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It has been a long time since I wrote an opinion piece. In Ghana we are told that “opinions are like noses; everybody has one.” And everyone thinks his nose is the finest. So who cares about another’s opinion? So I have kept my thoughts to myself. Worse still is your opinion if you are a political actor.

In Ghana where we have made man the measure of truth rather than truth the measure of man, it is almost useless to express an opinion. So we are engaged in what Prof. Ali Mazrui called “the dialogue of the deaf.” Everybody is communicating but nobody hears the other. All that we need to do is to tag you as either NPP or NDC and then we can either accept or reject your opinion. We give vent to the saying that truth is relative. In Ghana truth is not just relative; it has a relative. It is either related to the NDC or the NPP.

Otherwise I see no reason why an actress/film producer’s lamentation about a national crisis has been elevated to a gargantuan national banter.  And that banter has assumed all sorts of shapes and forms. It has even become a debate about who are prostitutes and who are not; as if prostitutes don’t have the right to express their opinions. One NDC apologist even said, “John Mahama will take advice on morality; but not from a brothel.” When I read that comment, I laughed. I said to myself, there we go again; simply mouthing platitudes and hackneyed phrases and axioms to which we have not given thought. I think the best place to take an advice on morality is from a brothel. After all, that is why we say that “experience is the best teacher.” The people in a brothel can best advise us to refrain from immorality because they know the implications of immorality. Prof. Gaba says “how can you talk about drunkenness when you have not been drunk before?” The other day a Facebook friend wrote on her wall that women should not seek to marry successful men, thinking to become successful themselves because “success is not sexually transmitted.” Again I laughed. That is not true. Success is certainly sexually transmitted. Ask all the first ladies around the world especially the African ones.

I was listening to former American President Bill Clinton in his interview with Christiana Amanpour. When Amanpour asked him if he will be actively involved in his wife’s campaign, he answered in the negative. He explained that to be in politics “you have to be angry and resentful.” But he says he doesn’t want to be angry anymore. He says he is content being a grandfather to Chelsea’s daughter who makes him laugh all the time. He wants to continue to laugh rather than be angry. More importantly he said I don’t want this “negative identity politics.” He continues; “negative identity politics will win you an election; but it won’t guarantee a better future for our kids.” But in Ghana, that is all we do: negative identity politics; them versus us. Amartya Sen has propounded a theory called “identity and violence.” He states that “a sense of identity can be a source not merely of pride and joy, but also of strength and confidence…and yet identity can also kill- and kill with abandon. A strong and exclusive sense of belonging to one group can in many cases carry with it the perception of distance and divergence from other groups…we may suddenly be informed that we are not just Rwandans but specifically Hutus (we hate Tutsis)…”

In Ghana however, that is what we specialized in, negative identity politics-especially our friends in the NDC. Every day they are at pains to tell us how NPP people hate one group of Ghanaians or the other. We are being told that it is okay for Ghana to be run down as far as it is not being run down by either an Asante or an Akan. See how we demonise Asantes all because the bulk of NPP’s support is in the heartland of Asante. But what is the basis of that demonization? For centuries, Asante has been home to people from all parts of Ghana. As for ethnocentric comments, in as much as they are condemnable, they are heard in all parts of Ghana, from Hamile to Axim. We ought to exorcise the ghost of ethnocentrism. Like Clinton said, this negative identity politics will win us an election but it won’t guarantee a future for our kids; it won’t give us energy to power our industries; it won’t give jobs to our youth; it won’t stop the public purse from being looted; it won’t clean our cities; it won’t restore our NHIS; it won’t restore allowances to our teacher trainees and the list goes on.

This country is in some trouble. And it does not seem to me that those who are in charge of its management even recognize the fact that we are in some trouble. From a growth rate of 3.5% in 2000, we kept growing until we hit 11% in 2011. Today even with oil, we are growing at 4%. That is called retrogression, not progression. So how else are the NDC’s town criers convincing us that all is well? An NDC apologist told me that we should give President Mahama time because “Rome was not built in a day.” Well, that may be true. But it was not built in the dark either. It is important that he restores the light so we can see to mold the bricks for building “Rome.” Then we are being told that the NPP is the cause of “dumsor” because they didn’t add anything to the national grid in the eight years that they were in power. That is not true. Below is a transcript from the 2009 budget prepared by the NDC government and read by the then Minister for Finance, Dr. Kwabena Duffuor on the authority of the then President of Ghana, Evans Atta Mills.

“Madam Speaker, as part of measures to address the power crises in 2006/2007 which lasted over a year, government supported the expansion of power generating capacity. These are 126MW emergency power plants currently on standby after the power crisis and 80MW power plant by consortium of mining companies. Madam Speaker, a number of power projects were also initiated as medium term strategies and fully funded by government and VRA which created substantial financial burden on the national budget. These were 126 MW Tema Thermal 2 Power Plant (TT2PP); engineering, procurement and construction of gas turbine generators and balance of plant for the 230MW Kpone Thermal Project in progress.

Madam Speaker, additionally as part of measures to resolve the power crises the ministry on behalf of the government of Ghana signed a power purchase agreement and a lease agreement with Balkan Energy Ghana Limited to refurbish, commission and commercially operate the 125MW Osagyefo Power Barge. The contract was signed in 2007 and Balkan was to complete the project in 90 working days and further expand the plant by additional 60 MW subsequently. Balkan Energy has not met the deadline for operating the plant as works on the plant are still ongoing. Madam Speaker, work started on the Bui Hydro Project in 2007. Activities undertaken included clearing works on the Dam site, topographic surveys, geological and hydro-geological investigations, relocation and resettlement to Jama in the Brong Ahafo Region of three communities living at the Dam site. River closure was achieved in December 2008, paving way for works on the river beds to commence…”(2009 Budget Statement, pages 92-93). I didn’t write this. The NDC did. So the NPP did its bit to add to what was already there. The NDC needed to take it from there.

Scott McClellan, a former White House Press Secretary under President Bush jnr, writes in his book titled What Happened that; “most of our elected leaders in Washington, Republicans and Democrats alike, are good and decent people. Yet too many of them today have made a practice of shunning the truth and the high level of openness and forthrightness required to discover it. Most of it is not willful or conscious. Rather it is part of the modern Washington game that has become an accepted norm.” Today our government, the NDC government, has deliberately shunned all truth. Indeed we were told way back that it was the policy of the NDC to say that “the President has presented a cow when in fact he has presented a sheep.” What it means is that the NDC has deliberately perfected deception and raised it into an art; indeed the major tool of governance. And this is premised on the President’s belief that Ghanaians have “short memories.” In other words, we shall not remember their lies a while after they have been told.

This country is in some trouble. Otherwise how do we expect do get out of our mess when all the monies we have paid to people through dubious means including the Woyomes and the GYEEDAs and the SUBAHs are far greater than all the bailout money we expect to receive from the IMF? How do we expect to get out of our mess when our interest payments outstrip our oil revenues by almost tenfold?  Unfortunately, the President, with whom the buck stops, sees differently. Businesses are folding up. Workers are being laid off. And all he says to those businesses is that they aren’t smart. This reminds me of a scenario that played out in the USA decades back. During a press conference, the President was asked about the strength of the economy. The President answered, “If I wasn’t the President of the United States, I would invest heavily in the stock market.” An unidentified voice from the back responded, “if you weren’t the President, we would all invest heavily in the stock market.” We are presented with a similar situation in Ghana today where the President thinks differently from the rest of us.

I would end these scattered thoughts with what Ayi Kwei Armah said in his Beautyful Ones are not yet Born: “I saw men tear down the veils behind which the truth was hidden; but then, the same men, when they got power, found the veils useful; they made many more.”