Long before 201,6 many Ghanaians believed the eloquence of Akufo-Addo and his utterances presented him as a credible candidate for the Jubilee House who could do better than the predecessors he attacked and undermined to get there. Little did we know that we were actually buying a black pot that was calling itself a kettle. We have married a ‘womaniser’ who deceived us that he was a faithful man without knowing it and now we are enduring a bitter marriage that has collapsed beyond reunion.
Prior to the 2016 elections, Akufo-Addo promised Ghanaians unprecedented prosperity because he claimed we were sitting on cash while going hungry. He was over the moon trumpeting his apostolic desire to end corruption in Ghana, protect the public purse and avoid family and friends government among other promises. Ghanaians fell for his hoodwinking and brought him to power. Immediately after assuming power we began to see the opposite of the promises not revealed to us.
The man who pledged not to form a family and friends government rather put together a huge government size, half of which are members of his close family. They are carefully selected and placed at sensitive and lucrative sectors where he opened the public purse for them to scramble for our state resources. Ken Ofori Atta was placed in charge of the Ministry of Finance, where he spread his tentacles to capture the financial sector with his family and friends. Kwasi Amoako Atta was put in the Ministry of Roads and Highways. For the Jubilee House, the President wove what can best be described as a spider web where the spider laid multiple eggs and hatched them into it. They are now wallowing in the bloated budgets annually stashed into their accounts for enjoyment.
To ensure total scavenging on the national cake, the President’s daughters were dipping all their 30 fingers into anything available everywhere in the jamboree. They were reported to be the ones behind the hurriedly formed Movenpina Oil Company that bought part of the 5 million litres of deliberately contaminated fuel from BOST. Recently, speculations emerged that they formed another company called Sister’s Keepers which managed to infiltrate GCB Bank and swallowed GHc2.2 million of our money from the bank.
The President who vowed to fight corruption became the chief patron of corruption, constantly clearing corrupt appointees who cooked dirty deals like the PDS, BOST, premix fuel, cash for seat and Agyapa Minerals Royalties for family consumption. The shameful discovery of fraud in the PDS and Agyapa deals showed how deep the Presidency is involved in arranging sweetheart deals to enrich members of his inner circle, the ‘sakawa mafia’.
There has never been a single scandal in Akufo-Addo’s administration that he allows full scale investigations without his personal intervention. The Auditor-General has had to go home because he was exposing another family food, the needless payment of $1million to Kroll and Associates by his traditional “Prime Minister” Yaw Osafo Maafo.
Now the money on which we were sitting while going hungry has been discovered and given to only a few to enjoy. The rest of Ghanaians cannot even sit on anything let alone think of enjoying now. This is the prosperity we voted for!
By Joe Baiden