Ghanaians Call This ‘Skin-Pain’

Once upon a time in the history of Ghana, John Mahama was president of the country on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

By then, the party’s communicators and government functionaries defended tooth and nail a rather funny happening when President Mahama in his State of the Nations Address in Parliament, took time to parade to the whole world, persons, including students in school uniform, women and children he claimed were beneficiaries of various interventions by his NDC-led government.

During that particular State of the Nations Address in Parliament, President Mahama took his time and called out some 16 individuals, some of whom had been brought from across the country to Parliament just to show that they had benefited from one government initiative or another.

THE PUBLISHER recalls the uproar that enveloped the country, when John Mahama mentioned that one of the beneficiaries was into pig farming and strangely, the person had an Islamic name. As strange as the whole episode was, NDC spokespersons and apparatchiks justified the ‘showcasing’ and described it as ‘evidence based.

Today, THE PUBLISHER is amazed that, the same NDC spokespersons say they find everything thing wrong with the fact that there was an official state function to announce the Nana Addo led-government has restored the monetary allowance for trainee nurses, scrapped by the John Mahama led-Government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

The beneficiaries of the restored allowance would be some fifty-eight thousand (58, 000) health trainees, comprising nurses and midwives and would cost government an amount of two hundred and thirty-two million Ghana cedis (GH¢232,000,000) for the 2017/18 academic year alone.

Each of the 58, 000 health trainees will be paid an allowance of four hundred Ghana cedis (GH¢400.00) for each of the ten months of the academic 2017/18 year.

It is surprising that when just some 16 persons benefited from a government initiative, some people felt it was okay to showcase those 16 during an official and important state function such as the State of the Nation Address, yet the same persons have a problem when a state function is held to announce a project that would benefit as many as 58, 000 Ghanaians.

If this is not hypocrisy and double standards, then it could be what is known as ‘skin-pain’ in Ghanaian local parlance.

The NDC, while in government used official events to communicate achievements of governments and very often, President Mahama was seen all sorts of functions held to announce one achievement or another, no matter how small or insignificant it was.

Today, the same NDC is saying it is propagandist to organize a function to announce a policy that benefits as many as 58, 000 people. This is certainly ‘skin-pain’

Source: thePublisher