Righting The Wrongs Before 2020 (1) – (AFRIMA, Afeku & The Arts)

As a private newspaper with a patriotic bias, the best we can do for President Nana Akufo-Addo, and mother Ghana, for that matter, is to be the responsible watchdogs we ought to be and not become praise singing lapdogs incapable of creating awareness of an impending evil. 

We would write about the wrongs and bark loud enough to remind the President of some of the bitter truths hidden from him by his own appointees. We do this with the hope that the President would act on them and save the situation before his political rivals pounce on them to use as political currency.

In the first of such series, our focus would be on the unaccounted-for tax payers money that was used by the former Minister for Tourism Arts and Culture, Madam Catharine Afeku to organize the 5th All Africa Music Awards (AFRIMA) in the year 2018.

Mr. President, we ask you to call for a probe into the AFRIMA saga and how much of the tax payer’s money was used, what it was used for and whether it does not amount to causing financial loss to the state.

Did someone tell Cabinet a lie on the figures? Do the signed documents tally with the figures that were officially given by the then Minister?  If the next government after the NPP decides to audit the AFRIMA expenses and adjourning matters, would the outcome do the NPP good?

Anytime this matter is raised, government appointees in the Arts, including the current Minister herself, Barbara Oteng Gyasi, get jittery and are unable to give clear answers to clear the government’s name.

The New Publisher has insider information that Barbara Oteng Gyasi herself may have not been given the requisite handing over notes by Catharine Afeku to explain the AFRIMA expenditure.

Barbara Oteng Gyasi has insisted the matter should be closed so we move on as a people. She is not to be blamed for thinking that way. Her style of politics is a bit diplomatic and has affected her approach to certain issues.

In politics, you do not sweep certain dirt under the carpet and pray it remains there. They would come haunting you like demonic shadows from the past.

Never! Not when it happened at a Ministry full of civil and public servants from different political parties. It is just a matter of time and the baby lizard that was flushed into the water closet would grow into a crocodile sized monster.

Mr. President, if  the NPP government of which you lead, does not open this AFRIMA chapter to investigate in detail what went wrong and either exonerate itself from all wrong doings or where necessary, let justice take its full course on persons found culpable of financial malfeasance, it would be a case of one bad apple  spoiling the bunch.

As for matters of  why  the current Minister for Tourism has no official vehcle and matters of a delay in passing the Creative Arts Bill and even removing the adjective ‘interim’, from the Interim Creative Arts Council, these are matters of failed political promises and not necessarily an illegality that can tarnish the government’s reputation.

We continue next edition.