed the so called invincibility of President Rawlings’s support in an election by handing his wife what is perhaps the most humiliating defeat in Ghana’s political history at the Sunyani congress that elected him as the NDC flag bearer  for  2012  presidential  election.

You can throw anything at President Mills, but you can never describe him as corrupt. Long before Prof’s demise, Kwame Pianim, a member of the opposition NPP, declared that there is no corruption found in him. That is the greatest tribute that can be paid to a leader from this continent where it is common knowledge that most leaders fleece the States they head. He never came across as a property grabbing president; neither did we hear rumours that his wife was stashing away wealth on his behalf. When Nana Konadu’s campaign team accused him of spending ninety million cedis on his campaign to get re-elected in Sunayani, he found it so amusing he couldn’t stop the ‘un-presidential’ laughter which he interspersed with words of disbelief in his native Fanti language. That laughter is one of the media’s favorite sound bites of him.

Of course, Prof was not a man without blemish. For his reputation as Asomdwehene (King of Peace), President Mill’s demeanor didn’t seem to have rubbed-off many of spokes-people as they traded mud with the spokes-people of the opposition NPP. Because there were no open admonitions of his own men, it appeared the young men and women who run riot with verbal diarrhea had the Prof’s tacit support. A few weeks before the Prof’s death, there were false rumours of his demise. In reaction to the rumours he blamed on the opposition NPP, Mr. Okudzeto Ablakwa, a deputy minister of information, was reported to have said, “anytime they say Prof Mills is dead, one of them dies”, in reference to the demise of Mr Owusu Ansah a member of parliament from the NPP side. He denied the departed MP the very courtesies President Mills is being accorded now. When Rawlings boomed several times in the Kuffuor regime using unsavory language, there was little or no effort to distance then candidate Mills from such trash talk. The NDC and the ex-president only found them unpalatable when Rawlings turned his guns on them.  

Perhaps the biggest blot on the Prof’s reputation is the difficult to explain judgment debt payment to business man and NDC party financier, Alfred Agbesi Woyome. Mr. Woyome is currently defending himself in court against accusations of fraud preferred against him by the State after fervent defense of his conduct from people very close to Professor Mills.

But all said and done, Prof was a model politician whose career path many young Ghanaians will love to tread. There is no doubt that he was a good man.  A man you love to love and hate to hate. Prof is gone to live with the fathers in a world where the aftermath of life is no more a mystery. As he yielded to the stroke that conveyed his spirit into the afterlife, he freed himself from all pain and every cancerous cell in his mortal body. He has played his part in the drama of life perfectly acting out his role as the Man John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills.

The grave has consumed another saint. But the greatest tribute we can pay to him is to make our politics cleaner and the insults leaner.  His death has reminded us that we only contest ideas in the political space but not the Men who carry them.  Like us, the conveyers of the ideas we detest are saints the grave is waiting to swallow.

Fare thee Well Mr. President.

The horses and the chariots of Ghana- A Lamentation in memory of President Atta Mills

“Man who is born of woman
Is of few days and full of trouble.
² He comes forth like a flower and fades away;
He flees like a shadow and does not continue"

Job 14: 1-2

The tintinnabulation calls, the students sit for the lecture, but the lecturer’s seat is empty

The castle doors open, the Press is ready to cover the news, but the microphone is silent

The program goes on air, the pundits are ready to debate, but the agenda sheet is empty

Suddenly, the quite is broken by the ominous tune of the sacred  bamboo

The atenteben is giving a message  “….Se ye de brodie ma asasea, asase yi no kain kain kain; se ye de abro ma asasea, asase yi no kain kain kain; na se ye di onipa ma asasea, na asase afa no kora kora kora”

The commander runs to the castle, ‘Chief, Chief where are you ?’

‘My men are ready to defend Ghana.’ ‘ We await your orders’. ‘Where is the commander in chief?’

The only response is the dirge from the atenteben, ‘asase afa no kora, kora kora’

Oh no! The horses and the Chariots of Ghana!

It is the visit we dread yet we know he will come. When I heard the ululations, ‘mewue, mewue’ I knew that my worst fear had overtaken me. Man’s nemesis, death, stretched his icy hand towards our house and what a wreck. He pulled down a great tree and took the shine out of a star. Oh how are the mighty fallen! It cannot be true, President John Evans Atta Mills of Ghana is no more? But alas! It is so.

Our grief is deep, our hearts are broken. There is no pond big enough to contain our tears, nor leaf bitter enough to take away our pain. But  for Prof, there is no more pain, he feels no more hurt. He succumbed to his physical frailties so he takes away their sting.  It is dusk. The argument is finished.

Asomdwehene Professor Mills, who will teach us tax law? Who will the opposition blame for Ghana’s problems? Who will the government communicators hold up as a symbol of integrity? Your final move is unprecedented and no one can challenge this one. As you take the lead to the village, we have been sobered, and it just sunk in, our differences and disagreements aside, we share one attribute- we are all mortals after all.  Hopefully we will debate with respect for each other, speak with humility, and serve with forthrightness, knowing that no one will be spared this journey, it is only a matter of time. We will miss your quips, - the cat hunter, dzi wo fie asem, gargantuan heckling and more.

Suddenly, for you this scripture is real

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:  

 Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. (II Tim 4:7- 8).

Damirifa due! Damirifa due! Damirifa due ne amanehunu!

Adieu good Professor. May your soul find rest with the Lord.