President Mahama’s hammer on Minister Hammah for merely contemplating corruption is bad judgement.
It would appear the Ghanaian president, John Mahama, took anti-corruption war to a ridiculous level when he hammered the country’s deputy minister of communications, Victoria Hammah, not for committing any crime, but for merely contemplating one. I am sure our own President Goodluck Jonathan and many other African leaders must be wondering what is going on in Ghana because that is something novel in this part of the world. A public official being dismissed for allegedly making a statement suggesting she could be corrupt? And what is the source of the information? A taped conversation that the minister had with someone which quoted her as saying she would not quit politics until she had made $1million, that leaked on November 7, and the next day, the minister got the boot. Just like that! Even baby lawyers know that intention is not a crime. Shouldn’t President Mahama have waited for his minister to commit the crime before moving against her?
The most disgusting thing is that some people have been commending him for this inhuman action. This runs against the grain of what obtains in this part of the world; which is that even when it is crystal clear that crimes have been committed and the public till tampered with, we still need to set up committees to look into the issue. In Nigeria, for instance, our president is so fastidious he would not want someone punished for sins they haven’t committed. Look at the recent case of the aviation minister, Ms Stella Oduah, the matter is still being looked into by several committees. The House of Representatives had looked into it and said the poor woman had a case to answer. But thank God for our President who understands that such a beautiful woman doesn’t come easy; so he is not one to be goaded to act by such conclusion from a House that seems to have a phobia for beautiful women. We shouldn’t forget this same House passed a similar ‘vote of no confidence’ on Ms Arunma Oteh, the Securities and Exchange Commission boss, and asked President Jonathan to starve her of oxygen (money). If the President had answered their prayer, the woman, a paragon of beauty that God created her, would have been ‘recreated’in the image of the House of Representatives.
We should wonder what kind of unsustainable template the Ghanaian president is trying to set for Africa? How can you render a minister jobless for merely dreaming of setting a goal for herself while in public service? Don’t ministers have performance bonds or targets? If the government demands that of them, why would a minister not set his or her personal target of how fat his or her bank account should be by the time he or she is quitting the public service? What is the big deal in that?
Obviously President Mahama’s action has given him away as a nincompoop in matters of corruption. When the issue is corruption, we are champions; and this is acknowledged worldwide. How many awards has Ghana won on corruption? If thus we have such comparative advantage over Ghana in the matter, it follows that Ghana must turn to us for solutions to corruption-related matters. As far as Ghana is concerned, the cankerworm fled their shores when Jerry Rawlings killed three former heads of state, among others, as sacrificial lambs. Corruption, it seemed, then relocated its castle to Nigeria.
Imagine also the ridiculous amount for which a honourable minister was fired! A mere $1million that she had not even made! Imagine, this is one other thing that annoyed me in this matter. If the minister had wanted to eat a toad, shouldn’t she have gone for a fat and juicy one? That a minister was contemplating quitting government after hitting the $1million mark shows that Ghana’s public officials don’t have taste. What would a Nigerian public official do with such peanuts that could only buy one bullet-proof car? That apart, didn’t the honourable minister grease some palms to get the job? President Mahama should have asked his Nigerian counterpart who would have lectured him that the poor woman needed to recoup money she spent greasing those palms before being approved minister. In Nigeria, such things have become a part and parcel of us. A lawmaker once told us why people must steal after winning elections. He said they must recoup their investments. Yes, here politics is investment, and, like all investments, the investors must make profit. We might not have clapped for him then, but we hailed him for saying the truth. Was Minister Hammah not entitled to such return on investment?
Honestly, it is the Ghanaians that I blame for giving their president this kind of sweeping powers. Are there no traditional rulers from the minister’s place who can protest on her behalf? Has she not got some ardent youth supporters? Where are they? By now, they should have protested that the minister’s sack was the handiwork of her political detractors who are unhappy with the good works she is doing? Or, don’t they have political detractors in Ghana? And the senior advocates? Where are they? Should they not educate their ‘unlearned’ president that you don’t punish people for merely contemplating to empty government treasury into private pockets?
What I am saying is that the Ghanaian president should have caused his government to set up a committee to find out whether the voice in the alleged tape was that of the minister. Even as that is busy doing its work, he should pretend to be angry with the minister by setting up his own committee tagged presidential fact-finding task-force on the matter. At the end of the day, committee reports will jam committee reports such that he will have no option than to set up another committee to harmonise the reports of all the committees. Then, another committee of eminent bureaucrats would be set up to prepare what we know as Government White Paper (that is if the matter is so serious as to ever get to that stage). Before the White Paper is ready, the people would have become weary and put the matter behind them, until another scandal breaks. That is what Fela called ‘government magic’. Why then would President Mahama want to demystify government the way he has done?
The Ghanaian President should not infest us with his kind of anti-corruption war. We don’t fight corruption that way. I wonder what African presidents review at their so-called peer review sessions, when Ghana’s president would take decisions on a matter that he is least competent to act on when he simply should have referred the matter to his Nigerian counterpart. He is lucky Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is no longer our president; otherwise, he would have taken offence at such insult. Nigeria is not only big, we are also rich. Our ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party is the ‘largest in Africa’; so, what the hell is wrong with President Mahama?
Not to forget that the woman in question reportedly contributed significantly to President Mahama’s electoral success. How can such a neighbour in need become a bloody nuisance for merely dreaming to make $1million off the government? Obviously, President Mahama has not heard of such things as Neighbour to Neighbour. We need to tell him, in fact, educate him on how to handle such sensitive matters. Obviously too, the Ghanaian leader has not heard of ‘soft landing’. These Ghanaians actually need to be tutored about a lot of things. Apparently what they do not know is by far more than what they know, or think that they know. If a president can single-handedly dismiss a minister, then, who says our own president is about the most powerful in the world? Haven’t we a lot to teach the Ghanaians about zero tolerance for corruption?
Ghanaian ministers who might want to resign in protest and solidarity with their sacked colleague should hop into the next plane to Nigeria. They have my assurance: none of them will in no wise be cast out. But they must be prepared to up the ante. In Nigeria, one million dollars will only get them a bullet-proof car or spent on official furniture!
