Former Second-in-Command of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and one of the main architects of the June 4, 1979 uprising, has strongly differed from the position of former President JJ Rawlings that blamed should be laid at the doorstep of Ex-President John Agyekum Kufuor for the current economic crisis the country is plagued with as well as the increase in corruption activities.
Major Kwadwo Boakye Djan (Rtd) aka Osahene, Former Head of Government and Official Spokesperson of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), believes past leaders including Rawlings should equally share the blame for failing to create wealth beside the existing ones the country inherited from its colonial masters.
Former President Rawlings has bemoaned the spate of corruption in the country, saying “if we were to use the yardstick of June 4, 1979, a lot more people would be paying a bigger price. The rage of the country then exacted a high price from corrupters. So how is it now that we are back in that dark tunnel, but with levels of corruption that we could never have imagined in those days?”
He also blamed his immediate successor for the current economic crisis the country is facing saying:
“I have said over and over again that Kufuor is responsible for setting in motion the moral and economic crisis that we are experiencing today, and I will say it again today. The investigation that Mills should have initiated never took place. But today let me give one very visible and concrete example of Kufuor’s mismanagement that we are all feeling the effects of.
But in an interview with the host of “Adeakye Abea” on Okay Fm, Osahene Boakye Gyan posited that corruption, which started from the era of Ghana’s first President, Osagyefuo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, was not the only bane of the downward spiral of the economy.
He diagnosed the country’s woes as the inability to consume what it did not produce locally but being compelled to produce what it did not consume after colonial rule.
He stressed that without reverse from the colonial mentality which has been the bedrock of the country’s development penchant, no matter the credentials of a leader in government the country cannot develop.
“I will blame our leaders for not reading through the problem including Mr. Rawlings himself. We should not conclude that a failing nation is as a result of only corruption; it is those who are not thinking properly who will blame it on corruption only…..let’s say that nobody is stealing our wealth in this country, the issue is that where is the wealth and who is creating what in this country? This is the fundamental problem and this has got nothing to do with corruption though corruption is not good, it does not explain why our economy is dwindling….corruption is not responsible for our failure but rather we are not producing as a country and that is the problem,” he asserted.