Where are the Independent Minded MPs in Ghana?

Government cannot be wrong all the time. Opposition parties cannot be right all the time. Ghana needs independent minded MPs who will be willing to call a spade a spade without conforming to the politics of the same. In Ghana issues are always discussed based on political lines where MPs of the ruling government always vote in favour and vote for the policies of government whether they be good or bad, whether the policies hurt farmers in his constituency or not, whether traders will be affected by the policies. There are no independent opinions in the ruling government. There are no independent opinions in the opposition parties either and Ghana is getting a bad deal. Why are our MPs not able to speak their mind freely for the good of Ghana? Do they have to vote on party lines all the time to the detriment of the nation and her people?

Due to lack of independent minds in both the the NDC and NPP the country is always driven by politics of the same. Ghanaians must begin to think about voting for independent candidates who do not support any of the major parties whose members continue to mismanage the nation while living on fat bonuses at the expense of the tax payer.

Are NDC MPs saying in Parliament saying everything that Mills has been doing is good if no then why they not letting their voices heard for the good of our country? Are the NPP MPs in Parliament saying everything that Mills has done is bad if no then why those who think otherwise are are not letting their voices to be heard for the good of our country?

Do you know what your vote can do? Very soon the president and his vice and the MPs will come begging you again to vote for them so they can keep you in poverty for another four years. Say no when they come.

If there is an independent candidate in your constituency listen to what he/she stands for and vote for him or her. Because if you vote for NDC or NPP MPs they will blindly put their interest and the interest of their parties first. Ghana and you will come second. You can let them think by refusing to vote for them.

"Ghanaians Must Sit Up"

Will Ghanaians vote for NDC and NPP for another 4 years of poverty?

Why do Ghanaians keep punishing themselves by electing corrupt NDC and NPP men and women who think nothing more than their own stomach? Have you seen any independent minded Member of Parliament in either the NDC or NPP speaking for Ghanaians or for Ghana other than themselves and their parties? Has anyone in the NPP or NDC being advocating for economic help for the poor in the country? Have you heard from your MP since he or she was elected in 2008? Has the regional minister in your region being doing anything to help the poor farmers and traders? Has the district chief executive been doing anything to help you and your community get water, waste bins, clean environment, and sanitation facilities in your community?

Don’t you know as a citizen of Ghana you have the right to know what your tax is being used for? Why have you kept silence when you do not have a job? Have you forgotten that Ghana is paying the minister of employment fat salary and bonuses to provide jobs for Ghanaians?

Why have you not taken any action when your community is without electricity? Have you forgotten that the Minister of Energy receives millions of cedis to ensure that you get electricity? Why have you not gone to his office to find out why he continues to receive salaries and bonuses every month yet you do not have electricity? Take action now. Organise the people who live in your community and are suffering like you and go to the minister, his deputy and the directors responsible for providing the service they are denying you, and ask for answers. Don’t take no for answer, demand answers now.

"Ghanaians Must Sit Up"

NDC and NPP and their politics of Inaction (Corruption)

When they were in opposition the National Democratic Congress [NDC] constantly accused the New Patriotic Party [NPP] of being corrupt and the accusation continued when President Mills government took office. The NPP has been accused by the NDC for appropriating millions of dollars during the celebration of Ghana@50. The NPP has also been accused of making profits from the building of the Jubilee House built to house the presidency. The allegation has forced President Mills to delay moving into House. The allegations against the NPP seem to go on by the day with P.C. Appiah Ofori a member of the NPP party going public to accuse Members of Parliament belonging to the NPP. He accused them of receiving $5000 each during the sale of Ghana Telecom in which they were asked to vote to support the motion.

The NPP too has countered the NDC’s accusations by pointing to the massive corruption that existed during the 11 years of PNDC and 8 years of NDC rule. They also point to recent revelations that suggest the NDC transition team spent a whopping 3.61 billion cedis on tea and water within two months.

NPP also points to revelations in Nigeria and Ghana newspapers that the Governor of Rivers State of Nigeria Mr. Rotimi Amaechi paid $3.5 million to ex-President Rawlings which was used to bankroll their 2008 election campaign that brought them victory.

NPP says the NDC is like a silver calling the kettle black and points to recent information in public domain that Mahama Ayariga the spokesperson for President Mills has illegally acquired five tractors meant for poor Ghanaian farmers. He took five tractors meant for underprivileged farmers and paid for only one whose price was further reduced for him.

NPP says the NDC should shut because it has no moral right to accuse its members of corruption. They accused the NDC of shady deals and point to Alhaji Muntaka Mubarak who used his office as a charity buying pampas, khebab and travelling around with his girl friend.

And as if that is not enough Nana Ohene-Ntow, the General Secretary of the NPP in a hot exchange with Kofi Adams has called on Jerry Rawlings to come clean if he is not corrupt. Nana Ohene-Ntow told Adams who doubles as the spokesperson for Rawlings and NDC Deputy Youth Organiser, “he [Rawlings] should tell Ghanaians how he got money to build his mansion at Agyirigannon, how he financed his children’s fees abroad, and those who provided him the 4 wheel drive vehicles.If he fails to provide the hard facts, he should desist from disturbing the peace of this country”.

The fact of the matter is that both parties are corrupt. Their members are getting richer everyday while majority Ghanaians live on $2 a day, without adequate food and shelter, water and sanitation. The mistake Ghanaians are making is that they keep voting for these individuals who are more interested feeding themselves and their families than taking care of the entire population.

NDC and NPP and their politics of Inaction (infrastructure)

The health of every nation’s economy and its potential to grow strongly depend on a reliable infrastructure system because infrastructures are the bedrock, life blood and the engines that drive the economy. The role play by infrastructures in the economy of a nation cannot be overemphasized especially its effect on sustainable development, foreign direct investment flow, GDP growth, inflation reduction, job creation, trade, agriculture, delivery of goods and services, lowering cost of business, improving health and standard of living and poverty reduction. Therefore, efficient and effective provision of infrastructure in a nation underlines all attempts to reduce poverty.

P(NDC) and NPP which have been governing Ghana for the past 28 years have neglected Ghana's infrastructure needs for years, yet we have forgotten that no nation can develop without investing in infrastructure and technology. The state of Ghana's of infrastructure is so appalling to describe yet we have NDC and NPP governments taking hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and grants and receiving hundreds of billions of cedis in taxes from the poor Ghanaians yet cannot provide the basic infrastructures that will make life a little bit comfortable for Ghanaians.

The telecommunication including ICT sector, is still struggling to catch up with the rest of the world. Fibre optic cables, which make it possible for internet users to have access to fast speed internet connectivity, are very limited in the country. Internet connection is absent in the rural parts of the Ghana and connection is very slow in the cities where internet may be available. Besides it is also very expensive. In many areas, there are no fixed telephone lines and mobile telephone infrastructures are still at the infancy stage. Absence of telecommunication infrastructures is part of the reason why cost of running businesses is expensive in the Ghana compared to other countries. Schools, hospitals, banking and security operations are handicapped by the absence of these vital infrastructures. Companies and industries that heavily rely on ICT for efficiency and higher productivity are prevented from doing so, due to the poor state or absence of the infrastructure.

For example the problems of waste management in the cities and the associated health effect on the people need no telling. Accra and Kumasi Metropolitan authorities and other city authorities are struggling with waste management issues due to lack of vehicles, waste treatment plants and inadequate personnel capacity. Sewerage in the country is almost non-existent, with only a portion of Accra, Tema, and Kumasi enjoying piped sewerage services. There is no centralized wastewater treatment system in most of the cities and households and commercial premises generally have no onsite flush latrines. Within Accra, Kumasi, Takoradi, Tema and most of the cities and towns solid waste is unhygienically burned, disposed; and indiscriminate dumping of waste is creating health problems.There are few cities and towns with reliable piped water supply. Many residence of Accra do not have access to good drinking water and many households have to resort to extreme measures to be able to cope. In short the infrastructures to deliver water to the people do not exist and poor city planning and management as well as untamed urbanization and continued influx of people from the rural areas into the cities have complicated the matter. The water situation in the rural areas is even worse. In the three northern regions people have to walk several miles in order to get water. The end result is that people are not able to live healthy lives due to poor water quality and dwindling accessibility.

That is why Democratic Republic of Congo has every mineral you can think of yet it is one of the poorest in the world. That is why Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong have developed and that is why President Obama is talking about building US infrastructures because they are the engines that run the economy. You cannot export if you do not have harbours and airports to support it. You cannot attract tourists if you do not have airport, hotels, well developed roads and other infrastructures that support it. You cannot move goods from centres of production to centres of consumption if you do not have roads, rail lines and inland water infrastructures to deliver it. You cannot supply the industries with doctors, architects, bankers, lawyers, planners, engineers, teachers, nurses if you do not have the educational infrastructure to deliver it. And you cannot run an efficient and vibrant economy if you do not have the energy and telecommunication infrastructures in place.

Look at the state of Akosombo dam. Ghana is shut off anytime it refuses to rain yet we have had parties and their political leaders who have promised us so much yet have delivered so little. Ghana has been experiencing serious disruptions in the energy sector for years and no political party has seen any wisdom to solve it. As a result factories are folding up and are laying off workers and we are waiting for nature to help fill Akosombo Dam before we rectify the problem. Will this do nothing approach to problem solving help our nation? What are we doing with the abundance of sunshine in the country? We have not taken advantage of it, have we? We have sunshine 365 days and we have not tap into solar energy which is cheap and more reliable than hydro.

In a situation that mimic problem facing the entire African region, the Finnish president on a visit to Nigeria in March 2009 asked, “Nigerian people have so much sun and wind, why don’t they use it for the generation of light for cooking and every other thing”? She queried, and added that “we do it in Finland for our renewable energy”. Source: www.dailytrust.com, 12 March 2009. The sad story is that Finland and most of the nations in Europe are locked up for most of the year by cold winter but take advantage of the short summer to convert the little sunshine they receive into solar energy while here in Ghana we have sunshine most of the year but do nothing with it. Dwindling rainfall has limited the ability of Akosombo dam to produce the needed energy to support the economy. It is another indication of the NDC and NPP inaction, lack of positive agenda.

"Ghanaians must sit up"

NDC and NPP and their politics of Inaction (agriculture)

The NDC and NPP and their politicians do not have any concrete agenda to help Ghana to become a food sufficient nation. Their their empty rhetorics, promises, pledges and policies of inaction is seen in the high food prices seen all parts of the country.

Look at the state of the agricultural sector in Ghana. How many of our farmers have their own tractors and farming equipments to produce beyond the level of subsistence? Virtually all the important equipments needed to make the agric sector viable and productive have to be imported and how many of our farmers have their own resources to buy even the basic machinery to expand their farms?

Today after 52 years of independence our farmers still depend on nature for water for their economic activities despite the availability of irrigation technology and what has the NDC and NPP done so far to help them? Aren't they still using cutlasses and hoes to plant and harvest their crops, technology our forefathers used before they were colonised? Aren't they still relying on nature to plant their crops in this 21st Century? Aren't we still importing rice from India and China after 52 years of self governance? We cannot even feed ourselves after 17 years of NDC and NPP rule.

Where are the food sufficiency policies of the two major parties then? What are the many directors at the ministry of Agriculture who enjoy fat salaries and bonuses doing? Although we are in the 21st Century yet our farming practices indicate that we have still not moved beyond the 19th century. Fishermen are always faced with the constant shortage of premix fuel despite the pledge by both parties to help them. This is the more reason why we continue to hunger even though rich soils abound in Ghana. We under utilise our land for lack of political commitment.

It is common to hear Ghanaians say that 'Malaysians got their palm fruit seed from Ghana'. Well Malaysians use the oil they get from the palm fruit as fuel for a number of engines including cars, something they accomplished through research and we what do we use the oil for? It is sad to say that Malaysia got independence about the same time as Ghana but they have made great strides economically, while we have been marking time curtesy NDC and NPP. While the rest of the world is moving forward scientifically and technologically we are still marking time because of corruption, poor leadership, poor governance, bogus agricultural and economic policies, politicization of every national issue and whipping of tribal and ethnic sentiments by the NDC and the NPP politicians and their agents.

Do we have to support NPP and NDC blindly?

"Ghanaians must sit up"

NDC and NPP and their politics of inaction (Children)

When they drive in their expensive tax-payers' Land Cruisers do the NPP and NDC MPs, ministers, Vice Presidents, the Presidents and their advisors see the children who live, sell, and are being taught by the street in Accra, Kumasi, Tema, Takoradi, Ho and Koforidua?

Don't they see the many children who sell ice water, coconut, sugar cane, plantain chips? What has the NDC and NPP ministers of Children done to ensure that these children who are the future leaders of the country will be given help so they can remain in the classroom? Majority of these children are on the street hawking instead of being in the classroom because their parents have no jobs and cannot afford to put the kids in the classroom. Yet we have NDC and NPP governments that continue to receive millions of dollars in loans and grants and receive billions of cedis in taxes yet cannot provide for these future leaders.

Look at how the two parties have been playing politics with the school feeding programme that is supposed to ensure that these kids are given some food in school. In many schools children have had to suffer and go without food because the NDC wants its caterers to prepare the food while the old caterers (seen as NPP sympathizers want to continue doing what they have been doing since the programme started).

"Ghanaians must sit up"

NDC and NPP and their politics of inaction (Education)

If Agriculture which provides us about 35% of our GDP is bad, then can our educational sector upon which the development of the nation rest be any better? Aren't the NDC and NPP toying and playing politics with our secondary school system. The SSS (now SHS) was a three year programme when it first started. When the NPP replaced the NDC in 2001 they changed it to four years and now the NDC is considering reversing it to three years. Who are they fooling? Is it not Ghanaians, our economy and the lives of our future leaders?

Is the entire educational system anything to be proud of? Just look at the world ranking of Universities and see where the first university falls. Of the about 9,760 Accredited universities in the World, Ghana's prominent universities including University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology only managed to place 5,702 and 6,703 positions respectively in the World University Ranking. Even in Africa, our own backyard they only managed to secure 43rd and 63rd positions respectively. (Source: topuniversities.com/2008) Can we afford to develop the nation with ill-prepared graduates not to mention the millions of illiterates and semi-literates who roam around the cities and countryside?

Dr. Ave Kludze, the top Ghanaian born NASA Scientist in a rebuke of our leaders and our education system said in an interview with the CNN "no empire has ever achieved greatness without technology and the earlier the leaders realise this the better". He later told BBC that, "But where African schools have a problem, is that they focus heavily on theory, whereas [universities in the west] focus on the practical - solving real world problems.” Source:bbc.co.uk, Thursady, 12 February 2009.

It is abundantly clear that our education system is not producing the architects, engineers, planners, bankers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, social workers, nurses and the scientists that we need in the 21st Century. That is why every major architectural and engineering activity in Ghana is undertaken by foreigners and foreign companies especially from USA, Japan, China, India and the European Union. The Universities lack well trained lecturers. They lack modern facilities such as state of the art libraries, laboratory simulation facilities, studios, computers, and books. They lack them because we cannot build them; we cannot build them because the curricula have not prepared our students to build them. As a result we have to import the equipments and books from countries that have done their home work well and have invested heavily in education notably in science and technology.

In many of our universities, Polytechnics and secondary schools lecturers/teachers are still teaching students the same way the 19th century academic institutions taught forgetting that we are in the 21st century. The same notes given a final year student four years ago are still being given to first year students with no addition or subtraction. Lecturers cannot write books for students because they do not have the resources to carry out research that form the basis of any academic material.

Whereas students in advanced countries get their hands on books immediately they are released those in Ghana have to wait 4 years or even more to get the same books. What is more the academic facilities including libraries are in a state too appalling to describe. Not a single of our universities can boast of a million volumes of books in their libraries. Even the few text books that they have are so old that information contained in them are useless. Very few books have been published by Ghanaians. Due to this most students have to rely on the notes that lecturers give them. This is state of our universities and the little I say about our Polytechnics and secondary schools the better.

The streets of Accra, Kumasi and other major cities in the country are swarmed with children selling ice water, bread, chewing gums and anything that can be hawked. Children head potters are visible every where in Kumasi, Accra, Tema and Koforidua, a clear manifestation of the misery and hopelessness that the NDC and NPP have brought to Ghanaians. These are the children who are supposed to be in the classroom and be trained as future leaders but have to abandon the classroom and scavenge for food because the NPP and NDC do not care about them.

Do you know why NDC and NPP keep toying with Ghana's education? Because they want to keep the people in darkness like poorly cooked rice, so no one will rise up to challenge their corrupt and useless administrations. Ask your President or his vice or their ministers where their children are schooling now and you will understand why they don't give a damn about SHS, Poly or University education. Their children are schooling in expensive universities in Europe and North America. And as to how they pay for those expensive fees your guess will be as good as mine.

When their children finish their education overseas they stay there and work. They only return to Ghana when there are big contracts where they would make millions of dollars for staying away and doing nothing for the nation, and what do the poor Ghanaians who could not travel to study outside and had to pass through God knows what get? Nothing - no contract, no retirement packages, just poverty.

Our research institutions have achieved very little because they are underfunded and the researchers do not have the expertise and the facilities to carry out any meaningful research. A case in point is Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) located at New Tafo in the Eastern Region. Despite decades of its existence we still export raw cocoa beans for peanuts. No value has been added to the cocoa. CRIG has not been able to come up with other ways in which to use the beans to benefit Ghanaians despite the mounting evidence that the beans have several potential uses.

What action has the NPP or the NDC taken to ensure that graduates from our tertiary institutions will have access to jobs? Massive graduate Unemployment is the order of the day and what action has the NDC and NPP governments which have ruled Ghana for the past 28 years taken to ensure that graduates have access to jobs? Look at how the two parties have been playing politics with the so called National Youth Employment Programme.

"Ghanaians must sit up"