This article glosses over specific economic situations. For more specific examples of the current economic hardships, please read more here: An article by Anakwa Dwamena on economic situation in Ghana

In 2017, as Ghana celebrated her 60th year of independence from colonial rule, Ghanaians in New York City gathered at the City Council Chambers to commemorate this monumental juncture. As Anakwa Dwamena described it, Ghanaians had put their arms around New York City once more. For generations, going back to before 1951 when Dr. Kwame Nkrumah had stopped by the city on his way to Lincoln University, Ghanaians have been embracing the New York spirit of free thought, progress and liberty. To the Ghanaians who had gathered there, Nkrumah’s sojourns in the city left a lasting footprint that still shapes their mode of relations with the city and its people. Nkrumah’s spirit was invoked during the event and portrayed as that of a unifying force that connects all people to fight for a free, more just, equitable society.

Meanwhile, in Ghana, the commemoration marked a new hope, a new beginning from the darkness (literally) that the previous NDC led government unleashed on us. The Akuffo Addo led NPP government have barely been in office for three months and there was a breathe of new air. The derailed country was back on its track. No less was this reinvigorated spirit emerge from the charming vice president, a highly informed economist, whose understanding of sophisticated theoretical economics seemed to surpass every one else’s. He will be heading the Economic Management Team. This, in addition to Akuffo Addo’s incessant activism for economic growth for decades, made Ghanaians have a conviction that a new dawn is truly here. At the bare minimum, this government could not be worse than the previous Mahama led NDC government. More likely, the Akuffo Addo government was touted as one that could bring forth the spirit of social, economic and political development that could parallel what Nkrumah set off and imagined post-independence.

In almost 7 years of Mr. Akuffo Addo and Dr. Bawumia’s government, the economic, social and political atmosphere of Ghana could not be any worse. Inflation is soaring, unemployment rates keep increasing, and salaries do not match the rising cost of living, forcing an unprecedented mass emigration of skilled labor. Besides all these economic hardships, the bogeyman facing the country is the rampant corruption and other dishonorable acts by the government and its cronies that ends with abuse and/or embezzlement of tax payers’ money. Worse still, the government uses the misery that taxpayers’ go through as discrete datapoints in their lobbying for international loans, debt reliefs and bailouts; programs that come with austerity measures which only deepens the afflictions of taxpayers.

These and many more issues prompted the weeks long #OccupyJulorbiHouse protests, which began in Accra, to London, Berlin, and without a doubt scheduled to take place in New York City on Saturday, 7th October 2023.

Accra

The #OccupyJulorbiHouse protests started on September 21st, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s birthday in Accra. When it started, the government, through the Ghana police had intended to clamp it down. Protesters were unlawfully arrested and, in certain cases, harassed. Despite these abuse of power, the determination fermented by the numerous scandals in the government that were now beginning to surface, carried the protesters through the planned three-day protest. In spite of rampant arrests and harassments, the Ghanaian mainstream media failed to cover any of them. This was largely due to the politicization of the media, a very dangerous precedent for any democracy, which is being entrenched in Ghanaian politics.

The aftermath of the three-day protests in Accra was the never-ending unsealing of many of the abuse and/or conflicts of interests and/or corruption that have happened in the past 7 years since the Akuffo-Addo led government took office. These revelations are mostly uncovered by citizen-journalists and other activists. Among others issues, major media persons, such as Kwame Sefa Kayi, who is probably a personification of morning shows in the entire country, have received politically motivated appointments. These appointments, regardless of any arguments made to justify them, are meant to limit the critique of these journalists on the performance of the government. This can explain why there weren’t adequate report on such an assault of Ghana’s democracy by the police (who were of course empowered by the government. According to them, their acts were “orders from above”). A journalist without the liberty to critique the politics of the country is no journalist.

Yet, politically motivated appointment of journalists is the least of the scandals that have been unearthed post-Accra #OccupyJulorbiHouse. The scope of these malice meted by the Akuffo Addo led government has left people wondering if this is an orchestrated state capture. In fact, in a widely circulated document, which was apparently publicized in 2020, and is likely to be a propaganda by an unknown author (likely from the opposition party, NDC), spells out how this hypothetical capture will unfold. For a document that was written at least in 2020, it sure has been able to predict the decay of Ghana, and all that she stands for: Freedom, Fearless Honesty, Absence of Oppression.

London

On September 29, 2023, protesters of #OccupyJulorbiHouse were marching to the Ghana High Commission to echo the message of their counterparts in Accra. To their surprise, they were met by counter-protesters, who have come to showcase the good deeds of the Nana Akuffo-Addo government. The good deeds, according to the protesters, included the implementation of digital address, Ghana card and other ludicrous achievements, most of which are either shabbily implemented or untrue. For instance, one of the counter-protesters had claimed on their placard that the Ghana card could be used as a travel document. This is not true. Even if it were, the implementation of such a card cannot be an achievement of a government that is to be paraded. It can impress a hunter-gatherer tribesman.

More crucially, what this counter-protest laid bare is the NPP government’s purposive iron hand on public opinion. Since assuming political power in 2017, the Akuffo-Addo government has expanded its social set strategically; recruiting, as mentioned earlier, prominent media personnel, in addition to the establishment of troll farms and generative robots tasked with promoting the government’s ideas or countering anti-government criticism on social media. As Walter Lipmann has made clear in his authoritative book on public opinion, the self-centered person depends on their social set for two things. First a person relies on their social set to bring the range of affairs outside their immediate point of contact into their range of judgments that form in their heads. Second, the social set of a person who seeks to control, by proxy, the political ideas formed in the heads of distant constituencies, serves as the person’s extension. It could be insisted that a good politician is the one that is able to use the second role of the social set effectively.

The Akuffo-Addo government has thoroughly put to use the second role, to the point of its transmutation into abuse. The abuse becomes clear once the self-centeredness that drove the second role of the social set is inverted to be stemming from a need within the person. This will reveal self-centeredness as an appendage of egotism, or its very nature thereof, instead of being the case of geographic proximity or its lack. Egotism results from an assumed self-importance that is not hard to imagine from the acts of any group that has assumed political power. The Akuffo-Addo government and its cronies have not failed one bit to parade their egomania. Their words ooze condescension and are purely gaslighting. They assume they are beyond reproach and criticism. So the counter-protestors in London were no less confident in arrogating that the protestors who had only come to express their displeasure at the rot happening in the NPP administration, were either less Ghanaian or no Ghanaian at all. For if they were truly Ghanaians, they will kowtow to the NPP’s conceit. It’s only through the admission of this conceit does their true power or self-importance becomes a reality. It’s a typical case of bullying that many kids face in high schools.

Berlin

When the protests moved to Berlin a few days later, the story was no less different from the case in London. Lo and behold, counter-protestors had gathered to legitimize their masters power.

New York City (NYC)

As New York City prepares its protests on October 7th, lessons should be learnt from the government’s incessant assault on public opinion. The government has shown over again that it’s more concerned with the pictures painted in the minds of people, instead of actually doing anything meaningful to make those pictures a reality (after all, that’s a hallmark of a ‘good’ politics). Ghanaians in NYC have the ultimate task of painting a picture of the reality that the government has invested so much to suppress. We should gain inspiration from the forward to Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s posthumously published book Revolutionary Paths, when he had said “…I was revolted by the ruthless exploitation and political oppression of the people of [Ghana] that I know no peace.” It’s time to put our arms around New York City once again, remembering that the streets we will walk today are those that shaped Nkrumah and all that he stood for yesterday. As well, this march has the propensity to shape how generations will fare, economically, politically and morally tomorrow.

The writer, Alexander Kwakye tweets @alexrepgh

Further reading:  An article by Anakwa Dwamena on economic situation in Ghana

Watch this: A satiric video about #OccupyJulorbiHouse by @Welbie on Twitter