President John Evans Atta Mills
“Action and reaction are equal and opposite,” Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
“As a football manager, you have to be held responsible for results, as a player, you have to be held responsible for performances,” Graham Taylor, former England Football Manager.
“If they come for your brother in the morning and you don’t speak up, they will come for you in the evening,” Malcolm X.
Today, under President Mills’s NDC administration, with this arch Ewe tribalist adviser reportedly making many appointments behind the back of President Mills (a confession supposedly made by President Mills to President Rawlings and reported by President Rawlings), a policy of negative reverse discrimination is being implemented in favour of the Ewes where top positions in many state institutions and the public service are going to Ewes while many state institutions are becoming colonies of the Ewes. At the same time, may state institutions are being ethnically cleansed of people with Akan names. A casual observation indicates that, currently, about 80% of overseas government scholarships are going to Ewes and to some extent people of northern descent. A case in point is the award of 250 scholarships to some NDC identified Ghanaians to pursue medical courses in Cuba.
According to a DAILY GUIDE report on the matter, of the 250 government scholarships given to 250 Ghanaians to study medicine in Cuba, not a single person with an Akan name from Ashanti Region and Eastern Region gained from it even though the indigenes of every region in the country were supposed to benefit. To add insult to injury, those nominated from Ashanti Region for example bore Islamic names, suggesting with all probabilities that northerners living in the Ashanti Region were considered in favour of their Akan counterparts in a clear case of regional imbalance. This is clear signal giving meaning to President Mills’s unwarranted exasperation when he stated in Wikileak that he feared “The Great Ashanti Project”. President Mills and his NDC administration is on a war path to destroy everything Ashanti in particular and Akan in general, a project which Flt-Lt Rawlings started during the PNDC era when he sought to destroy businesses belonging to Ashantis but which he woefully failed.
When you have an arch Ewe tribalist as an adviser to a paranoid Head of State, surrounded by a bunch of rascals, many of whom are political turncoats with an axe to grind against the successful of the society, playing the role of  operational and propaganda and communication directors, then you have far exceeded the critical mass of a naked flame close to a leaking gas pipe. How this country has managed to remain in one piece under President Mills’s obnoxious NDC administration can be considered to be an untold unprecedented gargantuan miracle of our generation.  Why the Ewe leadership, be it the traditional rulers, the intelligentsia, women groups and the youth, is keeping stolid silence over this NDC diabolical plan is very sad indeed.
This clearly brings to mind the case of Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey and the NDC cabinet decision. The issue of Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey’s Supreme Court judgment and President Mills’s NDC cabinet statement on it must neither be taken on the face value nor in isolation. We have to go back to the NDC era of 1995 when the policy which allowed citizens to buy government lands under the pretext of redevelopment of the capital city was fashioned out. We can then make a list of all those people, both Ghanaians and foreigners, politicians and non-politicians, who have taken advantage of that inimical, diabolical, criminal, selfish, self-seeking policy to rape the state of land situated in prime areas and other state properties including all divested companies since the era of the PNDC. The list includes all the NDC parliamentarians of the first parliament who bought the Sakumuno flats and thus denied future parliamentarians of residential accommodation. Who valued all those state lands and properties sold out? How and where did those who purchase the lands and properties procure the purchase price in dollars to pay for them? How many of them met their tax obligations to the Ghana Revenue Authority?
These were lands taken from traditional authorities for collective future development of government business and not for parochial individual interests. This is not an issue which should be given partisan party colourisation. It is criminal and immoral and shows the type of corrupt, self-seeking, irresponsible, covetous leadership with no sense and track record of accountability and integrity we have had to live with since independence. The educated African in leadership position is a devil of a monster in human shape with satanic mischievous, covetous, greedy brain. Since the white slave master was booted out, only to be replaced by the black slave masters, Africa has been forced to sleep with one eye open. Africa can never make it with the type of corrupt, incompetent, greedy leadership Africans have bestowed on themselves. As one prominent American Man of God charged to pray for the leadership of his country said, any time he looks at the leadership of his country, he prays for the survival of his country instead and not the leadership.
If that Man of God had visited Africa before making that statement, he would have fasted for 30 days and 30 nights before starting his prayer for the African continent. This foolish policy which allows people to buy government lands situated in prime areas of our cities must be jettisoned with immediate effect and alacrity to save the interest of future generation. The hypocrisy of President Mills’s NDC administration is unholy when one considers that the policy was fashioned out by a previous NDC administration under his mentor, President Rawlings, under which functioning NDC warlords and gurus benefitted from it. The PNDC/NDC sold state properties to its regime faithful who neither had the technical knowhow nor the financial muscles to manage them. The PNDC/NDC failed to account properly for all the state assets and corporations sold out. Today, some of the state catering rest houses, for example, sold to top NDC functionaries have become the French Riviera where some species of the animal kingdom spend their honeymoons. Today, after about 15 years, the NDC has been forced to take back the Tema Shipyard and Drydock Corporation, a strategic national asset which was sold off very cheaply to the Malaysians by the PNDC. The case of Ghana Telecom, which was initially enacted by the PNDC, would have been ludicrous were it not so tragic. What right, moral or legal, for NDC political turncoats therefore have to pursue legal actions against their political opponents who used their positions to acquire state properties under a policy dictated by the PNDC/NDC?
Currently, the first act of persons appointed to juicy positions in the public service is to buy Mercedes Benz S or E saloon class cars, costing anything up to $90,000 as official cars and park them in their garages. Then they buy Toyota Land Cruiser V8 4-wheel drive, also costing anything around $80,000, which they then use on a daily basis as official cars. When such officials retire, the Benz car is depreciated to less than 25% of its original value and “sold” to the retiring officer.  Then the retiring official’s financial entitlements are calculated which far exceeds the depreciated value of the Benz car. The depreciated value of the Benz car is then subtracted from the financial entitlement and the balance of this financial entitlement is paid to the retiring officer while the Land Cruiser is consigned to a pool disused cars waiting to be sold cheaply to a political functionary at a “public auction” directed from The Castle. . The state institution must then find money to buy two new sets of cars for the new officer taking over from the retiring officer. This is a policy which is being implemented within the public service.
The brain of the educated blackman must be black indeed. If not, how come Members of Parliament whose salaries are not for public consumption are paid seven months’ salary for every one year of parliamentary service as ex-gratia? If not, how come a proposal made for a retiring president, whose remuneration is not known to the public, suggests two mansions which will revert to his family on his death, five limousines, official office accommodation, coterie of household and office staff, millions of dollars to establish a foundation, tidy monthly salary for himself and his spouse and paid overseas travel twice a year. The good God up there must be shaking his head in disbelief for creating the blackman. No wonder, the good God created the blackman for his entertainment value so that the good God can have some moments of happiness in His brief periods of sadness.
Now let us go back to Kennedy Ohene Agyapong. Many of the people who have so far condemned Kennedy Ohene Agyapong have displayed parochial, sycophantic, and hostile state of mind. They have shown very little understanding of all the issues at stake. They have shown that they have never taken the trouble to read the entire comment. They have failed to carry out any intellectual analysis of the cause-effect relationship of the events that generated the comment. They have allowed the false fear of breaking up this country, while at the same time timidly trying not to incur the displeasure of a section of the community and the government in power. They have tried to push under the carpet a serious societal malaise which some self-seeking politicians are trying to exploit to their advantage – tribalism and ethnocentrism.
 E-mail: makgyasi@ug.edu.gh
Tel: 027 – 7588256
By Kwame Gyasi
