Oil revenue for a flamboyantly populist programme When the question is raised whether we can ever have a sustainable funding scheme for an audacious and overly ambitious programme as a free SHS programme, mention is quickly made of “cleaning ghost names” on the public payroll to generate some funding. It’s funny politicians only know about cleaning ghost names when in opposition. See? Then, also, a quick dash is made for Ghana’s oil revenue as potential funds for a free SHS programme. And this is what makes this plan even more disturbing, that this decision is being made at a time the developed world has taken a deep peep at the future and has projected that the world’s petrochemical resources will be exhausted in some decades not far away from today. So what is the developed world doing? There are presently huge commitments towards finding alternative energy sources. In some of the “green universities” across Europe and in the US, scientists are virtually locked up in their laboratories “forcing plants” to do what they’ll normally not do; metabolic pathways in plants are being altered to produce plastics and fuels. It’s not an easy job at all….metabolic pathways are intricately interconnected with so many enzymes here and there, and any slight engineering could lead to a drastically different product than expected. But they are determined to do it because they’ve concluded that the world cannot do without plastics, and going into the future, there’ll be no petrochemical resources to provide the world with plastics….and fuels. And so far, preliminary results have been remarkably encouraging. Indeed, there are even turf wars among some university professors/knowledge institutions in some countries about patent rights over some of these “bio-based economy” discoveries. Although there are still moral arguments about some of these technologies, that’s not the focus of this piece. The intention here is to show how the developed world is preparing for “a future without crude oil”. So what plans are developing countries such as Ghana making for a future without crude oil? I’m scared stiff that at that time, the only option for many African countries might be to “shut down totally”. Make no mistake about it; Africa is poor not because Africa is poor, but because of the shortsighted leaders we have had, and still continue to have. Here are some folks talking about how to use oil money to sponsor a populist programme when our university laboratories are empty….no facilities for researchers to work with….virtually nothing to teach experiments to university students….most university students of science go through their programmes without any real hands-on experience. So what? So we have found ourselves in a sordid state. I cannot imagine a future Africa without oil revenues. But I can imagine the days are coming when Tullow, Kosmos et al. will be moving, bag and baggage, out of our oil enclaves when the last drops of oil are about leaving the bosom of the earth. Indeed, they don’t really have to wait for the last oil drops: all that is necessary for them to begin to pack their tools is for oil levels to decline to such low levels that it won’t make economic sense to invest in its extraction any longer. Believe it or not, crude oil is a “non-renewable” resource. Don’t let discoveries of new oil fields delude you into thinking we won’t get there. Maybe it won’t happen in our lifetime. But we sure will get there. And maybe when we are inching close to that bleak future, developing countries must go back into some “colonial arrangements” of some sort with the West because with dried-up oil fields, someone must be calling the shots if he would supply us some green fuel? It’s time to think outside the box...the days of populism are truly over. Walking and chewing gum at the same time Some argue that it’s possible to walk and chew gum at the same time, that it’s possible to throw huge sums of money that we are not yet sure where they’re going to come from about “free SHS” and still be able to meet other pressing needs. I agree. Walking and chewing gum at the same time is easy, pretty easy. We all do it all the time. But certainly, “walking and chewing gum at the same time” is not for those who are “crawling”. Ghanaian politicians have made sure that Ghana is still crawling. I have already shown you why---‘no electricity’, ‘no water’. Still, in Part II of this series, I have also shown you how we have to rely on the benevolence of Donors to help feed our young ones in a few schools in the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP). And why didn’t the politicians “spend” Ghana’s multi-billion dollar GDP” on the GSFP? So surely, don’t point us to some so-called middle income status that we have attained. In effect, the point about walking and chewing gum at the same time does not arise at all. Also, there are those who brand others who try to probe this free SHS promise as “lacking vision”, as people who could have discouraged the late Neil Armstrong from going to the moon. Really? They mean when politicians go about speaking vacuously, we should assume such empty promises amount to putting Ghanaians on the moon? And that such things constitute “vision”? If you ever care to know, going to the moon, or space, as it were, is pure science. It has nothing to do with empty political campaign promises, although politics itself is said to be a science---political science. My apologies to all political scientists of this world. Ghanaian politicians have not helped your cause. Whereas science is supposed to follow logic, the way we practise politics here defies logic. It defies reason. The point is that any group of people who claim they can go to the moon have only themselves to convince, upon getting their act together. They need no approval from bystanders. However, there is nothing usually scientific about political campaign promises in Ghana, which is why the citizenry must continuously interrogate such promises. And of course if making promises alone constitute vision and going to the moon, then we have already gone past the moon because many other “big vision promises” were made in the past but were never fulfilled. Here’s the question: If indeed it’s possible to walk and chew gum at the same time, then how many “financial engineers” are we going to line up each year to go look for money for us to pay for a populist programme of this nature? And who pays back that money? ‘Springs of life’ could have averted the Arab Spring I’m winding up. Here is my final take on all of these matters. You might wonder the origin of the so-called Arab Spring. It was a young man Mohamed Bouazizi who self-immolated in Tunisia because he met the last straw that broke the camel’s back. He met obstacles to his efforts to keep body and soul together. Several other people emulated Bouazizi, by also undergoing their own self-immolations. One of the most significant reasons that reportedly underpinned these acts was the rising levels of unemployment. Thus, most probably, Bouazizi never intended that singular act to set in motion the toppling of political regimes across the Arab world, but that is exactly how it ended. Today, across the globe, the rising unemployment levels among the youth is one of the most important issues that have engaged the attention of world leaders. Ghanaian politicians must get to work. Enough of the populism. They must get to real hardwork. Certainly, “the springs of life” could have prevented the Arab Spring. Maybe, just maybe if Bouazizi did not set himself ablaze on that fateful day, an internet search for the phrase “Arab Spring” would return no result. And if you still haven’t got the message, here is the clue: citizens are always in search of “the springs of life”, life’s most basic necessities, necessities like water, electricity and jobs. Then you might say it is only when citizens have access to education, and maybe to “free SHS education” that they’ll make themselves ready for the job market. But where exactly in Ghana do we have “the job market”? I don’t know. Does anyone have a gadget with a GPS that is able to track the location of “the job market in Ghana”? Many parents invest in their children’s education with the hope that when these children finish school and begin to work, they would recoup their investments to be able to sponsor the younger ones too through school. But alas, where are the jobs? Several thousands of unemployed graduates are roaming the streets. Fifty-five years after attaining nationhood, we have no mechanism in place to generate employment statistics for our nation. The politicians have no clue how to lead us to do this, let alone creating jobs for the unemployed youth. Yet they claim they are now very innovative to be able to generate the necessary funds to engage in populism. They should give the National Scholarships Secretariat the free hand to operate, and let them subsidize the cost of education for those pupils who pass their BECE but truly need assistance to progress. Let those who fail their BECE go back to resit their exams. This makes sense. After all, don’t we say basic education is free? Why should we push everyone to SHS, including those who have not got the foundation right in the name of allowing children to terminate their basic education at the SHS level? These pupils with the shaky foundation might never achieve anything useful from a “free SHS”. If anything at all, they’ll only succeed in drawing back those pupils who enter SHS as high-fliers. This is because teachers must then focus attention on those without the requisite background to build upon if they should gain anything from such a system. And who builds a house without first laying a foundation? Let us proceed along the path of economic wisdom. We shouldn’t be told a promise of “free SHS” is well-founded. Good intentions alone are not enough. When politicians have not been able to create jobs for the thousands of unemployed youth for the past several years, is it because they have bad intentions for them? No. I guess it’s only because they have no idea how to do it. So why now tell us they have the capacity to do something “more difficult” than creating jobs? They should please come again. As citizens we have only two options left: we must wake up now, and wake our leaders too up…or we all sleep forever….What’s wrong with you lot?