[ 2015-08-10 ]

Ghana is an upside down country – Kojo Yankson
I think it's time I clarified a few issues with
everyone. This won't take long, I hope.

You know, I haven't been in this job for very
long. A year and four months exactly today. During
that time, I've been given many labels. I've been
labelled anti-government. I've been labelled NPP.
I've been labelled NDC. I've been labelled PPP and
CPP too, on a number of occasions.

Very often, I've been accused of being biased
cynical and negative. I've been called disruptive
and disrespectful – the same person!

So today, I think it's time I told you all what
makes me tick, so that going forward, we
understand each other a bit better.

Am I NPP? Or am I NDC? Am I against the government
or am I against the opposition. Well I am against
wrong. That is all. Is it not possible for a
person to be Ghanaian without belonging to a
political party? Must I belong to one or the
other? If I must be honest, there is no political
party in Ghana that is doing enough to earn my
membership. The suggestion that I might be
anything like these misguided fanatics you hear on
the radio attempting to defend the horrific deeds
their parties commit frankly offends me.

I belong to no political party in Ghana because
they have all got it wrong.

As a nation we have all got it so horribly wrong.
You have heard me describe Ghana as an upside down
republic. What do I mean by this? Well, an upside
down republic is one that has got everything the
wrong way round, a country that has mixed up its
priorities and continues to actively put in
efforts to move backwards instead of forwards.

An Upside Down Republic is a nation where the
people appoint individuals to serve them, and
those servants then oppress their masters.

An Upside Down Republic is where we protect the
strong against the weak, finance the rich while
bankrupting the poor, defend the criminal and
endanger the victim, give special treatment to the
privileged while disregarding the impoverished,
give voice to the oppressors while silencing the
disenfranchised.

I think I'm speaking too much English, so I will
break it down.

An Upside Down Republic is where we elect people
from among us to help solve our national problems.
We tell them to fix our bad roads, and then we
give them V8s to drive around in so they can't
feel the potholes. We want them to fix our fuel
prices, and then we give them free fuel to drive
around in the V8s. We tell them to solve Dumsor,
and then we give them generators. We want them to
reduce the occurrence of armed robbery, and we
give them police bodyguards.

We demand that they improve our health sector, and
then we let them go to South Africa for medical
care. We demand that they provide quality
education for our children, and watch as they send
their own children to boarding schools in
Switzerland. We want them to strengthen our cedi,
and then we pay them accommodation allowances in
dollars. We do everything to insulate these
elected and appointed officials from the problems
we appointed them to solve, and then we are
surprised that they aren't finding solutions for
us? That is an Upside Down Republic.

When a Lexus drives recklessly and almost kills a
taxi driver, and the police stop the Lexus, the
windows come down and they see a man in a suit
sitting in the back. They salute and wave him on.
Then they arrest the taxi driver. That is an
Upside Down Republic.

People ask whether I am against the Government.
No, I am not. I am not against any individual, any
party or organisation. I am just against doing the
wrong thing; and do you know why I am against
doing the wrong thing? Because I know we are
capable of doing the right thing. I've seen it
done elsewhere by people who are not smarter or
better than us. So why can't we do it here?

Simple things: The other day, someone reminded me
that from November onwards, I won't be able to use
my passport. I'll have to change it to the new
biometric one. So I went to the passport office.
Dear Lord, that place is a zoo!

I can't imagine the number of people who turn up
there every single morning from all corners of the
country, and go home at night without getting what
they came there for.

Just getting through the gate itself is a
nightmare.

Then you have all manner of shady characters
controlling your access to every stage of the
process WITH THE HELP OF THE OFFICERS ON THE
INSIDE! Goro boys and criminals handling your
sensitive confidential biometric national identity
data! That is if you are lucky enough to get that
far in the process.

In fact, if you want to see evidence that Ghana is
broken, go to the passport office.

Meanwhile, this is the easiest problem to solve!
We know that November is our deadline. We know how
many passports are in the system that need
renewing. We know how many renewals we can do in a
day. We know how many new passport applications we
receive in a day. It shouldn't take Prof. Stephen
Hawking to calculate whether or not we will hit
the deadline at this current rate.

And if we won't make it with our current capacity,
we should be able to calculate by how much we need
to increase our capacity and expand our facility
to ensure we meet the deadline without subjecting
Ghanaians to the serious risk of identity theft
posed by this current zoo system run by these Goro
boys at the passport office.

People ask if I am against the NPP. No. I am just
against doing the wrong thing.

The NPP is supposed to be a government in waiting.
Right now, with all their in-fighting and
taking-each-other-to-court, the attacks on each
other with machetes and acid, -- I don't even know
whether they are an opposition party in waiting.
In other parts of the world, the opposition
doesn't just criticize government. The opposition
provides alternatives. If you think a government
policy is wrong, you provide an alternative. So
that the people can compare and decide in the
ballot box which one they prefer.

To this day, in spite of all the noise and
demonstrations, I am yet to read a comprehensive
policy from the NPP or any other opposition party
on how they would end Dumsor. Our economy is
bleeding. All we hear from the opposition are
brilliant verbose descriptions of the problem, and
bullet-pointed lists of how the president has
failed. No solutions. If you want to be in
government, give people a reason to choose you.
Don't describe the problem to us. We already know
what the problem is. We live the problem every
day. Give us solutions.

People accuse me of being disrespectful. Please
believe me, I am not. But I also do not think for
one minute that the officials elected and
appointed to work for me are any better than me. I
definitely don't think the privilege of anybody's
high office places me in a position of servitude
to them. They are supposed to serve us, not the
other way around. That is the meaning of a
republic. It means the people rule. It means we
are the boss. Not them.

There is a video on YouTube of David Cameron
walking into a hospital to campaign or do politics
or whatever - basically taking the opportunity to
create a nice photo op with hospital patients. The
doctor in charge came in and sacked the prime
minister from the ward. Yes, he may be the Prime
Minister, but in that ward, the Doctor was in
charge. It was his job to look after those
patients, and he would not allow anything that
would not be in their medical interest - including
a disruptive visit from the Prime Minister. Was he
disrespectful? Definitely not. Would that ever
happen in Ghana? Not in a million years. Am I
disrespectful for speaking up against the wrong
thing regardless of who is doing it? Hell no. If
you feel that way, maybe it's because you haven't
earned my respect yet.

I'm just against the wrong thing. And it is the
wrong thing for us to wake up in the morning, wear
our designer suit, drive in our V8 tote airport
and fly first class to some developed country to
sit in front of their officials who rode a bicycle
to work, and beg for money.

It is wrong for us to airlift millions of dollars
to our mediocre footballers while approaching the
IMF for a bailout.

It is wrong for us to spend a fortune on expensive
engineering equipment, and then hand it over to
the President's brother to work with. And please,
it doesn't matter whether it is private or public
work he is doing with it. In fact, it is worse
when he is using it for public work. Let me
explain.

Why should the government spend our money to buy
equipment that nobody on government payroll is
qualified to operate? That means they didn't buy
it for public use. They bought it for private
use.

When we needed aircraft to airlift cash and fans
to Brazil, we didn't use any of our own, so we
approached someone to use his.

Whether we paid him for it or not is another
matter, but at least, I understand that scenario.
We need to do a job, we don't have the equipment,
so we fall on someone who does.

But when our water bodies are clogged and we need
to de-silt them to avoid flooding, and we have
bought the equipment to do the job, but we then
hand that equipment over to someone's brother to
use them in solving the problem for us, then
there's definitely something wrong.

Central Government alone employs 2520 engineers. I
know. I checked. That is those on the central
government payroll.

I haven't included those who work for
organisations that are not on subventions, like
the VRA and the hundreds of engineers in our
universities and polytechnics. Are we saying that
even after we have bought all this expensive
equipment to solve this flooding problem, we
couldn't find anyone with the brains to manage the
project, so we had to bring in the President's
brother who is NOT an engineer to do it? Or are
those 2520 engineers all ghost names?

But most importantly, if the Director of Urban
Roads is correct, and Ghana does not have a single
person on our payroll who is qualified to operate
these machines, then why on earth did we buy them?
Who did we buy them for?

I am not against the President or his brother, I
promise you that. In fact, I've been dying to meet
them both. But I am definitely against the wrong
thing being done. People ask why I am like this,
but the real question is why you are not all like
this?

Look, I promise I'll shut up in a minute, but let
me just say this: The most heart-breaking thing
about our upside-down republic is the fact that we
don't even realise it is upside down. That is what
really breaks my heart. When I express my shock
and disgust at the horrific injustices and the
bone-deep ignorance that some of our people -
including our leaders - perpetrate, the reaction I
get from some people is: "Oh, but Kojo, this
happens all the time".

Ah! That breaks my heart.

That breaks my heart because I know that if Ghana
ever becomes a failed state, it won't be because
our leaders did bad things. It will be because the
people accepted it when the bad things were being
done.

I promise you, I am not cynical or negative. But I
am definitely biased.

For Ghana to ever emerge from this ditch we are
digging for ourselves, we must all be biased.
Biased against the wrong things being done. If
something is not right, we must all be against it
– whether the person doing it is from your party
or not.

I once said something about Dumsor on my show, and
someone wrote me a long message reprimanding me
for speaking against the NDC government, because
of course, I must be NPP. So now, if I am against
Dumsor, it means I am against the Government? Does
this mean the Government supports Dumsor?

Many people think the best way to do my job is to
be neutral.

But no decent human being must ever stand neutral
between right and wrong. I am on the side of
right. Always. So if you think I am against you,
then you must believe you are on the side of
wrong.

Please, this is our nation. We all belong to it.

We all want what's best for it. It's ok for us to
disagree, but just because I speak against what is
wrong does not make me your enemy.

This is OUR nation.

Being Ghanaian is privileged citizenship, and we
must earn our place in this great nation by never
compromising on what is right. If you are ever
confused about what is required of you as a
citizen of this great nation, just sing the
National Anthem to yourself for a minute:

God bless our homeland, Ghana.

And make our nation GREAT and strong,

Bold to defend forever

The cause of freedom and of RIGHT;

Fill our hearts with true humility,

Make us CHERISH FEARLESS HONESTY,

And help us to resist oppressors' rule

With all our will and might forevermore…

I'm going to shut up now.

Source - MyjoyOnline

... go Back