What is this nonsense about NDC foot soldiers we are hearing?

By Lord Aikins Adusei

I am amazed by the criticisms that have been directed at President Mills by some NDC party leaders who have accused him of ignoring the so called footsoldiers of the party. I still find it difficult to understand why people like Rawlings who should no better are asking the president to give special treatment to certain groups of people in the country because they are footsoldiers. Who is foot a soldier and why should President Mills give special treatment to certain groups of people because his NDC is in power. Does Ghana belong to NDC or does the fact that NDC has won power means everything in the country now belongs to the party and that the leadership could disperse the resources in the country to their cronies?

I consider myself a Ghanaian not NDC, NPP, CPP, KKU, WWW I mean I am independent and I don’t want something that belongs to all of us to be given to certain individuals because they belong to party A or B. If Rawlings thinks there are certain individuals or groups in his party that deserve special treatments, awards, jobs and what have you, then he and his party must figure out how they will deal with such a matter without drawing on the resources of our country. To ask the President to use something that belongs to the whole nation to serve the interest of certain individuals in a party is completely insane and must not be tolerated. Ghana has enough problems of her own to deal with and we must not introduce and entertain ideas that will only work to breed corruption, nepotism, favouritism, and cronyism. If the so called foot soldiers in NDC have nothing to do then I suggest Rawlings should ask his numerous friends who have been paying his children’s school fees to come to Ghana and open farm plantations so the foot soldiers can be employed or Rawlings should use the proceeds he received when he sold the companies President Nkrumah established to establish companies so his footsoldiers could be employed.

It is this kind of nonsense, nepotism, cronyism and unpatriotic attitude that characterized Rawlings regime which brought nothing to Ghana except poverty. It is these kinds of patronage policies and waste that Rawlings and his short-sided friends implemented in his 19 years of reign that saw Ghanaians enduring poverty and hunger while he Rawlings and his cronies drove in expensive cars, lived in mansions, drove in heavy convoys, accepted brown envelopes at the expense of the nation and it is this rubbish that they want the wise Professor to implement so that at the end of another four years Ghana will remain a poor country. I am very much disappointed in Rawlings and his cohort who have given credence to such myopic ideas, especially those who have been bombarding the president to listen to the so called NDC foot soldiers. I want to state here categorically that there is no such thing as foot soldiers in Ghana, there is only one Ghana, and everything in Ghana belongs to all Ghanaians not NDC, its footsoldiers or any other party or institution for that matter and the earlier the propagators of such idiotic ideas stop talking about it the better.

If President Mills should feed NDC foot soldiers then what about the rest of the population? Should the rest of the population starve because they did not vote for NDC? Is this what Rawlings call development? It is completely childish to think that one party has won power and therefore every Ghanaian should be sacked and their jobs given to some illiterate foot soldiers? Where can such silly ideas be propagated and tolerated other than Ghana? If South Koreans, Taiwanese and the people Britain had given money meant for their nations’ development to one single party and their supporters would the nations had reach the level they are today? No wonder Rawlings took power about the same time that the Koreans were struggling with their political system yet they can now manufacture cars, electronics of every kind while all that Ghana can do is to export raw cocoa beans because of alien ideas like foot soldiers. I do not want to believe that the great ideas that Rawlings promised Ghanaians were about feeding his foot soldiers at the expense of Ghana our dear nation. We have had enough of such populist rhetoric that has brought us no progress and development. I strongly believe it is time to eschew some of these rhetorics if we are to develop as a nation.

I do not see any wisdom in a situation where one party wins power and all workers in the country have to be sacked to make way for the incoming administration and its footsoldiers. Ghanaian politicians must grow up, must begin to think positively and kick against such practices because they are recipe for our underdevelopment, poverty, laziness and inaction on the part of government. I want to urge the Mills administration to come out with policies and programmes that will provide jobs for all Ghanaians, programmes that will increase investments in the country and strengthen our economy for all to benefit.

It is also hard time we begin to see ourselves as Ghanaians rather than as members of political parties or tribes or ethnic groups. And to Rawlings I want him to know that politics is not about hating your opponents as if you bore personal grudge with someone, it is not about settling personal antagonisms but rather it is about nation building, developing strong institutions and ending poverty through the contribution of ideas from all sections of society and that includes ideas from your political opponents. I will rest my case here.