The Hazards of 2014 - Any Lessons for?Mahama and Country?

The year 2014 was one of the most horrendous in Ghana's history. It was a year packed with surprises, misfortunes, diseases, disappointments and irresponsible governance.? Lack of total control of situations by the government, misrule, corruption and empty promises opened the floodgates of severe and unbearable hardships for Ghanaians in 2014. That year recorded more rape cases, murder, suicide, armed robbery and severe environmental destruction due to illegal mining, than perhaps any other year. 2014?recorded the highest level of graduate?unemployment and mass failures in Senior High School Certificate examinations.

Mahama, in one of his speeches, confessed that Ghana will learn a great lesson from the Nayele cocaine scandal which is presently hanging disgracefully on the heads of the airport authorities like the sword of Damocles and is also threatening to brand Ghana as a gateway for cocaine smugglers. Typical of Mahama, in a well-rehearsed promise, he assured Ghanaians that he would tackle the weaknesses in the airport security system and ensure that shameful scandals do not happen again. Dear reader, will you believe him? A similar promise was made during Kufuor's regime, when the Nkoranza MP was arrested at the JFK airport for smuggling cocaine from Ghana. It was purely an empty promise. The drug smuggling continued unabated which finally culminated in the major cocaine arrest of all time in 2014. He made this promise a week after the arrest of a Ghanaian lady who allegedly held both Austrian passport and Ghanaian diplomatic passports was arrested at London Heathrow Airport for attempting to enter the airport with a 12.5kg weight of cocaine. Nayele Ametefe who also goes by the name Ruby Adu-Gyamfi and several other names, together with three accomplices breached airport security by allegedly passing through the VVIP section of the airport to board the British Airways flight. This cocaine smuggling issue stands out as the worst and most shameful scandal ever to happen in 2014.

2014 was also a year in which Ghana's participation in the World cup became a total shame and a fiasco. It was a sad year for the Black Stars. Several issues damaged the pride of our dear country, Ghana. What contributed to this shame was the weakness of the coach and his inability to control the players who were openly rude. Ghana's image was seriously damaged when a whooping amount of three million dollars (3.0m) was airlifted to Brazil to pay the Black Star players and the accompanying staff. The corruption that went on during the payment process cost the Minister of Sports his job. It is the view and opinion of many Ghanaians that airlifting such an amount to Brazil was not the best way to respond to the threat of the Black Stars to boycott the group game with Portugal. When the money was finally distributed to them, the players were then confronted with the problem of how to guarantee the safety of their monies in their hotel rooms. It was even alleged that some of the players had their monies either in their socks or in their pants while playing against Portugal. Their concentration was more on the money than the match. No doubt they lost to Portugal since their concentration was not total. A good win in that game would have seen them into the next round given that Germany beat USA at the same time. As it is, they came last in the group with a single point – a far cry from the sterling performance four years earlier! 2014 will go down in history as Ghana's year of shame at the 2014 World Cup. ? ? ? President Mahama still carries the shame and pain shrouded in his thoughtless decision to airlift the money to Brazil when he openly declared in an interview with Al Jazeera that since the decision he took turned out to become a problem, he will never take such a step again as long as he remains president because he took a faux-pas which regrettably has marred Ghana's image not only in football but in the world at large. In his New Year address, the President said he would never give promises again. It is good he has realized that empty promises do not put food on anyone's table. The work he will do to effect change and development in Ghana will determine whether Ghanaians will forgive his empty promises. ? ? ? One issue that was a bother for Ghanaians in 2014 was the number of foreign trips undertaken by the president. According to Hon. Matthew Opoku, MP for Manhyia, Mahama has broken the record of presidential travels. He criticized what he described as wasteful foreign travels by the President On every travel, huge per diems are allotted to himself and his massive entourage. At the close of 2014, President Mahama was virtually out of the country every week, while Ghanaians languished in abject poverty. His numerous trips took him to several countries including the United States of America, United Kingdom, Turkey, China, Dubai, Japan, Germany and a host of African countries. All these expensive travels that yielded little or nothing were made at the expense of the tax payer. Matthew Opoku advised president Mahama to cut down foreign travels in the years ahead of him and work more in Ghana to put his government on a good and credible footing. Whether President Mahama will be able to cut down his foreign trips and work more at home lies within the womb of time.

The Woyome saga will go down in history as one of the worst scandals in 2014. The Woyome saga among others exposed the real Mahama on two levels: The court sat on the case in which Woyome (was) wrongfully appropriated a whooping amount of fifty million Ghana cedis. The court unanimously agreed and concluded that Mahama and his government must ensure that Woyome pays back the amount immediately to the government’s chest. The President’s inability or deliberate refusal to compel Woyome to refund the money, betrays Mahama as either a weak leader suffering from indecision or as an accomplice in the deal and therefore blaming Woyome alone and demanding a total refund from him will compel Woyome to spill the skeletons in the cupboard. Therefore Mahama feels the right thing to do is to remain silent on the issue. How tragic and shameful! Did the court rule that Mahama should ask Woyome to refund the money? So the President is the one to collect the money?

The amount of money that has been thrown away or wasted on failed projects is unpararelled in Ghana’s history. The failed projects that come immediately to mind are the SADA, GYEEDA and SUBAH projects. Many pressure groups including the Progressive Nationalist Forum (PNF), called for the impeachment of President (John Dramani) Mahama over the corrupt scandal involving SADA (GHC45million), GYEEDA (GHC200million), SUBAH (GHC144million) and ISOFOTON ($300,000). The PNF confirmed again that Ghana lost five billion cedis through corrupt practices in the year 2014. That financial waste dealt a major blow to Ghana’s economy. Mahama indeed is the worst thing that happened to Ghana in terms of fighting high level and institutional corruption.

There was a major outbreak of cholera in 2014 which claimed many deaths, especially in Accra. This unfortunate situation could be prevented if our environment was kept clean. Zoomlion refused to collect the garbage because the government had not paid them for more than a year. Happily the Ebola disease could not enter Ghana and 2014 closed the curtain with a clean sheet of no outbreak in Ghana.

It is the hope of many Ghanaians that Mahama will wake up from his deep slumber of inaction and rise up to fight corruption and relegate it to the abyss of forgetfulness. The Ministry of Power must prove its worth and existence by bringing dumso dumso to a total halt in 2015.

Written by Stephen Atta Owusu

Author:Dark Faces at Crossroads

Email: [email protected]