I happened to be in a certain town a couple of weeks ago where I spotted some children in school uniform playing under a tree. They were practicing shooting with sticks. I was trying to come to grips with the actions of these children when I overheard each of them mentioning the vigilante group he wants to join in future.
A wave of apprehension pulsated through me, so I approached them to find out the school they are attending, and they mentioned “Ken & You Can’t School of Terrorism.” My eyes popped out in surprise because they were just about 5 years old on the average. Was it a case of catching them young? Chineekee!
My worry grew with each passing second, and I decided to follow them to the school where I saw a young man teaching some class one pupils. Interestingly, the teacher had a nasal problem, and spoke “through his nose” often making some funny noise. He instructed the pupils to repeat some words and phrases.
Teacher: Invisible Forces
Pupils: Invisible Forces ( they responded through their noses)
Teacher: Delta Force:
Pupils: Delta Force ( they responded the same way)
Teacher: Kwaebibirem Iron Breakers:
Pupils: Kwaebibirem Iron Breakers ( they again repeated through their noses)
Teacher: Chase Circuit Court Judge
The children repeated as usual, but the teacher thinking his pupils were making fun of his nasal challenge, shouted, “Children, stop! It’s sickness! The children obeying an earlier instruction to repeat whatever the teacher said, screamed their lungs out: “Children, stop! It’s sickness!
Given the behaviour of these pupils and what they might have learned within a few months of Akufo-Addo’s government, I can argue incessantly that things have not gone well, and I’m going to apply the twin blades of raw emotion and brutal honesty. I’m going to write something that will titillate my readers to frenzy. Chai, I won’t allow this kind of stuff just to hang on oo. I will make sure it burrows like a tick.
Hundred days into the NPP administration has been fraught with too many mistakes as the former moderator of the Presbyterian Church, Rev. Prof. Martey not too long ago put it. And I want to add that the mistakes are too monumental. This has made Ghanaians to carry their disappointments with them like the way Catholics carry their rosaries. And to say the problems are going to be solved soon is just plain ridiculous. There are a million reasons, but I’ll stick to a few because of time and space.
I am in a quandary regarding the NPP’s agriculture policy of “Planting for food and jobs”. The policy seem to be Dead on Arrival, and I will explain. We are in the farming season, and anyone who wants to farm must have cleared farmland, and have already planted his or her crops or in the process of planting. But as I write, the farmlands of those who have expressed interest in the project have not been inspected for clearing to be done. In some cases the inspectors are seriously under resourced, and are only able to visit just a few farmlands. And this is one of the so called flagship projects to create jobs for the youth.
Dredging up the past, Nana Akufo-Addo and his NPP promised before the 2016 elections to offer free SHS to every Ghanaian who is qualified to attend Senior High School. But it has turned out that only first year students will benefit from the programme. The awful and ugly truth is that not all first year students will fully benefit from the much touted programme. Snippets of information buzzing around suggest students with aggregates between 6-15 would be given full scholarships, and students with aggregates 16 – 26 will benefit from half scholarships.
This means that students with aggregates 27 – 36 are not going to benefit from the educational policy to the disadvantage of the rural poor whose scores are usually within this range; a complete demonstration of substandard thinking just like the recent case of reducing fares of domestic flights to favour the rich, and increasing trotro fares to exacerbate the woes of the poor.
There are more: Akufo-Addo has sharply divided Ghanaians by sacking over 5,000 civil servants who were employed under the NDC government, excluding 8,634 nurses whose appointments have been suspended.
Furthermore, Nana Akufo-Addo and Dr. Bawumia made excessive noise before the elections that the Mahama government has borrowed too much; newsworthyly, the Akufo-Addo government has borrowed 3 billion dollars within the first hundred days of his administration. The worst part is, it has been alleged that Enterprise Insurance purportedly owned by Hon. Ken Ofori Atta, the Minister of finance, his wife, and a director of Franklin Templeton who happens to be the chairman of Enterprise Insurance board, provided insurance cover for the $2.5 billion bonds issued by Government of Ghana with a coupon rate of 19.75% as against Mahama government’s highest bond coupon rate of 9%.
Corruption.
On.
Stilts?
I’m not going to mention the issue of 110 ministers, the state of insecurity curtesy, NPP military wings; and the high cost of living. Not to talk of the upsurge of cocaine trafficking. Within three months, three cocaine arrests have been made. Sosket, this be one month, one arrest.
But you haven’t seen anything yet. A tsunami is in the making. I. Can. See. It. There is a simmering conflict within the corridors of power. The supporters of Hon. Kan Dapaah and the combined supporters of Chairman Wontumi and Hon. Ken Agyapong are at each other’s throats.It would be recalled that Hon. Agyapong and Chairman Wontumi rudely attacked Hon. Kan Dapaah, the Minister for National Security for his strong stance against the activities of NPP militia groups.
That is not all, some Ministers of State are reported not happy, there is some huhuhu that they are complaining bitterly about little cash allocated for their ministries to execute government’s ambitious programmes while the chunk of funds have been sent to the seat of government for people to chop nyafu, nyafu.
The interesting thing is Nana Akufo-Addo and his NPP government are living in a time warp; the days are fast approaching, and most of their campaign promises will soon be due; and that is where the mega trouble is. Disillusion has been marked. The next natural conclusion by some political analysts is that state machinery grinding to a halt before the close of this year is not outside the realm of impossibility. This is the gruesome reality the people of Ghana have to face because we are losing pieces of our lives each passing day under this substandard government of Nana Akufo-Addo.
All these are being anticipated for the simple reason that President Akufo-Addo seems to be a walking contrast, a dichotomy of everything he said before the 2016 elections. This is totally insincere, and he can never absolve himself from blame. He is as guilty as sin: and judging from the exploits of the little children who were being taught lessons in terrorism, it appears one of the legacies our president is going to leave behind is violence. If you ask my opinion of his hundred days in government, I will say it is Dead on Arrival (DOA)
Anthony Obeng Afrane
