Politics - ‘Relentless’ War on the twin evils of Corruption And Tribalism?

Nduom Declares ‘Relentless’ War on Corruption and Tribalism according Modern Ghana.

The Founder of the Progressive People's Party    (PPP) Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom has asked Ghanaians to wage war against “the twin evils of corruption and tribalism”.

According to him, these cankers are killing the national spirit.

“Our nation is in a deadly embrace with corruption, the rot that is killing our national spirit. That rot gave birth to dumsor. That rot is what has sent us back again to the IMF.”

Dr. Nduom expressed these sentiments on his official Facebook page in his 58th independence anniversary message on Friday, March 6.

He lamented how the majority of Ghanaians have been made poor in the midst of plenty.

“We have suffered under leaders - political, religious, business and social, who have promised a lot to be given the opportunity to lead but have disappointed the people with selfish partisan political and ethnic/tribal approach to governance.”

What begs an answer is can African politicians have the ability and the confidence to  advocate a national sprit and develop sustainable economy to generate enough income to compensate them more than the free privilege they getting from the international community?

A case in point is the Ethiopian ethnic regime's official tribal regime that survive on corruption and begging from the international community legitimate economic activities.   Fundamentally, tribalism is driven by self-preservation by patronizing own tribe to sustain its hegemony financed by corruption. There is no other mechanism it can be sustained where competitive political and economic environment amount to a surrender of tribalism to democratic rule and individual freedom that would marginalize tribal regimes on the sideline and reduce  corruption as individual petty theft.

Therefore, tribalism is the mother of corruption than its twin as Dr. Nduom contend. Unlike ideology driven corruption (centralization) that brings politicians together on some ideal societal conditions against the officially stated policy, under tribalism, corruption is the underline official policy against the national sprit -- freedom, democracy and prosperity of all the citizens.

Africa's sustained tribalism is the legacy of colonialism that is still encouraged and fueled by international Aid.  The regime in Ethiopia is a good case study of how the international community promote and mainstream tribal corruption as legitimate official financing mechanism to self-finance itself.

Two important point can be made on the international community complicity to sustain tribalism thus corruption. First, financing the official tribal Federalism as legitimate political arrangement to sustain it  from its natural death. Second, promoting tribal corruption as a legitimate economic activity by mainstreaming it as investment and economic development.

In both cases, they failed the conventional wisdom of developmental measures known to the world by relegating capital fungibility and liquidity and the rule of the market to tribal regimes imagination.  At the meantime, they reduced the rule of law to tribal exercise of mainstreaming corruption to the benefit of a tribe or tribes. In short, the ‘national sprit’ is reduced as entertainment of tribal chiefs’ (politicians) maximizing their interest in a banana republic they created and allowed to sustain it by the international community subsidy.  

Dr. Nduom' statement;  “Our nation is in a deadly embrace with corruption, the rot that is killing our national spirit. That rot gave birth to dumsor*. That rot is what has sent us back again to the IMF.”

The statement might not mean much for the beneficiary of tribalism that congregate around state power sustained by international charity and doing very well for themselves with no practical efforts. It also might not have much meaning for the intellectual elites that see it as an academic exercise or power struggle with the elites in power that benefit out of the status qua. 

But, Dr. Nduom point touch on the nerve center of what many progressive intellectuals in Africa have been saying for far too long that never materialized. His appeal to the people of Ghana instead of the elites appears out of the frustration many before him attempted and failed to deal with 'the rot that is killing our national sprit', as he put it.  

There is unspoken truth African elites are trapped between self-interest generated by tribalism at home or the international Aid flow from abroad. That reality is evident when the data is mapped where most are congregated  to rip the highest economic benefits of what they do at enormous cost to the vast majority of the people of Africa.

Under the status qua, the elites have no incentive for national interest to overcome self interest short of popular revolution for democratic representation. Ghana with the ingenuity of her progressive elites achieved  the first hurdle.  The second; dislodging the most intricate economy order that was build around tribal interest and 'poverty industry' that 'rot the national sprit' is much complex to address and difficult but not impossible to reverse for countries like Ghana that overcame the first hurdle. But, it require extreme care how to deal with the entrenched interest groups that can undermine or completely reverse the hard fought and won democracy.    

The Ghana Anti-corruption Coalition,  Ghana Journalists Association (GJA),  Centre for Democratic Development, Ghana (CDD) and corruption groups and independent national Medias that specialize in economic policy and the intricate business transactions that affect the population, particularly in international trade  and investment that primarily leads to high level corruption and disruption of the markets can reverse the long entrenched economic order that besiege most African countries often driven by some of the powerful foreign extractive industries and Aid agencies' that operate with impunity.  

Many African countries can learn from Ghana's transition to democracy. Professor George Ayittey described the success of Ghana's transition to democracy on four factors, the existence of a free media, vibrant and vigilant civil society groups and NGOs,  maturing of political leaders and pure luck.

Reinforcing the importance of free Media, he quoted New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman;

"Let's stop sending Africa lectures on democracy. Let's instead make all aid, all IMF-World Bank loans, all debt relief conditional on African governments permitting free FM radio stations. Africans will do the rest,"

Prof. Ayittey went on; "Sadly, Africans have not been able to do the rest because, currently, only 10 of the 54 African countries have a free media. In Ethiopia, for example, there is only one government-controlled television network for 83 million people."

The 'twin evils of corruption and tribalism' Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom referred are the products of a deliberate blackout of the truth by the ruling elites to protect their power and economic interest by restricting the free Media' for Africans not to do the rest; as Friedman put it.

The international community's complicity and interest to suppress the truth, worst yet to finance 'the twin evils of corruption and tribalism' continue to hunt millions of Africans into poverty and conflicts and underdevelopment.     

More tragic is, the same international community present themselves as change agents by suppressing the truth in collaboration with the ruling regimes.

At the end on the day, the problem of Africans can only be solved by making the international community as accountable as the regimes.  After all, it takes two to tango, and the regimes can't survive without the full participation of the international community.

The question is not why but, what jurisdiction the international community can be accountable and by whom?   

* Dumsor is a popular Ghanaian term used to describe persistent electric power outages. The term is coined from two separate words from the Twi dialect of the Akan language (a language spoken widely in Ghana), dum (to turn off or quench) and sɔ (to turn on or to make light).