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There are two male twins in my village in Ahanta West District by name Kofi Yalley. It happened that the two fell sick one day and they decided to visit a health facility in the district. On reaching the OPD, they waited for their turn until they got to the staff who was taking their names to issue them with attendance cards. The first of the two mentioned his name, �I am Kofi Yalley�. The officer dealt with him and called the next person, who happened to be the half brother. Instead of mentioning his name, he pointed to his brother and told the officer, �Da Same�, meaning that his name was no different from his brother�s. Baba Jamal �askorondo�, a Deputy Minister of Information, has told the staff of the Information Services Department that they should lie to Ghanaians in the performance of their duties as public servants to make government look good in the eyes of Ghanaians because election is nigh. He gave them an example that when government donates a sick sheep to a community, they the staff of the ISD should tell Ghanaians that government donated a healthy gigantic spotless white cow to the community. When pushed to the wall, he said he asked them to embellish the stories. One of the definitions of �embellish�, according to my antiquated Oxford Advanced Learner�s Dictionary �is improve a story, a statement etc by adding often untrue details�.� So to embellish or to lie are �da same�. This statement has raised apprehension among Ghanaians of all walks of life. I am amazed that for the first time, Ghanaians have realized that the NDC is a lying machine created purposely for winning elections. The PNDC, the mother of NDC, was itself born out of falsehood, deception and blatant lies to hoodwink Ghanaians into accepting the PNDC. Later confessions by some of the architects of the 3Ist December coup have it that even those of them within the army at the time were deceived into believing what they were told. Throughout the period of the PNDC, lies upon lies were told about the previous regime to win the support of the good people of this country. They engaged in a venture of discrediting every government that preceded the PNDC and made us believe that the PNDC was the best thing that ever happened to this country. They used the �da same� lies and instruments of deceit to even justify the cold blooded murders they committed. They continued with lies when the NDC 1 came into office in 1993. Official lies became major part of government policy, not only on political platforms, but even in the area of government policies presented to Parliament. Between 1996 and the year 2000, government�s financial statements to the people of Ghana through Parliament were full of lies and misinformation. An example here will suffice. The Mallam-Yamoransa road had appeared in the NDC 2 Budget and Financial statement for three consecutive financial years and in each of the cases, assurances had been given that that stretch was going to be done. Not an axe was used to dig an inch of ground on that stretch; in fact in the 2000 budget and financial statement, the government of NDC was categorical that the Essipon-Sekondi road was nearing completion when indeed no work had began. The NDC used its instruments of lies to make Ghanaians believe that the rural areas of Ghana were paradise even if those of us in the urban centres were clamouring for facilities and other social and economic infrastructure. Until I became a District Chief Executive and came face to face with the criminal neglect of many rural communities in this country, I had been made to believe that all was well in the rural areas in particular. If I could be convinced through lies persistently told to believe that they are true, then one can imagine what the millions below would be made to believe. What Baba Jamal told the staff of the ISD is the stock in trade of the NDC and those political parties with socialist or communist inclinations. The NDC, since its birth, and following from its biological parent, the PNDC, has shown no disposition to abandon organized deception as an instrument of national policy. The recent happenings between the Fonkar Group of Companies on one hand and GAME and Associates on the other hand, where blatant unadulterated lies, perfectly manufactured in factories of those bodies were thrown at each other, is an ample testimony to the fact that for pure and untainted lies, any of the NDC manufacturing houses of Fonkar or Game can deliver 24-7. The NDC has over the years developed a Russian type of disinformation and misinformation which entails the distribution of forged or fabricated documents, letters, photographs, manufacturing of lies and vigorous propagation of such malicious and misleading falsehoods with such consistency and persistence that even the most doubting of Thomases will break down and believe it. Ever since the NDC3, under the leadership of Prof. Atta Mills assumed office through the instruments of lies, the leaders have not ceased using lies as an umbrella to cover up their incompetence and failures. They told the world through lies, how the NPP as it were, ripped this country off and mismanaged everything good for the younger generation. The economy left behind by the NPP was proclaimed to be the worst ever in the history of this country. Former public office holders were daily portrayed as criminals even when no single evidence of criminality had been established against them. These were part of the lies aimed at eroding the confidence Ghanaians had in the previous administration and to further dent the credibility of the then leaders. To back up their lies, they started hauling past officials into the courts with a pledge to their supporters that they were going to jail each one of them. Unintelligent as they are (the NDC says it is not an insult to say some one is unintelligent so I think I can use it liberally), two years down the line, not a single one of those they had labelled criminals have been found guilty by any court of competent jurisdiction. They then shifted the dissemination of false and provocative misinformation onto the judiciary, blaming it for the string of losses in the courts to assure their gullible foot-soldiers that they are doing their best but the system is not helping them. Even when they cannot deliver ordinary liquefied petroleum gas, which was very much abundant in the era of the previous administration, they are still shifting the blame onto the out-gone government. Since according to Baba Jamal, a small black sheep can be changed into a huge stainless white cow, who should believe anything the government says, if it is simply not graduating a small black sheep to a white cow? The first black sheep to graduate into a huge white cow was announced by another Deputy Minister of Disinformation and Lies, Samuel Okdzeto Ablakwa. According to him, 1.6 million jobs had been created within one year when all the government had done was to sack the staff of the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) and replaced them with their foot-soldiers. A sheep becoming a huge white cow. Unfortunately for Okudzeto Ablakwa there was no warehouse to accommodate the cow so it turned back into a sheep. A blatant lie told by a minister of state to make government look good. Now the issue about the President�s house at Spintex road, is it a rented apartment or a wholly owned house for the President? If it is wholly owned by the President, how on earth can another facility within the premises, which is owned by the occupant, now become a rented property? That I have my house, I need to add a few things to the existing structure to make life more comfortable to myself or relations and I ask someone to build that for me on my own compound and rent it out to me? No no no no, it is a sheep turned a white cow. Very sad, so sad for a man who has been painted as a man of integrity. One other area where the sheep-cow relationship has been seriously cemented is the area of the building of �Schools Under Trees�. Even when the Finance Minister says in Parliament that 187 such schools have been built, the Baba Jamals continue to say that the government has built thousands of such schools. My dear compatriots, from today to go, if government tell you say go take GH�1000, please cancel the first two zeros and make do with GH�10. The GH�1000 would have been GH�10 graduated to make government look good. The NDC has nothing good to offer this country; as a result of which they have resorted to the use of lies, shameless ones at that, spewed not by foot-soldiers but by ministers of state paid to tell us the truth. God save us. I want to use this opportunity to ask all NPP constituency executives to take inventory of new schools built by the NDC in their various districts so we can aggregate all of them and compare the figures with what they are telling us. Make sure you do not include schools built by NGOs like Plan International, Action Aid and the rest. I am waiting for them. The lessons Ghanaians, I believe have learnt, is probably that never again should we allow lies to sway us into making decisions that have direct and indirect impact on our lives. It is better to stick to your mahogany bitters whose supply you are assured of than expect a Black Label whiskey which you are unlikely to have for the rest of your life. As for me, I promise to be faithful and loyal to my mahogany bitters, after all mahogany or whiskey, the effect is �da same�.