Dr Nii Amu Darko, Founder and Leader of African Reform Movement (ARM), a new political movement in Ghana, has observed that the problems in Accra are due to rotten political governance of the country.
He said: “The Accra problems are not about any mayor, a Ga Mantse who is not assertive or unscrupulous Mantsemei (chiefs) selling land multiple times, but a putrefied political system which puts all power in one person in one place.”
Dr. Darko made the observation in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra.
He said Accra became the political, administrative, commercial and economic capital of Ghana on less than 0.5 per cent of land surface of the country through the late Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of the country.
Dr Darko said political authority and major development has been centred in Accra and it has become obvious that it was not sustainable, but for political expediency.
“And we all know from basic common sense that if one tree is made to withstand the storm all alone, it collapses?”
He said Accra is faced with annual floods, inability to clear garbage, incredible traffic jams, filth and squalor, lawlessness and arbitrariness, anarchy and entropy.
“All these were not the problems of Accra, but are symptoms of a fundamental problem of building political, intellectual, economic and social congestion on a small space of land - Accra.”
Dr Darko said the ARM has come to distribute political power from national to sub-national levels under an “Economic Federalism” system.
“Our advocacy for Economic Federalism ‘Ecofed’ is different from the ethno-federalism of the 1950s,” he said.
“2016 will be 60 years since we voted to be independent. Let us rebuild around a new vision for collective work and prosperity through a mechanism of fair distribution of power, responsibility, opportunities and wealth.”
The Ecofed would create new politico-economic units to be called states that would give chance to politicians, intellectuals, investors, entrepreneurs and workers to operate co-operatively and competitively among themselves.
He said the new states would be between eight 10 per cent of the national population, but not on ethnicity, for a sustainable and autonomous economic development growth.
<<Print>>