On Saturday, December, 7, our constitutional democratic process would offer us, the Ghanaian electorates a consequential mandate to choose our nation’s governance leadership that would ultimately decide its development trajectories either on a progressive or regressive path.
Over the last months of mammoth electoral campaigns, the two major political contestants have to the best of their ability made a case for the electorate’s endorsement.
It goes without saying that, out of this, the most obvious and strongest case has been a Vote For Change and Reset Ghana. This strong case for change has not only been made by the opposition Presidential Candidate, John D. Mahama but the entire rank and file of the NDC including critical voices within Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) like Flanklin Cudjoe, Founding President of IMANI Centre for Policy and Education.
While I do not intend to belabour this impressive case for change, I intend to make one from my perspective because after almost eight years of poor leadership, inimical governance action and cruel economic policies, I know why Ghana Must Change.
Suffice it to say that perhaps the current ruling regime has made the most unbelievable case on why as a matter of urgency, it is underserving of a re-election.
For example, I hail from a cocoa-growing rural community where during the pre-2017 era, the cocoa industry of the agricultural sector remained a booming one and continuously received enormous intervention from the erstwhile Mahama government.
Today due to the gross mismanagement, greed and impropriety of this regime, the once vibrant & profitable sector has been reduced to bankruptcy, liquidity difficulties and struggling small and medium-sized cocoa farmers like my father in the village called Asikaso in the Achiase Constituency.
Now the above is just a snippet of impact at the macro level, now let me give you the typical consequences of the mismanagement of the cocoa sector at the micro level.
In the pre-2016 era, my father as a cocoa farmer received free fertiliser, and benefited from the government’s free cocoa spraying program, agric extension officers’ support and cocoa farmers’ bonuses that often came in very handy during non-cocoa season.
Averagely, my father was able to produce 20 bags of cocoa per farm during the major season.
This is however in sharp contrast with the current happening as he now struggles to produce even 5 bags of cocoa, if in doubt check the 2023/24 cocoa season national output which compared to the 2016 figure of about 900,000 metric tonnes has declined to a little over 400, 000.
Historical data indicate this output is the worst in over two decades. And this is why I am submitting very forcefully that the current regime now led by the vice president as its presidential candidate is undeserving of the electorate’s votes.
For instance, this is a ruling party that has executed the cruellest and most repressive economic programme deceptively branded as a domestic debt exchange programme (DDEP), which simply means pickpocketing of government creditors or lenders.
Put differently, this is the only regime in living memory to make government bond a high-risk investment option as it has expropriated investors including pensioners hard-earned savings and watched millions into penury simply because they opted to lend to the state.
Never should this nation experience such inimical actions to its people whose only crime was to help government with funding through the purchase of Bonds.
Again, a ruling party that against all meaningful advice chose to allocate the nation’s scarce resources equivalent to $58 million to create the most senseless hole at the heart of Accra in the name of building a National Cathedral is completely out of touch, without priorities and sound judgment.
This is at the time when Ghana’s leading education think-tank, Africa Education Watch has disclosed that there are about 5,400 schools under trees at the basic level and further posited that it would take the nation about 300 years to eliminate the menace with the current pace.
Even worse, about 2.3 million pupils are without desks or chairs yet this administration brazenly opted to pump $58 million of taxpayers’ funds into a corrupt and useless national cathedral pit.
Such useless spending of state funds must stop and that’s why the Ghanaian electorates must vote for Change to restore responsibility and accountability into our governance spheres.
This is certainly a government that is very aware of its incompetence, poor management of the economy, and greed, yet nonchalant about it simply because they profit and benefit from the very mess they have imposed on the Ghanaian people. And that is why I maintain that this nation cannot reward an incompetent and a government of impunity with re-election.
Oh yes, after eight years of poor leadership, and repressive and inimical economic management, Ghana will choose Change to Reset Ghana For Jobs, Accountability and Prosperity For All!
The Writer, Evans Senior Owu, is a Seasoned Activist, Researcher and Policy Analyst