Ghana: Where did we go wrong?

Yes, Ghanaians are now waking up to the reality that Ghana is in another phase of its perennial ‘crisis of a neo-colonial state’. I heard this phase in the 1970s, but it never seems to go away. As Ghanaians, can we afford to live in our past glory? I am ashamed to say not anymore. What is the state of play right now? Ghana’s current predicament is captured by the acclaimed Kenyan writer in Kenya’s leading ‘Daily Nation’ (http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/). He writes: ‘The wheels are coming off Ghana’s economic miracle. The cedi has fallen 40 per cent this year. Interest rates have gone through the roof. Inflation is at 15 per cent and rising. Landlords are demanding rent in dollars’. Can things get any worse before they get better?

So where have we gone wrong as a nation? First, the government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) called for a national conference where a ‘consensus’ of some sort was reached. I must admit that I have not read this report, but if the debate on radio and the lack of analysis of the Senkyi Consensus Report is anything to go by, I can safely rest in the comfort that I have not missed much. What I am not sure is if the Senkyi meeting recommended this new concept (in Ghanaian terminology) and ‘bailout’ to President John Mahama and his NDC administration. If it did, I ask a rhetorical question: have we not been here before?

Every ten years, Ghana takes the same path to ruin and dependency. Yet, we hope for some kind of redemption. It never comes. More misery on the horizon, but those who rule us never seem to learn. The National Liberation Council (NLC) (1966 –69) which overthrew Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah surrendered Ghana to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United States of America in 1966. The Supreme Military Council 11 regime under General Akuffo took Ghana again to the IMF in 1978. General Akuffo begged for the country to be re-colonised. So the IMF hatchet men in their well pressed three-piece suits and sharp notebooks came and went. The economy did not recover. The crisis worsened until the June 4, 1979 uprising, which swept away General Akuffo, his kleptocrats and his IMF cohorts in the Ghanaian bureaucracy.

Then came the Peoples National Party (PNP) government of President Dr. Hilla Limann. The lacklustre nature of this government is now legendary. The PNP government then, was acutely aware of the welfare and development implications of going to the IMF and the structural adjustment that follows naturally as night follows day, and vice versa. President Limann’s government prevaricated, shilly-shallied and dragged its feet, but there is due credit to the late Hilla Limann as he never took the first step toward this destructive path.

On December 31 1981 there was a coup and a ‘revolution’, which generated endless debates on these issues. Generally, there is an agreement among progressive thinking minds that the IMF has never succeeded in rescuing any African economy. Ghana is living proof. The verdict of the role of the IMF in Africa so far is harsh.

Some of us have argued that we need to retrace our path and follow Dr. Nkrumah’s example. The policies that Ghana has adopted since the 1966 coup have never made any sense. The anti-IMF front argued for ‘home grown’ policies and for self-reliance as General Kutu Acheampong’s Supreme Military Council 1 tried with some success. There were neo Marxists converts who argued that the IMF option was the only one open to Ghana. I did not believe it then and do not believe it now.

At the behest of the pro-IMF neoliberal Ministers, the IMF/World Bank wagon rolled into town in 1983. Jerry Rawlings became the chief apostle for the IMF and Dr. Kwesi Botchway the chief architect of the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) (1983-85), which won international acclaim from the western media. Western journalists and their consultants praised Ghana as a ‘success story’. It was the former Nigerian Premier, Tafawa Balewa who is quoted as saying that ‘when the West praises an African leader, he must be doing something wrong to his own people’. How prophetic.

Under the Rawlings regime, in the era of the IMF led Structural Adjustment, Ghanaian workers were laid off in their thousands, welfare systems were closed down and Ghana’s education system suffered immeasurably. The few manufacturing industries that survived the onslaught of the NLC regime were sold off to their family and friends. Need I remind anyone who was in charge? The local and international hypocrites of the IMF success story now claim that we have to return to the same IMF. Some think that changing the name of the game from ‘structural adjustment’ to something called a ’bailout’ will change the narrative. These Rasputins are not helping the NDC government and the President. And we know who they are.

Let us be clear, the current economic mess dates back to the February 24, 1966 coup, when the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) government was overthrown. And to those for whom this is too far, rewind back to 1983, to the PNDC’s ERP, which was designed and fronted by Dr. Kwesi Botchway. This is the root cause of the current economic crisis. It is the neo-colonial economic system that is at the heart of the crisis. We have been tinkering with it since independence and any attempt to change it is frustrated by the same forces – local and foreign. It is difficult to fathom why former President Rawlings of all people, will bemoan the current crisis when he created it in the first place. No one can blame the current President for this. Both President John Dramani Mahama and President John Agyekum Kuffour inherited the mess created and sustained by PNDC’s ERP. The late President John Atta Mills (God bless his soul) tried to manage it in his own quiet way, and could have been successful if only the same self-serving anti-progress brigade had helped instead of undermine him relentlessly.

It is therefore saddening and indeed disheartening to see the same elements parade themselves in front of TV cameras as the saviours of Ghana’s monumental economic decline and engage in empty annoying platitudes about corruption and hardships, when they planted and watered the seeds of the current crisis. These same purveyors of doom claim they can return Ghana to a haven of economic peace and tranquillity where the Cedi will find saving grace only if we trust the IMF once again. Sorry, some of us will not buy this stupendous hypocrisy. A Kenyan friend of mine used to say that you cannot do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. I could not agree more.

The pro-IMF brigade in Ghana is having a field day, promising us peace if only the IMF is given another chance. We have given the IMF too many opportunities to help and each time, our dalliance with them has ended in disaster. In 1982, some of us posed a question to inquire on any country that has been rescued from a disaster by the IMF; we got no answer then, and will not get it now almost thirty years later. Yet, we are asked to trust this same IMF. There are those genuine Ghanaians who think the IMF can promote fiscal prudence and discipline. There is no evidence of this. No Ghanaian citizen expects the IMF to tell us how to lead decent lives, how to spurn corruption and recognise the needs of poor Ghanaian families, homeless children and the sorry state of our hospitals. Do we need the IMF to tell us that our children need milk and school textbooks?

In recent years, Ghana was touted as a rising star. Some economic gains were made. We maintained our position as the second largest producer of cocoa, benefitting from the chaos in nearby Ivory Coast, while the middle class grew by leaps. With the discovery of oil in 2007, I was one of the well meaning but ignorant ones who thought the day of salvation had arrived. I am not so sure anymore. The facts and figures in David Ndii’s article in Kenya’s Daily Nation confuses me even more. He writes:

‘Oil was discovered in 2007 and came on stream in 2010 adding to gold, of which Ghana is Africa’s largest exporter. Ghana is also the world’s second largest exporter of cocoa after neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire. Ghana’s oil production started in 2010, and is running at about 80,000 barrels a day, yet Ghana’s trade balance has worsened’. The Kenyan writer offers a very good explanation for Ghana’s economic decline by stating that ‘Ghana’s management of its public finances was never great to begin with. However, following the discovery of oil, the Ghanaian state seems to have opened the floodgates. Government expenditure has ballooned from 20 per cent to 27 per cent of GDP in the last two years, against revenues of 20 per cent of GDP’.

I am one of those Ghanaians who are intrigued as to where all the money is going. The judgement debt scam remains one huge hole into which state resources disappear. Yes, I call it a scam of some sort. Our own dear President Atta Mills admitted that ‘his Government had paid an equivalent of Sh28 billion in judgement debts’. Add other problematic areas such as SADA, GYEEDA, and others is the reason why I am beginning to worry that living in Ghana is like living in a ‘gangsters’ paradise’, if I can borrow the words of a rap song. Yet, Ghana remains a paradise for foreign companies in the oil, gas and mineral sectors.

I have no doubt that the NDC administration under President Mahama is under pressure to stop the downward decline of the cedi, improve people’s living conditions and reverse the problems brought about by a neo-colonial economy. I believe that the President is well intentioned and can deliver on his promises. I have only one concern. This cannot be done by the same old faces and forces of neo-colonialism who led Ghana down the path to near ruin with their IMF solutions to the nation’s headache. A better Ghana agenda cannot be led by the IMF.

Where are the new young economists with fresh ideas to help the President? For a start, I will suggest that radical economists, both young and old from Africa who can help us should come and do so. Instead of new consensuses, let us return to the source: combine Dr. Nkrumah’s radical and ground breaking Seven Year Development Plan and General Acheampong’s radical plans for self-reliance, Operation Feed Yourself and Industries, etc. These two documents contain the ingredients for a successful home grown policy.

Keep the IMF out of our business. Keep out what Rawlings himself called the ‘has beens’ from economic policy and decision-making as they are tired, tiresome and bereft of any fresh and radical ideas for todays globalised world. The Western owned and directed IMF is like the owner of a funeral home, always waiting for bad news. Ghana is not dying.

As for those who are clamouring for the President to take us to the IMF again, I say they are dangerous and unreliable allies and not worth listening to. They have taken us along that dangerous path before. It is time for them to stay behind like failed Generals and allow new energetic soldiers to lead this nation. It will not be too much for them to have some humility, as they have been there before and they should leave President Mahama to try his dose of medicine. Maybe, it will work, maybe it will not, but that will be his legacy. Do not infect him with your years of irredeemable failures.

* Zaya Yeebo is Director of the Accra based Pan African institute for Development

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