Is Kwakye-Ofosu Qualified to Evaluate Dr. Bawumia?

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The basis on which Deputy Information Minister Felix Kwakye-Ofosu predicates his judgment on the professional competence of Dr. Mahammudu Bawumia is incontrovertibly suspect and decidedly flawed(See "Bawumia Lacks Competence to Advise Gov't on Economy - Kwakye-Ofosu" MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 2/7/14). The fact that Dr. Bawumia was not a Kufuor cabinet appointee does not mean that as a Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, at the time in question, Nana Akufo-Addo's running-mate for elections 2008 and 2012 had not made any positive and/or significant impact on the stability of our monetary currency, the Cedi.

The Deputy Information Minister's rather flippant and cavalier observation that it was rather such face-of-sector cabinet appointees as Messrs. Anthony Akoto-Osei, Yaw Osafo-Maafo and Kwadwo Baah Wiredu, of blessed memory, and former Bank of Ghana Governor Dr. Paul Acquah who effectively ran President Kufuor's economic policy, clearly indicates that Mr. Kwakye-Ofosu abjectly lacks any worthwhile knowledge about the intricate dynamics of governance. Needless to say, the strength and comptence of any cabinet official is as good as the caliber of technocrats from whom regular advice is sought in regard to the effective administration of the cabinet portfolio concerned.

We, of course, know for a fact that it was Dr. Bawumia who headed the Bank of Ghana's team of technocrats who caused the auspicious re-denomination of the Cedi. Can Mr. Kwakye-Ofosu confidently suggest that it was purely on the basis of the Oxbridge-educated Dr. Bawumia's total lack of knowledge about the workings of the Cedi, and the global financial market, in general, on which the decision to name the latter head of the currency re-denomination team was based?

Then also, who told Mr. Kwakye-Ofosu that technocrats at the Bank of Ghana, or any of the other cardinal sectors of government, for that matter, have absolutely no hand in policy-making decisions? For his information, it is the technocrats who actually run the government. Clearly, it is the woeful lack of such understanding among the cabinet appointees of the Mahama government that has put the country into the sort of seemingly intractable economic morass in which the country presently finds itself. Mr. Ofosu-Kwakye is definitely one of the misfit cogs in the extremely slow-moving wheels of the Mahama government that need to be promptly gotten rid of, if Ghana is to make any significant headway in the economic and industrial sectors.

The Deputy Information Minister also poses the wrong question vis-a-vis the Cedi's purported loss of about 30-percent of its value while Dr. Bawumia served as Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana. Rather, what he ought to be looking at is why in spite of the preceding state of the Cedi's precipitous depreciation, as he exuberantly alleged, nonetheless, the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party administration still ran a far better "Better Ghana Agenda" than both Presidents John Evans Atta-Mills, of late, and John Dramani Mahama.

Then also, comparing the relatively far better developed economy of Argentina, which is also undergoing an economic crisis, with that of Ghana is absolutely beside the point. Ghanaians live in West Africa, and not South America. And they have the personal experience and indisputable example of the Kufuor government upon which to base the results of such comparison, regarding whether, indeed, they are better off today than they were between 2001 and 2008.

As well, just because Mr. Kwakye-Ofosu thinks that his paymaster, President Mahama, is working hard to resolve the country's economic crisis, ought not to negate the inalienable democratic and human rights of those frontally suffering such economic blight to bitterly complain about the same. It is also rather peevishly disingenuous for the Deputy Information Minister to suggest that it is, somehow, tabooed to pinpoint the cause of our current economic crisis - the indisputable result of the gross managerial incompetence of the Mahama Gang. That is brazenly presumptuous on the part of Mr. Kwakye-Ofosu!

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Feb. 7, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
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