Four threaten to burn down South African High Commission

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Four persons on Friday threatened to burn down the South African High Commission in Accra in the heat of the xenophobic attacks on foreigners in South Africa.

South Africa’s High Commissioner to Ghana Ms Lulama Xingwana who disclosed this to the media in Accra on Monday said the Commission has been receiving threats from persons she did not name.

She said four men stormed the High Commission’s premises Friday and forcefully tried to enter the offices but their effort was thwarted by the security attachment at the Commission.

“After that they threatened that they will be coming back to burn the High Commission’s offices,” Ms Xingwana revealed.

She said the threats have been reported to the police, “and we have received the support from the police to make sure that the premises are safe”.

The Commission has staff who are both Ghanaians and South Africans and must all be protected, Ms Xingwana said.

The xenophobic attacks are being fuelled by South African nationals who feel foreigners have taken over their jobs leaving them unemployed.

But Ms  Xingwana unequivocally condemned the xenophobic attacks, stressing that South Africans who want jobs must go through the proper channels to secure one.

Meanwhile, 10 people have so far been confirmed dead in xenophobic attacks and several others maimed.

Although Ghana’s High Commission there has confirmed that five Ghanaians have died, spokesperson for the South African police, Solomon Makgale, in an interview on Adom FM’s morning show ‘Dwaso Nsem’ could not confirm the causes of their deaths.

He also indicated that about a 100 people have been arrested in connection with the attacks and will be put before court later today.

In related developments, pressure group, Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG) is demanding the expulsion of the South African High Commissioner to Ghana and other key staff.

The group is also putting pressure on Ghana’s President, John Mahama to use his office as the Chairman of ECOWAS to push for travel bans on the Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini , the South African President, Jacob Zuma, his Cabinet ministers, the head of the South African police and other top government officials

myjoyonline

 

Via: -Daily Guide  

French Gov’t Positive About Ghana’s Prospects

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French business delegation with President Mahama

France Ambassador to Ghana, Frederic Clavier has expressed confidence in Ghana despite the numerous economic challenges.

He said France was ready to collaborate with the Government of Ghana to help address the various economic challenges.

Mr. Clavier, who made this known at his residence when a French business delegation paid a courtesy call on him, said the partnership would also deepen the bilateral relationship between the two countries.

The delegation, made up of representatives of about 37 companies in various sectors like energy, transport and logistics, industrial projects and banking and financial services, among others, was in the country to explore investment opportunities.

“The French Government is very confident in the future of Ghana. We have delivered the message that we have to partner by investing now in Ghana.

“We know that the competition is much opened and many stakeholders are participating but France has many qualities in terms of quality of service,” Mr Clavier said.

France is currently investing over $1.2billion in bilateral trade with Ghana, and it plans to double that amount in next two years.

The envoy revealed that French business represents only three percent of the market in Ghana and “that is why we do need to have more partnerships.

“We came to see what type of joint ventures that can be made with the Ghanaian companies so as to accelerate this capacity for the French companies and to create jobs in Ghana.

Chairman of the African Committee for MEDEF International, Patrick Lucas, who was the leader of the delegation, said once the current energy crisis has been resolved, the investments of Ghanaian and French industries as well as European would increase.

“Energy is the key issue to facilitate the development of the economy in years to come. We know the difficulties you are facing but we know as well the possible and potential you have got subject to a few problems that can be solved.

“With energy and infrastructure, it is possible.  Once it has been done, it will open a way for Ghanaian industries as well as French investment and surely European investment,” he said.

By Nii Ogbamey Tetteh

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Via: -Daily Guide  

Ill-Gotten Almost Everything

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My compatriots, the talk everywhere is ill-gotten wealth.

It is the latest among the never-ending congress scandals. Ill-gotten wealth my compatriots have suspected, rumoured and heard of. Those who have seen it have more of talked it. Today, however, we all know from confirmation, ranting, lamentation and whatever you choose to call it of a congress insider, that, indeed, congresspeople are amassing ill-gotten wealth.

The cat of covertly stealing state resources, which their cat-killer chair forgot to, or was unable to kill, is out of the bag. The rot of congress plunder of our resources has been confirmed from within the group’s own inner circle. If someone who has worked at the heart of the presidency with access to intelligence tells you there is evidence of ill-gotten wealth, you would be the greatest of fools to question that.

Many of us had heard of a telco bribe of one million dollars to a big mouth critique of a certain sale in the ɔsono administration. One million dollars into that one pocket began the loading of thieved funds which continued through trade matters. The telco spot cash payment had attracted a young self-confessed dunderhead of frontal and dorsal loading to blabber over a one million dollar target to quit politics.

So apparently, if you want your pocket loaded, you clamour and covet a communication posting. There, you can steal big and make the money big time. If you want to steal one million dollars in the shortest possible time, that is where to go. The boss knows it. He has been there before and so he makes sure he keeps one of his boys there.

The ill-gotten wealth guy worked his way there because he knew beef and honey are stashed there. Unlike that, the incumbent hoped to be there and was sent there. Anyway, whether one worked to go there, or was sent there matters not. It is a big money making place known to the boss and by that knowledge he poses or disposes strategically to encourage amassing ill-gotten wealth.

In my estimation, the ill-gotten is the sum of thieving, arrogance, greed and avarice. If you are greedy, you come to believe and forget that if you steal in print and you are caught, you can steal money and not get caught.

You become so intoxicated with thieving, the motherland money you have stolen included, that you begin to act kingmaker and come to see yourself as president.

It is amazing how an appointer manages to find this array of daftness and ignorance which end up thievery and of arrogance. Oh, such misfits and people of all kinds of shady know little or close to nothing character. The speaker who spoke the ill-gotten word is believed to have an unclear KNUST-UG transition. And the one he spoke the ill-gotten about is known to have committed an academic high crime punishable by the withdrawal of an awarded degree.

When people with shady character are appointed into ministerial positions, you can expect their performance, actions and inactions to be shady. If a person can tell you that being a dining hall prefect is working experience upon which he should be appointed a minister, you should know he is destined to steal.

I think it should be possible to find out from a prospective deputy defence minister whether he was ever enrolled in a cadet corps or not because that could be a useful criterion for evaluating him. For such a person to have not prepared himself at all for vetting to the extent of not knowing about army ranks, I bet he could be in for thieving.

Take a close look and you would realise that as for congress anything and everything about them is ill-gotten. It could be wealth, position, authority, and influence: all that is acquired in an ill-gotten manner. Everything and anything in the possession of a congressperson, owned by her/him is ill-gotten.

Strange congress – NUGS thieves and SRC thieves – have now descended down on the hierarchy steps to DHP thieves. If you care, the DHP makes me feel like hypothesising that the CV of prospective appointees as presented to the parliamentary vetting would most likely relate to the overall performance of the government formed from those CVs.

And I doubt that those who were eventually appointed as ministers in the ɔsono administration ever stated their student leader positions as job experience. They seem solid than that.

Husbands and wives form consortiums to rule. Recently, we heard a consort’s ‘There is God ooo!’Someone wondered about the Clintons why ‘a man driven, intelligent and ambitious’ would want a wife who was his equal ‘rather than one who was helpful, pliable, even decorative subordinate.’ Your guess of the motherland’s lot is as good as mine.

By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh

 

 

Via: -Daily Guide  

Great Comic Show From The Jesters!

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I have on many occasions likened the actions of the Zu-za to that of a joker. Despite always supporting my claim with evidence, many Zu-za sympathisers have consistently rejected my claims. One of such persons is my cousin, Nuhu.

Nuhu is a Zu-za fanatic by all standards. He finds nothing wrong with anything that his party or government does. Indeed, he supports all actions of the Zu-za government, good or bad, with so much zeal that one tends to wonder if he is rational in his thinking. I was therefore shocked to the bone when he called me to complain bitterly about the drama that unfolded at Parliament’s Appointment Committee (PAC) last Tuesday.

I was just recovering from a bout with malaria and was having an afternoon nap when he called. I ignored the caller when my phone first rang. But the persistence of the caller compelled me to pick the call. Nuhu fumed with rage as he complained bitterly about the poor performance of the deputy ministerial nominees. His concluding remarks kept ringing in my ears long after we finished the chat: “Ogboro, I’ve eaten humble pie. This Mahama government is full of mediocre ministers and jokers.”

Though I was not surprised at the drama that unfolded at PAC, I perfectly understood my cousin’s reaction. The failure of a deputy defence ministerial nominee to mention a single rank in the country’s armed forces is shocking, to say the least. Is it not puzzling that the nominee did not even bother to do little research on the ministry that he is going to head?

Shocking as his performance was, one cannot help but understand him. The nominee himself knows more than we do that competence is not the reason for his nomination. He therefore did not think it important to bother to do any research. After all, he has a political godmother in the person of the First Lady herself.

Another deputy ministerial nominee exhibited his comic skills when he gleefully stated on his Curriculum Vitae (CV) that his work experience was serving as a dining hall prefect in senior secondary school. How that could help him in his prospective position as a deputy minister defies common sense. But hey, in a government that people without any work experience are appointed as ministers and deputy ministers, having been a dining hall prefect could easily pass.

Abusuapanin, do not be surprised if the House of Honourables endorses the nomination of the Dining Hall Deputy Minister and Deputy Minister I-Know-No-Rank. Why? The answer is not far-fetched. Many such nominees have gone through vetting at the House of Honourables and passed, only to publicly soil their ministerial clothing with faecal matter.

Need I remind you of Sister Vicky of vikileaks fame? From the first day she was sworn-in as deputy minister, the writing was on the wall for all to see. It was more than obvious that the state was simply splashing cowries on an incompetent deputy minister. But when we complained, we were told ours were useless lamentations. Did the vikileaks not vindicate us?

Sad to say, but the bitter truth is that most of our deputy ministers produce next to nothing for this country. They are virtually a drain on the country’s scarce resources. What they do best is hop from one radio station to another to spew out pure propaganda and Kwaku Ananse stories. Is it any wonder that the Yutong bus is at the verge of falling into a bottomless pit?

There is this Member of Parliament (MP) whose analytical abilities are very suspect. How he managed to get a degree in Political Science from the University of Ghana and an EMGL from GIMPA remains a mystery, considering the fact that he hardly constructs two or three sentences together without making an unpardonable mistake. The MP in question is currently a deputy minister.

Are your ears itching to hear more? He is an MP from the Western Region and has been responding to the ‘honourable’ title since 1995. He was the MP who had the misfortune of receiving the ‘honourable’ slap from Hon Abdul Rauf Tanko in 1996. Can you guess whom I refer to?

I therefore ask, would you blame me if I likened the comedy being played out in the name of governance to the actions of a jester? In case you’ve forgotten, a ‘jester’ is a professional who entertains using varied skills. These may include one or more of skills such as music, storytelling, juggling, acrobatics, joke telling and other similar skills.

We now live in an era and place where court jesters are rarely seen. But just mention the word ‘jester’ and the only image that appears in my medulla is that of our President and his Dining Hall Minister. Indeed, the comedy on display couldn’t have come at a better time, considering the economic difficulties we are going through.

See you next week for another konkonsa, Deo volente!

By Agya Kwaku Ogboro

Via: -Daily Guide  

RAINBOW XENOPHOBIA

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Via: -Daily Guide  

Bawumia Escapes NDC Attack

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One of the NDC boys being restrained

The vice presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, avoided a scheme by some elements in the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) to embarrass him during his visit to the Volta Region last week.

Dr Bawumia was scheduled to hold some meetings in the region last Friday but decided to reschedule them after the NPP picked credible information about a plot by some members of the NDC to disrupt the event in retaliation of the humiliation suffered by two deputy ministers in Kumasi last week.

Five government appointees, including deputy minister of education, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa and deputy minister of communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, were hooted at by students of Colleges of Education in the Ashanti Region over the withdrawal of their allowances, accusing the government officials of using the money to by luxury vehicles which the students termed ‘allawa cars.’

Dr Bawumia was supposed to meet executives of his party in selected constituencies in the Volta Region, appear on some selected radio stations and later address students of the Akatsi College of Education and Ho Polytechnic.

The programme for Akatsi was scheduled for 2pm while that for the Ho Polytechnic was expected to come off at 5.30 pm.

Plot

But Regional Chairman of the NPP, John Peter Amewu, said they picked intelligence earlier in the day suggesting that the NDC was planning to disrupt the programmes, especially Dr Bawumia’s planned meeting with students of the Akatsi College of Education and Ho Polytechnic, through the foot soldiers.

This has also confirmed by police sources in the region.

After various confirmations regarding the plot, and after meetings with security persons in the region, coupled with contacts with the heads of the two institutions, the NPP regional executives therefore devised a smart way of averting the planned attack and expose the plot for the whole world to know.

Considering the enormity of the confirmations, the NPP gurus were said to have decided to postpone the programmes and Dr. Bawumia made not to appear on either of the two campuses.

Dr. Bawumia was therefore made to appear on two local radio stations in Ho – Kekeli FM and Volta Premier – as originally scheduled, which incidentally is on the campus of Ho Polytechnic.

From Volta Premier, Dr. Bawumia was expected to move to the Akatsi College of Education to address the students there before returning to Ho in the evening to address students of the Ho Polytechnic.

It was at this stage that the plan by the regional executives to thwart the attack and at the same time expose it, was set in motion.

Decoy

Instead of heading to Akatsi, Dr. Bawumia was said to have been made to return to Accra with his team, while the regional executives headed for Akatsi – something which deceived the plotters to think that Dr. Bawumia was indeed coming there.

While the executives were in a meeting with teachers of the Akatsi College of Education, the NDC foot soldiers arrived at the campus with placards to act their prepared script (cause confusion), thinking Dr Bawumia was also there.

However, students of the college who realised what was about to happen, mobilized and engaged in a fierce battle with the hooligans, some of who were said to have pulled out knives and sticks but were eventually overpowered and driven out of the school by the students.

The NPP regional executives after meeting the students and explaining why the programme had to be rescheduled, then left Akatsi and proceeded to Ho.

Drama

However, the NDC foot soldiers, who were still oblivious of the fact that Dr. Bawumia had long reached Accra and still believed he was part of the team that went to Akatsi, started flying pictures of the supposed demonstration against Dr. Bawumia on social media.

Thinking that he was among the team to Ho, the NDC elements behind the plot were said to have rolled out the Ho version of the plot.

This time around, hired ‘machomen’ were allegedly dispatched to the Ho Polytechnic campus to cause similar chaos.

However, because the Regional CID in the morning had picked up signals of the plot, these assailants were confronted by the police who had dispatched dozens of their men to the campus.

The police were said to have managed to drive the NDC hoodlums away but refused to arrest them since they were not permited to demonstrate.

The executives of the NPP have since described the plot as unfortunate and despicable.

A pro-NPP group, ‘Operation 40% for NPP in Volta Region,’ also issued a statement over the weekend condemning the plot and likening it to the xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

The group was at a loss as to how elements in of the NDC could actually plot to maim Nana Akufo-Addo’s running mate, noting that if the plot had been carried out successfully, it would have led to uncontrollable tension which could have sparked chaos countrywide.

The group, in the statement, thanked God for His intervention in averting the plot and called on the Regional House of Chiefs to call the NDC to order since such acts could end up tarnishing the image of the region.

It also called on the security agencies to get to the bottom of the matter.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu

Via: -Daily Guide  

Jinxed Campus Connect

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Samuel Ablakwa Okudjeto

Whoever engineered the Campus Connect project of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) must be disappointed that it has suffered a major setback, dying almost upon takeoff.

Cynics think it has taken this turn because after all, the project is a repackaged propaganda piece intended to throw more dust into the eyes of students in tertiary institutions.

We do not care about the staggering budget earmarked for the project but are only concerned about the reaction of those engaged in the execution of the dust-throwing assignment to spontaneous action.

In Kumasi the trio of Samuel Ablakwa Okudjeto, Felix Kwakye Ofosu and Dr Kpesa Whyte did not expect the pure water bombardment and heckling visited upon them when they entered the campus of Wesley College. It was a spontaneous action by enraged teacher trainees still sulking over their cancelled allowances initiated by Ablakwa Okudzeto.

To associate the action with the machination of a political party as Okudzeto seeks to do through his remote action in the Volta Region, is to display a sickening ignorance about the reality of the situation on the ground.

Driving to the Wesley College in those sleek four-by-four vehicles with a baggage of unfulfilled promises and cancelled allowances was courting trouble which the propaganda-bearing trio bore.

Angry and depressed students can never brook lies from persons they have already concluded are on a lying mission.

We are amazed that Hon Okudzeto Ablakwa is not getting it and would embark on what for him is an equalisation assignment which can draw more embarrassment for the political party he belongs to.

Following the embarrassment he and his team suffered, he turned to the Volta Region to avenge for their tribulations at the hands of the students in a manner which lacks finesse and sophistication.

Persons who have nothing to do with teacher training screaming their resentment to allowances can only be regarded as hired hoodlums expressing their madness to justify the monies given them by diabolic politicians in government.

These guys were told to state things contrary to what the angry teacher trainees said, and it exposed the Okudzetos and others.

The hounds Okudzeto Ablakwa engaged to heckle and embarrass Dr Mahamudu Bawumia were unable to set eyes on their target: he was not in Akatsi Training College but rather in Ho.

They could have as well been demonstrating against a person they were not seeing as they held their miserable-looking placards at Akatsi.

The Volta and Ashanti Region scenarios are at variance with each other. While the former was about an orchestrated project to embarrass Dr Bawumia, the latter was about disappointed teacher trainees venting their spleen over cancelled allowances.

Ablakwa must return to the drawing board because this one flopped, exposing his mischief in another embarrassing fashion.

Decency is an important ingredient in politics. When it is deficient those engaged in it are turned into nincompoops groping in the dark.

It sounds imbecilic to react the way the deputy minister behaved after his epic embarrassment in Kumasi.

 

Via: -Daily Guide