How does Ken Ofori-Atta feel listening to findings from the latest nationwide socio-economic survey? They reveal that 59% of Ghanaians think the country’s economy is headed in the wrong direction.

On Wednesday evening, the radio stations called in the experts for comments. One was an NDC economist. He was literally pleading with the Finance Minister to “make a call to IMF for a bail-out”.

Ken may have stopped his ears, dismissing the suggestion as coming from an opposition party that has always, since 2017, been looking for an opportunity to equalise, in order to thump their chest that “NPP, too, has gone to IMF”.

Then came the shocker. Next on air was an NPP economist, Dr Assibey Yeboah one-time Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Finance. He agreed with the NDC caller that the economy was so tattered it needed an IMF bail-out!

In 2014, when NDC ran to IMF, I gave up on Ghana. Yes, everybody, even America, borrows, but to have gone 14 times to IMF was like saying that Kwame Nkrumah was wrong in asserting that the African could solve his own problems.

I am not a learned economist, and I don’t need to be when hunger is pouring acid into my lungs; when prices of goods are getting out of hand; when I pay more for fuel every month, etc. These are signs that the man in charge of the economy has failed me. There is only one name I know: Ken Ofori Atta.

Vice President Bawumia carries a worse verdict. There is no Ghanaian above 15 today who does not remember Bawumia’s charge against the NDC, describing their borrowing as excessive. Today, six or so years later, has Bawumia borrowed!

But is NDC the answer?

Ex-President Mahama, in his first State of the Nation Address, announced that  “Mr Speaker, the meat is now down to the bone”.

Who ate the meat? At the time Mahama made this confession, the NDC had been in power since 2009. He himself had just taken over from Professor Atta Mills in 2012, an NDC government in which he (Mahama) had been the Vice President.

I don’t like the E Levy, but how much less or more anti-poor is it than the NDC’s imposition of a tax on condoms and farmer’s cutlasses? Even kayayei, the poorest of poor, were taxed by Mahama’s government.

The verdict is clear: both NPP and NDC have proved incapable of managing Ghana’s economy. Life is hard for Ghanaians.

But was life any better under any of our four military adventurists?

The verdict of history is that Ghana’s woes can be traced to military adventurism in government. Less than two years after the NLC coup that overthrew Nkrumah, its Chairman, Lt Gen Ankrah was pressured by his colleagues in government to step down because he had collected 6,000 cedis bribe from a Nigerian businessman, Nzeribe; three years after overthrowing Busia’s Progress Party government for devaluing the cedi, General Acheampong’s NRC devalued the currency; Rawlings killed the Generals for corruption and declared “One House One Toilet” but at the time of his death, he was in a house with multiple WCs and he had taken a bribe from Nigeria’s General Abacha.

My case is simple: Ghana does not need a military ruler, no matter how hard life is now.

Now to the Minister of Roads.

I agree with NPP General Secretary, John Buadu that ¢78 million from road tolls is a pittance compared with the ¢6.9 billion expected from E Levy. Should that, however, be the reason a Roads Minister would rush to close down all toll booths in Ghana within 24 hours of the 2022 Budget presentation?

It’s been five months since the toll booths were ordered closed. Is it inconceivable that five months revenues from them could buy tables and chairs for hundreds of school children who sit in the dust on bare earth or go to schools under trees?

The Ewes say the fool is the man who throws away the water in his pot just because he has seen signs of rain.

John Agyekum Kufuor was right in repeating the words of Jesus Christ, that the poor will always be with us. An American evangelist in the 1980s used to advise that “the only way to help the poor is not be poor yourself”. He was so wealthy he had an entire wardrobe for neckties, a wardrobe for suits and rack upon rack of shoes, yet he never gave alms.

The Roads Minister has no poor man in his family.