From Maputo To Guinea-Fowls

The Rt. Hon Speaker's description of the Maputo Report as damning is an apt summary of the mismanagement of the public purse in the country in recent times.

The past few weeks have been characterised by a litany of stories about how monies from the state kitty have either gone unaccounted for or have been outrightly misused.


Try as they have to whitewash the damning revelations, the so-called communicators for government have ended up entangling themselves in the cauldron as they hop from one radio station to another with figures which do not add up.

There is just too much looting and we wonder whether those who are busy doing so ever think of being asked one day to account for their financial misdemeanour.

Parliament has virtually been overrun by the pillagers, who are bent on clearing anything in the coffers, regardless of the effects of the wanton haemorrhaging Ghana is suffering at their hands.

The Maputo story is being told afresh and the damning details emerging are enough to break the heart of a nationalist. Why allocated funds for purchases related to an international sporting engagement were diverted, remains one of the many fiscal riddles of recent times.

The identification of a mafia in the National Sports Council now Authority was not made today yet little or nothing has been done to stem the fiscal anomalies upon which many government appointees have fed fat on.

We may never know why the Information and Media Relations Minister sought to prevent Hon Isaac Asiamah from raising the issue of the misappropriation of public funds meant for the All-Africa Games in Maputo, Mozambique.

Suffice it to point out that, the attempt by Hon Mahama Ayariga to stop his colleague MP from laying bare the open thievery was anything but acceptable.

We are faced with myriad of opportunities with which to prove our unalloyed commitment to fighting corruption in our body-politic but in all these we have failed to prove our mettle in the direction of confronting the graft head on.

The best policy formulators have done is talk about their commitment to fighting corruption, period, as the nation's coffers continue to bleed profusely.

The tale of the missing guinea-fowl funds, as some cynics have dubbed one of the freshest of scandals in the Corruption Chapter, has made an unsettling debut on the political terrain.

These are busy times for the ruling party's communicators as they tackle the scandals as and when they rear their heads. Until it is displaced by another scandal, the tale of the guinea-fowl and the Asongtabas will remain at the top of the scandals chart.

To Guinea-Fowls