I was sitting in the old sofa in my sitting room last night watching BBC News on the rigmarole of Donald Trump’s bastardisation of America democracy, when the tired on old brain went on an excursion. The tired grey matter wandered into the wilderness to the era in Ghana when Jerry John Rawlings seized power and administered this society as if it was a conquered colony.
There was a humble businessman from Akwasiho, just before ascending the Kwahu Ridge, who had done well for himself. Mr. Joshua Kwabena Siaw single-handedly established the biggest brewery in West Africa. Tata Brewery Limited was located at Achimota, a suburb of Accra. The huge brewery was commissioned by then Head of State, Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, on January 30, 1973, to commemorate the businessman’s 50th birthday anniversary. Tata Brewery was producing Tata Draught, Tata Pilsner and had been licensed to produce ‘Maltex’ soft drink, by Alban Brewery Limited of Denmark.
Tata draught and pilsner were popular with Ghanaian patrons. Its Maltex soft drink was very popular in the country and enjoyed a special relationship with our Muslim brothers in neighbouring Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal and The Gambia. Exports of the product were booming when Jerry John Rawlings seized power and appointed then young ideologue lecturer Kwamena Ahwoi to head the much-dreaded Citizens Vetting Committee.
To cut a long story short, the Citizens Vetting Committee seized the brewery on the flimsy excuse that the company was hoarding sugar at a time the commodity was in short supply in the country. Now, sugar is one of the most important raw materials in the brewery industry.
When Tata was seized it was sold to a foreign concern, which in turn sold it to another company. The company has now been merged with Guinness Ghana Limited and Kumasi Brewery Limited, original producers of the Star brand.
Sad to relate, Mr. Siaw died in penury in exile. He was not the only businessman who suffered under Pontius Pilate in the Rawlings purge.
Do you remember a man called Mr. B.A. Mensah? You would if you are over sixty fifty years now and a smoker. The businessman established the International Tobacco Company Limited and was manufacturing Rothmans King Size cigarette under license in the North Industrial Area, Kaneshie, in Accra.
The company was seized without any compensation. The owner battled the seizure all the way into his grave. And they say Jerry John Rawlings has established a party, and I, Ebo Quansah, should vote it to return to power after losing disastrously in the last vote. Certainly not me! That is not my only problem with the party Jerry Rawlings founded and its current presidential candidate.
When I look back and reflect on the tragedy of Odeefuo Asare and others, I wonder why anybody should worry him or herself with Jerry John Rawlings and his so-called legacy.
On Sunday, February 7, 1982, about one month after the 31st December coup d’etat, Odeefuo Asare was leading his congregation of members of The Lord is My Shepherd Church at Amakom, near the Baba Yara Stadium in Kumasi, in prayers when Major Joe Darko of the Ghana Army Medical Corps burst into the church auditorium brandishing a gun. He ordered the congregation to abandon the service and go out and fill pot holes on the streets.
Odeefuo Asare pleaded with the gun-toting soldier to allow the service to end before administering his instructions. After the service, Odeefuo sent a delegation to the Army barracks in Kumasi complaining about Major Darko’s threatening behaviour. This annoyed the Major who sent military personnel to burn down the church.
The rampaging soldiers went on a search and destroy operation in the Kumasi Metropolis with state radio broadcasting live and asking all members of the church to surrender to the military.
On that Sunday, Asante Kotoko was playing its arch-rivals, Accra Hearts of Oak, at the nearby Baba Yara Stadium. After burning down the church premises, the soldiers went on an indiscriminate search and destroy operation. They killed and maimed a number of soccer fans.
A policewoman, who had earlier disarmed Major Darko in Odeefuo Asare’s church and was injured in the scuffle, was receiving treatment at a private hospital when soldiers burst in and shot the woman dead on her hospital bed. Odeefuo Asare went into hiding, but following persistent radio announcements for his church members to surrender, he came out of hiding two days later on February 9 and reported himself to the police. He was handed over to the rampaging soldiers, who shot, killed and displayed his body at the Kejetia Lorry Park.
Similar search and destroy operations took place in Burma Camp and many military barracks, particularly Sekondi-Takoradi, where several soldiers identified as non-conformist were shot dead.
I am afraid Jerry John Rawlings has been bad news for the body politic. Does anybody remember the famine of 1982-84? When the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) took over power, the young and inexperienced soldiers decided that the business community was the enemy of the state. They decided to sell all commodities in shops and all market places identified then as the centre of kalabule in the country.
Long queues formed at pump stations and food joints. It was those days when people queued for uncooked kenkey. On one auspicious day, I chanced on a queue for kenkey at Adabraka, in Accra, and joined. It took a while for me to be served.
I bought four balls of uncooked Kenkey and took them home. Poor me, I did not know that it takes that long to boil kenkey. After being on fire for a considerably long time, I decided enough was enough, only to learn that the food was far from ready to eat. That night, my household slept virtually counting the ceiling.
When the Provisional National Defence Council gave way to the National Democratic Congress, with the same people in charge, corruption made its masterpiece.
Does anybody remember an African-American woman called Ms. Juliet Cotton? Ms. Cotton was brought in from America to grow rice at Aveyime. This was done on the blank side of the Ghanaian Ambassador to the United States, Kobby Koomson.
The Ambassador got detectives to investigate the woman’s background and found that the famous rice business tycoon had been unemployed throughout her adult life. She had never even grown grass before. Kobby wrote to the then Vice-President, the late Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, warning that no money ought to be paid to the woman.
Mills called Cabinet and read the Ambassador’s letter, but he was largely ignored. The likes of Finance Minister Kwame Peprah, Agriculture Minister Ibrahim Adam, and other state officials flatly ignored the Vice President’s directives and went ahead. Not only was the full US$20 million sum paid, many openly hobnobbed with the American imposter.
To spite Ghanaians whose hard earned US$20 million went into the project, Mr. Ibrahim Adams and his cohorts went to the United States of America as guests when Ms. Cotton married her unemployed boyfriend. Her favourite tune throughout the wedding ceremony was: God is good all the time. And all the time, God is good.
From its very inception when the entire governance system was used to carve out the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as a political concept, the political party Jerry Rawlings founded has been a gargantuan fraud on the people of Ghana.
Unfortunately, the party in government did very little to purge itself of the fraudulent tag any time it was in power. In the last Mills-Mahama oligarchy for instance, corruption was promoted as an art.
The way and manner GH¢51.8 million of scarce state resources was parceled out and handed over to Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, an NDC activist, in a crafty deal described by Mr. Jones Mawulorm Dotse, sitting at the Supreme Court, as ‘Create, Loot and Share,” told everything about the fraudulent minds that directed the party in office.
Mahama was a complete waste of time. Five years of Dum-so is well chronicled. Decline in food security and total economic mess leading to this country falling on the International Monetary Fund dictation that ensured that there was a freeze in public service employment in a developing country, brought the economic fortunes, as well as the job market, down on their knees.
When news broke out at the Southwark Crown Court in London that an elected Government Official One had negotiated with his brother and three friends to buy three aircraft from Airbus SE for this country, after which the three UK-based crooks benefitted from US$5m kick-backs, all Ghanaians knew that the elected Government Official One was no other than Mr. John Dramani Mahama.
For me, the only good thing that Mr. Martin Amidu did to warrant his two and a half year stint as Special Prosecutor was his ability to identify Mr. John Dramani Mahama as Government Official One. Note, his brother, Samuel Mahama, had long been established as Intermediary 5.
Life is getting interesting. When you hear Mr. John Dramani Mahama protesting his innocence in the Airbus Deal that has shamed Ghana in the international community; Mese Se No Huu!
I shall return!
Ebo Quansah in Accra
The post Why I Won’t Vote For Mahama (Part II) appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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