Fighting Corruption With A Dining Hall Prefect?

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
April 25, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

As of this writing, President John Dramani Mahama was being widely reported by the Ghanaian media to be warning that he could not fight corruption all by himself, and that he literally needed all hands on deck. The problem here is that scarcely a couple of weeks ago, one of the President's own deputy ministerial appointees, Mr. Murtala Mohammed, clearly indicated in an unrehearsed talk-radio tirade that the last item on Mr. Mahama's agenda was fighting corruption. Mr. Mohammed, a National Democratic Congress' Member of Parliament for Nantong, in the Northern Region, vehemently insisted that nearly all of his ideological fellow truckers in the vanguard ranks of the NDC attained their comfortable economic fortunes and status via the unconscionable acquisition of "filthy money." Of course, the reader is entitled to put her/his own spin on the meaning of the above-quoted phrase.

The fact of the matter is that President Mahama cannot presume to successfully fight corruption when he deliberately, consistently and unwisely fields emotionally immature and administratively incompetent people like Mr. Mohammed in his cabinet. And the latter, of course, inescapably reflects the caliber of man making these scandalous appointments himself. Among the Akan-speaking people, the adage runs that "A crab does not beget a bird." And so I was not the least bit flabbergasted, when last week one of my esteemed colleagues and one whom I consider to be an elder brother, Mr. Charles Owusu, called and jokingly informed me that he had a pressing media assignment for me.

The assignment, my good friend and brother went on, had to do with a Deputy Minister-Designate who had appeared before Ghana's Parliamentary Appointments Committee weirdly claiming, when he was asked to state and explain his work experience, that he had served as a Dining Hall Prefect while he was in secondary/high school. The nominee, Mr. Kwabena Mintah-Akandoh, who is also the Juaboso National Democratic Congress' Member of Parliament, claimed that his service as a Member of his college's Students' Representative Council (SRC), in addition to his high school Dining Hall Prefect's position, more than adequately qualified him to serve as Deputy Minister for Natural Resources in the Mahama cabinet. And, by the way, Juaboso is in the Western Region of Ghana.

The bigger scandal here, though, at least as I envisage the same, has to do with the man who serves as Chairman of the Parliamentary Appointments Committee. He is Mr. Ebo Barton-Odro, the widely discredited Atta-Mills homeboy who was appointed Deputy Attorney-General and Minister of Justice under President John Evans Atta-Mills, late, and was one of the chief architects of the C 51 million Woyome Scandal. And on the latter score, we hasten to add that back then, the now-President Mahama was Dr. Atta-Mills' arch-lieutenant or vice-president. And so now you know the caliber of people the former Rawlings Communications Minister prefers to fight his so-called War-on-Corruption with.

It is also quite certain that Mr. Mintah-Akandoh would smoothly sail through the parliamentary vetting charade and be named Deputy Minister of Natural Resources. We know this because instead of roundly rejecting the appointment of Mr. Mintah-Akandoh and asking President Mahama to send forth a better qualified and more experienced candidate, Mr. Barton-Odro merely asked the Deputy Minister-Designate to clean up his vitae, that is simply delete his risible work experience excuses and quickly resume his post at the aforementioned ministry.

I couldn't stop wondering whether my 7-year-old son, Papa Yaw Sintim-Aboagye, a second grader, who was recently appointed Closet Helper - or supplies manager for his class - having also served as Attendance Helper and Table Captain, by his hard-driving Italian-American teacher, had not acquired adequate work experience to qualify him to serve as President Mahama's Chief-of-Staff.

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