Ghana Inc. Confusions and Delusions in High Places
Posted by By Akogun Akomolafe at 13 July, at 01 : 31 AM Print
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May his soul rest in peace.
His Motto: “One must strive for perfection until one realises you must strive infinitely.”]
RIP Hanshi Hassan Delimi
“If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.” – Carter G. Woodson
“If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his action. … If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.” – Carter G. Woodson
It is impossible not to come to the conclusion that the Western world has succeeded in their project which is to guarantee that we in Africa with remain in perpetual servitude. They have us squarely where they want us: as hewers of wood and drawers of water. They successfully established the institutions that will ensure that we shall remain their neo-colonial subjects, long after their ostensible departure. Their success is crowned when we not only inherit the colonial structures, but continue to celebrate the inherited edifices that are clearly failing us.
We dance for joy when every four years we elect reprobate misrulers whose allegiance is to their masters\sponsors in the West. We jump for joy when politicians who do not care a hoot about our welfare take office. We are happy and contented when MPs who do little but ratify loan agreements are sworn and award themselves fantastic allowances. Oh, sorry, our sso-called honourables have recently found a new vocation: they drag citizens whose comments they disagreed with before their committee.
Meanwhile, we go through life like demented zombies. We live the totally unexamined lives. It never occurred to us to question the abysmal condition in which we continue to live almost sixty years after we start to govern ourselves. It never entered our brains to ask why we gave the world gold, diamond, bauxite, time and other precious, yet we don’t have money to give ourselves potable water. We laugh and joke and consider it normal that we lack enough electricity to light our homes, and power the few disarticulate industries in the land. We live just three degree shy of the equator and yet we sleep in darkness. We live in rat-infested and mosquitoes-overwhelmed ghettoes and think nothing of rolling out bid drums in celebration.
It is more than sad.
In “Our officials as agent of neo-colonialism,” www.alaye.biz/our-officials-as-agents-of-neo-colonialism/ we lamented: “It is difficult not to think that our elite in Africa are in cahoots with our slavemasters to keep us in perpetual servitude.
I have often lamented the attitude of our paid officials who behave more and more like agents of the neo-colonial forces bent on ruining our lives in Africa.
Let us take the case of the mobile telecommunication sector as an example. I do not know in which other part of the world the reprobate multinational organizations operating in the telecommunication sector in Ghana, would be allowed to get away with all the shenanigans in which they are engaged in our dear country.
Instead of investing in state-of-the-art modern technologies to give us quality services, these companies will ‘invest’ in the most obsolete equipment.
They give us the shoddiest services at the highest rates possible, and laugh all the way to their banks.
They will then invest some of the ill-gotten (totally undeserved windfall) in organizing lotteries, raffles and other razzmatazz to bedazzle us.
They are forever sponsoring this or that jamboree in other to make themselves look good. And many of us are too stupid to realize the con-game the tricksters play on us.
We are too stupid to realize that we are paying for all the bull…. they are dishing out in the name of ‘good corporate citizen sponsorship.’
We have men and women, who ought to know better, dancing silly to the pantomime of these Telcos just because they have receive some envelopes or air-time.
The Telecomm companies were not license to play Father Christmas. They did not come into Ghana to give away cars, televisions, phones or whatever through their useless jamborees.
They got their licenses to deliver telecommunication services to us. No more and no less.
Why do some among us believe the nonsense the Telecomm companies spew out through their marketing departments?”
But then it is difficult to blame governments and foreign companies that took us for fools. Didn’t our elders say that goods are priced the way they are displayed. Do we not deserve the rot we get when we won’t let the elite know that we are fed up with the abject poverty in which we live?
We cannot tell ourselves the lie that the elite don’t know that we live in sub-human conditions. And we can no longer pretend that it is not the policies of these elite that confine us in our sub-human conditions. Ask yourself why the elite send their children to schools abroad, or why they fly abroad at the onset of a headache. Ask why they purchase standby generators and have water tanks in their homes. They know that these are life’s basics, and they make sure that they get all these comforts for themselves. Our religious elite are not left behind. The pastors are not prepared to die before they enjoy earthly luxuries.
So, comrade, the elite know that we are idiots who don’t care enough about our situation to raise voices to protest. As one of them bluntly told me: “Femi, we read all that you write, but since there are so few of you, we can choose to ignore you.
Gladly, we are not the only one that know the cheating game being perpetrated on us. For those that missed it, here is what an ex-British diplomat said about why have dumsor dumsor.
Read and remember to shed a few tears for Mother Ghana. A big Shoutout to Mr. Craig Murray.
“Just ten years ago, Ghana had the most reliable electricity supply in all of Africa and the highest percentage of households connected to the grid in all of Africa – including South Africa. The Volta River Authority, the power producer and distributor was, in my very considerable experience, the best run and most efficient public utility in all of Africa. Indeed it was truly world class, and Ghana was proud of it.
Obviously the sight of truly successful public owned and run enterprise was too much of a threat to the neo-liberal ideologues of the IMF and World Bank. When Ghana needed some temporary financial assistance (against a generally healthy background) the IMF insisted that VRA be broken up. Right wing neoliberal dogma was applied to the Ghanaian electricity market. Electricity was separated between production and distribution, and private sector Independent Power Producers introduced.
The result is disaster. There are more power cuts in Ghana than ever in its entire history as an independent state. Today Ghana is actually, at this moment, producing just 900 MW of electricity – half what it could produce ten years ago. This is not the fault of the NDC or the NPP. It is the fault of the IMF.
Those private sector Independent Power Producers actually provide less than 20% of electricity generation into the grid – yet scoop up over 60% of the revenues! The electricity bills of Ghana’s people go to provide profits to fat cat foreign corporations and of course the western banks who finance them.
Indeed in thirty years close experience the net result of all IMF activity in Africa is to channel economic resources to westerners – and not to ordinary western people, but to the wealthiest corporations and especially to western bankers.
Not content with the devastation they have already caused, the IMF and the USA are now insisting on the privatisation of ECG, the state utility body which provides electricity to the consumer and bills them. The rationale is that a privatised ECG will be more efficient and ruthless in collecting revenue from the poor and from hospitals, clinics, schools and other state institutions.
Doubtless it will be. It will of course be more efficient in channelling still more profits to very rich businessmen and bankers. I suspect that is the real point. That privatised utilities bring better service and cheaper prices to the consumer has been conclusively and forever disproven in the UK. What it does bring is huge profits to the rich and misery to the poor. To unleash this on Ghana is acutely morally reprehensible.
Ghana has a political culture in which the two main parties, NDC and NPP, heatedly blame each other for their country’s problems. But if they only can see it, in truth the electricity sector has been ruined by their common enemy – the IMF and World Bank. I pray that one day the country will escape the grip of these bloodsucking institutions.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/06/imf-and-usa-set-to-ruin-ghana/
About the Author
Femi Akomolafe is a passionate Pan-Africanist. A columnist for the Accra-based Daily Dispatch newspaper and Correspondent for the New African magazine. Femi lives in both Europe and Africa, and writes regularly on Africa-related issues for various newspapers and magazines.
Femi was the producer of the FOCUS ON AFRICANS TV Interview programme for the MultiTV Station.
He is also the CEO of Alaye Dot Biz Limited Dot Biz, a Kasoa-based Multimedia organisation that specialises in Audio and Video Production. He loves to shoot and edit video documentaries.
His highly-acclaimed books (“Africa: Destroyed by the gods,” “Africa: It shall be well,” “18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories” and “Ghana: Basic Facts + More”) are now available for sales at the following bookshops/offices:
- Freedom Bookshop, near Apollo Theatre, Accra.
- The Daily Dispatch Office, Labone – Accra
- WEB Dubois Pan-African Centre, Accra
- Ghana Writers Association office, PAWA House, Roman Ridge, Accra.
- African Kitchen in Amsterdam Bijlmer
Where to buy them online:
On Lulu Books:
18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories https://goo.gl/Skohtn
Ghana: Basic Facts + More: https://goo.gl/73ni99
Africa: Destroyed by the gods: https://goo.gl/HHmFfr
Africa: It shall be well: https://goo.gl/KIMcIm
Africa: it shall be well
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Africa: Destroyed by the gods
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on Lulu Books: http://goo.gl/KIMcIm
My Lulu Books page: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/FemiAkomolafe
Get free promotional materials here:
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A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: It shall be well’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-it-shall-be-well-a-free-chapter/
- Africa: Destroyed by the gods (How religiosity destroyed Africa) http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-introduction/
A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: Destroyed by the gods’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-free-chapter/
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Comradely,
Femi Akomolafe
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