President Mahama, You Are Not Above Latrine Provision

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
June 23, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

If President Mahama has a speech writer and a communications consultant, either he is not making good use of them or the man is hopelessly incompetent (See "I Am Above Provision Of Toilets; I Handle Big Projects - Mahama" Chronicle / Ghanaweb.com 6/23/15). During a stopover speech at Asante-Bekwai last week, Mr. Mahama is reported to have told a gathering of local chiefs and the Amansie people that he was way above receiving and dealing with requests bordering on the provision of basic amenities like toilets; and that he was a "big thinker" whose primary focus was providing Ghanaians with roads and hospitals. The President therefore urged Bekwai chiefs and community leaders to direct such "petty" concerns to their respective Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) and the CEOs of the various localities.

Well, somebody needs to point out to him that the President and his office, the so-called Presidency, are not above the provision of toilet facilities to Ghanaian citizens scattered across the country, especially at a time that the most common deadly disease facing the nation - and I am deeply embarrassed to say this - is cholera. Maybe the Nkrumah-leaning former NDC-MP for Gonja-West ought to research about what Dr. J. B. Danquah had to say, throughout much of the 1940s, 50s and 60s about the imperative need for the central government to focus a greater part of its development policy on Preventive Medicine, rather than taking such short-sighted and adhoc, or reactionary, measures as Mr. Mahama seems to be hopelessly focused on.

The fact of the matter is that putting up empty hospital and clinic buildings is not going to appreciably improve the level and quality of healthcare in the country, unless foresghted measures are also taken at the same time to raise the standard of environmental and personal hygiene in the country. The provision of adequate modern toilet facilities is integral to raising the levels of both environmental and personal hygiene in the country. Then also, the President needs to be reminded that the greatest problem facing the country presently, in the area of healthcare, is not the building of more hospitals and clinics, but rather the imperative need to upgrading and modernizing the ones that already exist, by providing them with state-of-the-profession equipment and signal resources such as medicines.

Equally significant is the need to providing healthcare workers, and here I don't mean just doctors or physicians, with competitive conditions of service. If he cannot fulfill the two preceding fundamental conditions, then putting up hospital buildings is strikingly akin to pouring water into a wicker basket. It may score him some cheap political points in the short term, but it is unlikely to significantly advance the broader development of the country. Indeed, the correct answer that President Mahama ought to have given the chiefs and people of Asante-Bekwai ought to have been that he intended to confer shortly with his Minister for Local Government, in order to ensure that the provision of toilet facilities was listed among the dry-run of priority projects in that sector of the executive branch of government.

Instead, Mr. Mahama laughably sounded as if he had become permanently constipated such that his body was now effectively and decidedly above Nature's Call. He also waxed inexcusably insensitive to the needs of the people who offered him their electoral mandate. Maybe what Mr. Mahama needs to do, if he really cares about his public image and legacy, is to have the communications division, or directorate, of his presidency videotape every major policy address or speech that he gives for near-future reviewing so as to enable him avoid such epic social and political blunders.

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