We are still pursuing the shady trail of the 1.5 ton-gold question of which the Mahama government rather lamely claims not to be complicit. We shall address this aspect of the denial in due course. For now, though, suffice it to observe here, at least in passing, that the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has a great credibility problem.
I am personally convinced that if, indeed, the gold bars impounded at Turkey’s Ataturk International Airport was destined for Iran, then, perforce, elements close to the government of the National Democratic Congress ought to be in the know. One-and-half tons of gold is too much gold to have left the country without the full knowledge and/or consent of any higher-up executive operatives, except if the most plausible presumption were to hold that our country is, somehow, run by a bunch of zombies.
Anyway, when President Mahama publicly asserts that Ghana is to deepen bilateral relations with Iran, one ought to instantly appreciate this to unmistakably imply that it is about the 1.5 tons of gold. For absolutely no country, whatsoever, does any good for another without any tangible benefit in one form or another in return. And I am not particularly convinced that the Islamic Republic of Iran is any more of an exception than the rule in this instance.
On the ground, there doesn’t seem to be much that Iran may be credibly said to have significantly contributed to the socioeconomic development of Ghana, short of the one Iranian-built clinic in Accra which was recently reported to have been upgraded to the status of a polyclinic (See “Ghana to Deepen Bilateral Relations with Iran – President Mahama” Ghana News Agency/Ghanaweb.com 2/9/13).
Yes, I couldn’t rank this largely propagandistic clinic among the ranks of any of our flagship regional hospitals. Neither would I take any seriously the reported establishment of an Iranian hybrid rice plantation in the Northern Regional Capital of Tamale. To begin with, the human inhabitants of that regional capital are not known to be remarkably blessed with an adequate supply of potable drinking water, let alone have enough water to irrigate a commercial rice plantation. As for the Iran-erected Kumbungu Community Center, it is a damn shame that none of the many benevolent associations formed by the natives of the region had been able to do the same for themselves.
In brief, the very idea that politicians from a Third-World country like Iran had come to Ghana and built a community center for any rural Ghanaian settlement, in basic show of friendship, gratis, disgusts me to no end. At any rate, if one may aptly ask, what really prevents the government of Ghana from trimming the national budget of the otiose fat that is the GHC 50,000 accommodation allowance for Members of Parliament, who are already paid fat salaries, and then gearing most of these readily available funds towards rural community development?
You see, once you voluntarily and fatuously reduce yourself to a mendicant, it begins to make perfect sense for one to noetically join in the celebration of the bloodiest and most primitive bout of human butchery ever orchestrated in the name of Islamic theocracy in the twentieth century. And the very fact that the leaders of a democratic African country like Ghana would be so light-heartedly celebrating the 34th anniversary of the extortionate tyranny of the Ayattollahs and Mullahs of Iran, makes it all the more pathetic for me to share the same geopolitical space with the key operatives of the Mahama-led so-called National Democratic Congress.
In other words, I simply fail to see that Iran, as it is politically constituted presently, has any special significance for Ghana than any other nation to cause any forward-looking Ghanaian leader to want to forge deeper links with the same. For instance, Iran is not like Saudi Arabia, to which the overwhelming bulk of our Muslim brothers and sisters are emotionally and spiritually invested and for positive reasons and purposes. Of course, within Ghana’s so-called National Democratic Congress reside easily the most depraved and abjectly soft-, if also incurably criminally, minded politicians in that legendary West African nation of some 25 million people.
I also don’t know what he means, when Mr. Mahama calls on Iranian entrepreneurs to come down in their numbers to invest in our newly discovered oil industry when, during his two decades as a bona fide top-ranking operative of the Rawlings government, Iranian oil engineers and moguls and prospectors had not been heartily invited to help Ghana in its desperate search for the proverbial black gold.
You see, it is this kind of insufferably bankrupt leadership that continues to make our country the veritable economic basket case that it is even amidst its oil glut. Of course, it is quite understandable that a certified assassin like Capt. Kojo Tsikata would be dispatched to the Bloody Theocracy of Iran to court the gruesome affections of Dr. Ahmed Ahmadinejad. Talk of birds of same plummage!
One thing, however, is clear: the Mahama-Arthur-led government of the National Democratic Congress is as determined to regress the socioeconomic, cultural and technological advancement of Ghana as it is desperately intent on hanging on to power for as long as a cruelly shortchanged electoral majority would allow it. In sum, the main opposition liberal market-oriented New Patriotic Party ought to be fully prepared to fiercely battle out the Cash-and-Carry ideologues of grand larceny and wannabe Iranian slaves!
Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D. Department of English Nassau Community College of SUNY Garden City, New York
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