Evaluating the Executive Arm of Government in 65 years

These first nine years of Ghana’s Independence was perhaps the biggest blessing for our people. We had the goodwill of many nations, East and West, and our students were granted thousands of opportunities for our brilliant students to learn and be trained overseas.

The main reason for this blessing and success, it seems, was the leadership of a man who seemed to have had deep spiritual love for his nation. Nkrumah sacrificed to the end, despite 4-5 assassination attempts on his life in just 9 years till Feb.1966.

All humans grow up in a culture and traditions. Growing up in Secondary School between 1960 and 1966 the Daily Graphic was our main paper for reading and learning about Ghana and the world. They would publish summaries of the district and regional crimes, prosecutions, and imprisonment for various crimes and corruption.

That taught us as children that there were laws in society and we all had to comport and respect laws and other people's rights. At the same time, public corporations would publish Quarterly and Annual Financial Statements or Reports.

These were our first exposure to the white man’s modern laws and modern accounting systems and accountability to stakeholders.
There was a culture we could have built upon, as big words like “malfeasance”, “misappropriation of funds” and “evidence in court”, were strange words to 12-18-year-olds.

Some good traditions of the earlier government to cite were:

1. Planning

2. Massive unprecedented infrastructure development of roads, highways, schools, hospitals and clinics, electricity and pipe borne water to cities and remote areas of Ghana.

Some of these places like Abetifi, and Kwahu lasted from 1958 to 2004. However simply broken motors were never replaced by succeeding Governments, while Town and District Councils broke down and seem today to exist only in name.

3. Legal enforcement and Prosecution of crimes. Let's out the Courts to work for us.

4. Public disclosure and accountability of state or public assets. Let’s learn to account for the taxpayers' money.

Ghana was still new under the first administration. The one deficiency in the system in 1957-66 was the lack of enough trained Professionals, technicians, and executives to manage Ghana under Nkrumah and beyond.

This is called in Leadership literature “Executive Succession Planning”.

Let us remember Nkrumah was relatively speaking a young man without any Executive experience of his own, just like most of his supporters or critics.

The WAY FORWARD for Ghana is to revise the rules and laws of DISCIPLINE and change our national work culture. We do this by demanding:

1. Public accountability by all Ministries, Government agencies, and MMDCEs.

2. Performance evaluation of all public workers, and

3. Termination of non-performers!

This is how modern organizations PLAN and EXECUTE for SUCCESS!!