Mr Kwaku Baako Jnr, the man with arguably the most documents in Ghana hastily produced a document on Peace FM’s Kokrokoo Programme of Wednesday December 07, 2011 intended to eulogize the Convention People’s Party (CPP) of Kwame Nkrumah. Unfortunately, it exposed the deep seated corruption that was perpetuated by the great CPP of the late President Kwame Nkrumah and additionally dented Mr Baako’s reputation as a fair minded social commentator.
Whilst offering his views on the raging allegations that the hitherto non-profligate National Democratic Congress (NDC) is, upon the assumption of power putting up a multi-million head office complex in Accra, Mr. Baako argued rightly that it is not necessarily out of place for a party of the stature of the NDC to do so. To support this claim, he cited elaborately that whilst in power the CPP constructed the current Ministry of Information Building as its national head office. His additional comments clearly faulted the National Liberation Council (NLC) government for confiscating that edifice to the state. It was this seemingly harmless example and the additional comments which sought to question the basis for the confiscation of the building to the state which has unfortunately exposed Nkrumah’s CPP as corrupt and also permitted me to grudgingly tag Mr. Baako as being anything but fair minded as far as the CPP is concerned.
In his analysis, Mr Baako mentioned several individuals and companies who according to him contributed financially to the construction of the then CPP headquarters. Amongst the names mentioned were A-Lang Limited and Oyoko Contractors. Please permit me to use A-Lang Limited for my analysis as I do not have any ready evidence of the works done by Oyoko Contractors in those days.
A-Lang was a very good construction firm established by a Swiss national Mr. Alfred Lang who was domiciled in Ghana in the early 1940’s. In fact A-Lang was said to be the standard for construction in those days. It was contracted to build most of the buildings that the state and its numerous para-statal institutions as well as private individuals and institutions initiated in those days. So A-Lang who were undertaking numerous government contracts in a country where the government was and is still the largest employer as far as construction is concerned was in good business and hence had every incentive to protect their interests through any means one being (according to Kwaku Baako) giving gifts to the CPP. This purported act of A-Lang to donate money to the CPP for the construction of their party head office raises serious issues of corruption and conflict of interest. A careful reading of all the editions of the Government of Ghana’s Articles of Agreement and Conditions of Contract originally called the Pink Form clearly shows that it frowns on Contractors giving any gifts to any officials and entities related to any project they are undertaking for whatever reason. Hence if Mr. Baako claims are true reflections of what happened and he does not see anything wrong with such happenings, then I will have to state that my highly respected Mr.Baako was on that occasion being inconsistent as most politicians, social commentators and media practitioners.
It is important in this respect to remind readers that not very long ago Mr. Baako saw everything wrong in some officials of SCANCEM, the parent company of GHACEM, allegedly providing financial support to the NDC. In fact he even rightly travelled as far as Norway to collect evidence of the harm that the NDC inflicted on Ghanaians in respect of the divestiture of GHACEM through its acceptance of gifts from SCANCEM. Is it therefore not surprising that Mr. Baako fails to see any negatives with Nkrumah’s CPP receiving financial donations from construction companies who were then handling huge government jobs? How can a patriot not support a subsequent government who rights such abominable wrongs by confiscating these ill-gotten properties to the state? It is such selective amnesia (apologies Kwaku Baako) exhibited by people in responsible social, traditional, political and economic standing that has resigned our country to a place where majority of the populace cannot achieve their aspirations. Our standards for what is bad and should be condemned is so warped that we are able to amend our positions without a wink.
I am sure that anytime those who fought for media freedom listen to the shifting positions of Mr. Baako and the large majority of media players, they cringe. This is because the media have largely been hijacked by commentators who are not using the media improve access to quality and fair minded information. Their selective amnesia rather leads them to deal in twists, outright lies and jaundiced analysis. Let me remind those inconsistent commentators that their actions and inactions are hurting the country and condemning a lot of our people to hopelessness. Finally to Mr Baako, thank you for proving incontrovertible evidence that Nkrumah’s CPP was indeed corrupt.