A Following is Never Owned
/#GhanaVision 2020
A following is never owned; it's earned.
A party is never owned; it's found and filled.
A movement is never owned; it's started and followed.
Now read back up to what "following" means.
Whenever there are fights about movements, it saddens me. It only means the movement is myth-y.
Someone decided to own it. And in owning it, it becomes one that they must now populate.
But how do you populate a movement?
When there are fights about opinions,
And insults are traded in its place, I wonder:
When will turf and territory prostrate before humanity, instead of the other way round?
The truth is, we Ghanaians have never had the opportunity to vote on merit and capability. We have always voted on popularity and populism. From the era of Nkrumah as Prime Minister right down to President Akufo-Addo, we have never been strategically-thinking creatures in the majority!
To compound the problem, we never had the chance to unite ethnically before leaping straight into democracy or even independence. From the days of brutal inter-ethnic fighting in the 1600s and 1700s, the colonial masters came to take control until they left us in 1957. Have they truly left us? Have we truly left them? We went straight into our own post-colonial form and spirit of politics on the basis of populism!
As the adrenaline left our system and the realities of hard work drove home, we began to look for ways to either re-assert our old tribal dominances or to seek ways to rise above them (for those who were slaves and minions). Power seeks the familiar, and we began rooting out what we left behind in year 1600-kominini (i.e. 16-something). Our populist politics tapped into this sordid power play like a he-goat on heat thrown into the midst of wildly-ready she-goats.
1957 dribbled the ball down to 2017 and here we are in 2020. Wretched remnants of a past that was never fully glorious; never quite matured, yet thrown into play without a regent to play daddy. Do we need a daddy? Do we need parents? What we need are some adults in this goddamn country! And by God, we better knuckle down and work towards it! The year 2020 better show you resolved to vote with Ghana in mind, or to quit complaining.
(Wo)Man's hot.
***
"The Ghana I Dream Of” #TheGoldaUpwardCurve
This is an idea I am happy to have any leader copy. If they do not, I will run for president and do the damn thing myself.
Create a National Welfare Fund that will take up portions of the Consolidated and Legacy funds. It will make the bulk of its funds from fines: for noise pollution, environmental degradation, poor waste management, littering, building zone violations, and traffic violations at individual, group, neighborhood, and industrial levels.
This Fund will be used to provide Ghs 10, 000 (at least) per annum to highly impoverished and needy citizens for either schooling, artisanal skills, small business support, or health and old age support. The beneficiaries will be selected via highly meritocratic and transparent processes (see me in chambers for details) and at a thoroughly devolved level of community. It will require institutional and district identification, application process validation and a selection that will take no more than one week. It will also involve fund oversight members selected every year at the neighborhood level and board members picked from assembly levels.
The idea of the Fund is to bridge the gap between the wealthy and poor or highly impoverished demographics in the country and to provide welfare as well as incentive for improving one's own life. It will replace non-transparent and unmeritocratic schemes (like MASLOC, COTVET, State Scholarship, LEAP, School Feeding) and eventually lead to the dissolution of one or two state funds that go into dark budgets for politics[i].
Beneficiaries of this National Welfare Fund will be selected from vulnerable populations in courts, prisons, hospitals or health facilities, the streets, psychiatric facilities, schools, etc., and will have verification of their personal socio-economic circumstances done through a triangulated validation. This verification comes from persons with familiarity of the applicant – people familiar with their hardship from a distance or up close. This improves the socio-cultural rapport and ties of most communities immediately, as most will realise how much transparent relationships will matter to their case.
The beneficiary will receive 30% to 70% of the financial support in tranche(s) unless it is for health reasons (in which case 100% might sometimes be given in direct transmission to service providers on the case) and each tranche will be pegged on specific milestone achievements being clocked by the beneficiary to genuinely build up on their skills, education, health, or business, so that by the end of receiving these funds, there is measurable improvement.
Further, funding can be given in support to return beneficiaries only if they have sustained their performance in what they were supported in previously. Or, if there is a dire need in a new aspect under one of the areas applicable for funding. Same rules will apply for tranche support. A third time repeat beneficiary will be advised and receive extraordinary coaching, counselling, or apprenticeship before being considered for further support.
This fund will simultaneously resolve many social, cultural, state, and devolution issues in the short-term. It will reduce noise, waste, and environmental pollution; raise funds without raising taxes; reduce poverty and improve the local economy; improve law and order and afford metropolitan, police, health, and state entities a bit of room to breath and apply their energy and employees to more needed areas; improve the skills and capacities of citizens; bring dignity to our people; and provide security and stability to the nation. It will also introduce the principle of merit, accountability, and transparency back into leadership and governance.
There are good men and women who will build this from the ground up in a split second, monitor and evaluate it in integrity, build checks and measures to prevent its corruption, and commit to keeping it running. I know many and I see many others.
[i] “Dark budgets for politics” are the many points along financial reporting where funds vanish “legally” and evade auditing. It points to the manner in which funds are handled and the deliberate lack of transparency and lack of laws to insist on the right thing being done.
Golda Naa Adaku Addo is a strategist and a trainer in Communications, Monitoring & Evaluation, Knowledge Production, Policy, and Community Development. She brings a piercing and uncanny forecasting ability to many areas of national development, and often engages her followers in a hybrid of playful-serious musings that often triggers surprise or humour, and leads to more musings, creates some new perceptions, challenges mindsets, and throws some hard truths at concretised harmful institutional thinking.