Former Ghana President John Dramani Mahama has bared his soul in a special interview with Africawatch. From politics to the economy to agriculture to education to the banking and oil sectors to the country’s current sorry state to his personal feelings and religion, he was happy to field the questions and discuss them at length. “I don’t have to tell you that people don’t believe that their lives are better off,” Mahama, the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the 2024 election, told Africawatch. “There has been a deterioration of every aspect of life — in health care, in education, and the infrastructure has gone bad, the economy is in crisis.” He also said incumbent President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo “never accepts responsibility” for the way he and his government have run the country. “If you are a leader and cannot accept responsibility, then you cannot solve the problems and the challenges that the nation faces,” he said. Africawatch editor Steve Mallory spoke with Mahama in Accra.
Q: How has life been treating you as opposition leader?
A: We can only thank God for protecting and preserving us. It’s been hectic reorganizing the party. We have just recently finished our primaries, and I crisscrossed the length and breadth of this country. I visited 275 constituencies and covered almost 14,000 kilometers. There’s no part of this country I didn’t visit.
We did that safely, and there were no accidents, no incidents. We can only thank God for His protection.
Q: What’s the biggest lesson that you have learned since leaving office?
A: Oh. [laughs] Since leaving office, you get time to reflect. It teaches you that not everybody who smiles at you when you’re in office is a permanent friend.
One good thing that leaving office has done for me is it has made me identify who are my true friends and who are just fair-weather friends. That’s a big, big lesson.
Q: I saw a video of President Akufo-Addo at a state event, passing by you without greeting you. But during his State of the Nation address in Parliament on March 8, 2023, you exchanged warm greetings. What happened in your relationship, and how are things between you now?
A: That event you are referring to is the Peace and Security Forum, which was organized by the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Center. It’s an annual event, and they invited me and other several ex-heads of state. I don’t know if it was deliberate, but when he got to me, he jumped me, and greeted the person next to me. And that was supposed to be a peace and security event.
I will say now our relationship is cordial. We have met at several places. I won’t say we are the best of friends, but at least we show cordiality to each other. I respect him as my president, and I stand up when he comes in. I greet him with the respect due to an occupant of the highest office in our country, because I have occupied that office before. So, I give him respect for being in that office. Of late, he reciprocates. Sometimes he stops and chats a little. I guess it’s all good.
Q: As a Christian, what do you make of the huge 5,000-seat National Cathedral that President Akufo-Addo says he will build at an estimated cost of US$350 million?
A: I think it’s a misplaced priority. If I was the president and had access to US$350 million, I would use it to do things that would receive more blessings from God than building a cathedral, because, according to the Bible, God says he does not any longer dwell in temples built by men. You can read that at Acts 7:44-50, and also at Acts 7:24, which says: “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.”
Things have changed from the Old Testament era, where God used to come to the Tabernacle (which was a tent) that he asked Moses to build. Apostle Paul finishes the argument at First Corinthians 6:19, where he asks: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” So, our bodies are now the temples of God where the Holy Spirit dwells.
But I am not a pastor, so I will say if I were the president, I would use the US$350 million to build more schools, provide water and electricity for the people, and invest in creating jobs for young people. I think that will give any president a better blessing than investing in a cathedral.
Let’s just take the example of the huge cathedral in Yamoussoukro, Cote d’Ivoire. It’s a big waste. Go there today and it’s really nothing. You can’t justify why that thing was built. It’s not boosting tourism in any way. Maintaining that cathedral in a month is more expensive than all the revenue it gets in a year. That’s really a misplaced priority.
Q: What are some of your fondest memories of being president of Ghana from 2012 to 2017?
A: I took a lot of joy in seeing the appreciation of the people for little things that we take for granted.
For instance, when I went to commission a small-town water system, the joy you saw in the faces of the women and children especially are memories that you can never forget. Because in some of these communities, before we did the water project, they walked two or three kilometers to fetch water that was not even suitable for human consumption.
Even little things like providing a decent dormitory block for students, students who have been living in dilapidated structures. Suddenly, you open their dormitory block, they have everything, it gives you the sense that it was all worthwhile. That you were able to improve the lives of people.
It’s not only in structures like that, even in hospitals. For instance, one of my happiest moments was when I commissioned the Shai-Osudoku Hospital. They had a small health center before, nothing to write home about, and so for any major illness or difficult deliveries, they had to rush them to Accra, to Korle Bu Teaching Hospital or the Police Hospital or the military hospital.
Now, when we opened the Shai-Osudoku Hospital, that whole catchment area from Somanya right down to Dodowa and all the way down to, let’s say Amrahia, that is the hospital of choice, because everything you can find in any advanced hospital, you can find there. They have oxygen, they have everything. So, they no longer need to come all the way to Accra for good medical care.
Little things like that are some of the things that I remember, and I miss from being president.
Q: This will be your fourth consecutive run for the presidency as National Democratic Congress party candidate. You won in in 2012 and lost in 2016 and 2020. Why do you want to run again in 2024?
A: I would have liked to take time to go and rest and then do the thing I love to do most, farming. My dad was a farmer, and he was the first commercial rice farmer in Ghana. He had a rice mill, and he was producing most of the rice that was eaten in Ghana in the ’70s. During vacations my siblings and I used to go to the farm, and work on the farm. I know how to use all the implements, tractors to plow, harrow, everything. I can use a combine harvester to harvest rice.
One would have loved to retire and just go do that. But unfortunately, the current situation in which our country is, means that we must have all hands on the deck. This government, Akufo-Addo’s government, has plunged us into a deep crisis. I do believe that it wouldn’t be fair to deny the NDC my services. Not only to win the election, but more importantly, to carry out the kinds of reforms that will put Ghana back on track, both in terms of governance and the economy. I believe that with the experience I have, having served at all levels of the political ladder, I have what it takes to turn our fortunes around. May it never be said, that when it mattered most, I refused to put my knowledge and experience at the service of my country. That is my motivation.
Q: As you go around the country, how do you assess your chances of winning the presidency this time around?
A: They look very bright. When I was leaving office, I said posterity would be the judge. I knew that one day I will be vindicated from the web of lies the NPP spun around me. I expected that posterity would take centuries to judge. It looks like that judgment has come quicker than I thought. I feel vindicated.
People now have a clearer view and appreciation of the work we did while in office. They can feel the sharp deterioration in the quality of their lives since we exited office. They are looking up to the NDC to come and turn things around again, make things better so that they can live decent and dignified lives.
I think we have a very good chance of winning the next election. You must have seen the example of the Assin North by-election. We not only retained the seat, but we even widened the percentage of the win. In 2020 we won by 55-point-something percent. This time it was by 57.6%. I’m positive that this will be reflected in the next election.
Q: If you are elected to lead Ghana again, what are some of the things you would do differently?
A: Not exactly differently, because I think we did quite well in the circumstances in which we found ourselves. I will give a lot more emphasis to youth employment creation and jobs. I will focus on agriculture and agro-processing in order to severely slash down our food import bill and increase our exports. But I do think that in a new Mahama administration, our work is cut out for us.
The people of Ghana are looking for us, one, to stabilize the economy; two, to carry out governance reforms; three, to launch a strong fight against corruption; and four, to create more employment opportunities for young people. These are the four main things that the people of Ghana are looking up to our next administration to do. I will concentrate on those areas.
Q: In March, you said that the last six years had been perhaps “the most difficult and challenging period in our history,” and that “our country is broken on all fronts.” Why do you believe this?
A: The plain truth is that our country is broken. Let’s take the economy. All the rating agencies have declared our economy as junk. That is a clear verdict. And so, the economy is broken, isn’t it? We can’t pay our debts. Deficit figures are very high. Last year, the Bank of Ghana printed more than 40 billion cedis to finance the government’s budget deficit.
The cocoa sector is broken too. Cocoa production has gone down. It’s probably going to be the lowest we’ve ever had in recent history. Aside from that, the Cocoa Board is broke. They can’t pay their debts. They have increased their debt, from about 1.5 billion Ghana cedis in cocoa bills to almost GH¢15 billion. Those bills matured and they were unable to pay, so the Bank of Ghana had to roll over the bills. I now hear the Cocobod debt is being included in the second round of the Domestic Debt Exchange. Now it means people who were expecting their investment with interest in February this year, will not receive their money until sometime in 2028 – 2030.
I was recently in Assin North, and the farmers were all complaining that they couldn’t buy fertilizers and other inputs. They complained that it is no longer worth their while to tend to their cocoa farms. The producer price is less than 50% of the world market price. The policy over the years has been to pay the farmers at least 70% of the international price.
In several parts of the cocoa growing areas, we hear of farmers giving up their cocoa farms for gold mining, popularly known as galamsey.
Q: What happened to the much touted government’s Planting Food and Jobs program?
A: The planting for food and jobs has failed. They have recently announced suspension of the fertilizer subsidy program. Very little thought went into the sustainability of the program. Once the foreign funding was exhausted it became exposed to the hazards of the government budget cycle. Not much planning went into the agricultural value chain, from land clearing to processing and marketing. Most of the emphasis was on provision of improved seed and subsidized fertilizers. We will do this differently. The support to farmers will take into recognition food security for Ghana, export earning for our farmers, and agro-processing and marketing of our crops.
Q: Are the banks in trouble again?
A: The banking sector is in crisis, first, because of the panic reaction of Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta and the governor of the Bank of Ghana, Ernest Addison, in shutting down indigenous banks and microfinance institutions. It threw tens of thousands of Ghanaian professionals with banking experience into the unemployed ranks. And all of these people have gone home with nothing, really no means of employment.
We are now in a second banking crisis because of the debt restructuring. The liquidity position of the banks is fragile. This year, they are going to post major losses, all of the banking institutions. That’s why the government is thinking of a financial-stability fund to try and support the banks until we overcome this crisis. The Bank of Ghana itself is on shaky grounds because of its over exposure to government.
Q: And education?
A: The education sector is collapsing. Standards are falling. Infrastructure is poor. There are many schools today where the children do not have basic furniture, even to sit on and write. For the last six years, the government has not been able to provide basic schools with textbooks. You go to most schools, and only the teacher has a textbook. None of the children have a textbook.
And then we have the capitation grant, which is used to finance the running of the schools. For almost seven terms now, the capitation grant has not been paid. The headmasters have nothing to run the schools with.
Q: What about the health sector?
A: The health sector is also collapsing. Many of the hospitals are refusing to see patients from the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). The private hospitals are threatening to pull out of the National Health Insurance Scheme, because when they attend to patients on the NHIS, they don’t get reimbursed for the cost of looking after the patients.
For most of the health-care facilities now, the only benefit you get with your NHIS card is consultation. There are no drugs, nothing. You just get a prescription, and you have to go out and buy the drugs yourself.
Q: Can the same be said about the oil sector and industry?
A: Of course. Industry is growing at its lowest rate ever, because virtually nobody is investing in industry in the current situation.
Oil production has gone down. In the last six-and-a-half years, there has not been one successful well brought into production. Not one well. We left the Akufo-Addo government the TEN field, which I worked on, and ENI Sankofa, which were two new fields we handed over to them. All the new revenues from the newly producing wells fell into their laps.
The possibility of increased production from ENI’s prospect has hit a snag following ENI’s litigation with the government and Springfield.
We also worked on the Hess block, which later became Aker Energy. We were working on several other fields, which we handed over to them. Since then, because of greed, they have not been able to get even one new block on stream.
ExxonMobil, which came in, had to withdraw. Aker Energy put on hold their development for several years. It is only now that the African Finance Corporation has taken over Aker’s shares in one of the wells, and other investors are looking to come on board too. Let’s see how that production can go.
Q: Is the downturn in all areas of national life?
A: Absolutely. If you look at all the areas, things are in a very bad state. In the power sector, electricity company’s losses have increased from, when we were there, 21%, to almost 31% under recoveries. And because the ECG is under recovering, it is unable to pay the independent power producers [IPPs], who are now threatening to shut off power. That would take us straight back into electricity rationing dumsor [electricity coming on and off].
Water supply is down. If you get water in any part of Accra more than twice a week, you’re lucky. Mostly, people have to either drill boreholes in their houses, or pay for water tankers to deliver water into storage tanks.
Forestry. We have about 37 forest reserves. Almost 30 of them have been encroached upon by illegal mining. Some of these mining companies belong to the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) people.
Q: You have accused President Nana Akufo-Addo and Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia of destroying Ghana’s economy through mismanagement. Can you give some examples?
A: We currently face a crisis with the IPPs. Why are we facing that crisis? Before we left office in January 2017, dumsor had two causes. One was the lack of generation and, two, was financing – how to pay for the power produced. We solved the first issue by adding additional generation via emergency plants – Karpowership and Ameri. And immediately we solved the generation challenge.
Then we passed the Energy Sector Levy Act (ESLA), which generated revenues to pay off some of the legacy debts that were hobbling the power sector. When the NPP took over the administration, they used some of the ESLA funds to finance the free SHS [senior high school] program, contrary to the objectives of ESLA. They actually, went further to collateralize the ESLA funds under the guise of an SPV [salary payment voucher]. So, there is not enough money left over to pay the IPPs for power generated. It is this kind of recklessness that has landed us into the energy problems that we have.
Q: And there was the first banking crisis.
A: Yes. the government shut down almost 300 microcredit finance institutions and nine Ghanaian-owned banks and created a debt of almost GH¢25 billion for the nation. That was a very poor policy choice. I believe that it could have been handled differently if we were in government.
Some of the revocation of licenses was done based on pure politics. Not on any sound judgment. Take the example of Heritage Bank. The main reason they gave for revoking Heritage Bank’s license was that its principal shareholder was suspected of criminal conduct in the Cocoa Board case. Because he has a case in court that is being prosecuted, it meant that the proceeds which were used to set up the bank must have come from criminal enterprise. And the man has not been convicted yet! And in law, you are innocent until proven guilty.
I have said we will review the bank closures and we would restore licenses of the banks where there is sufficient proof that the revocation was unjustified.
We knew when we were in government that some of the indigenous banks were facing the challenge of capital adequacy. We were looking to find ways to help these banks return to position of capital adequacy. We spent much of our final year in office passing legislation to strengthen the financial sector, such as the Deposit Protection Act.
The hostile posture of the NPP administration and the central bank authorities to these indigenous banks created a very adverse operating environment for them and created a situation where there could be a run on the banks. Using this excuse, they suddenly pounced and shut down the banks and created a GH¢22 billion debt for the government in one fell swoop.
When the NDC returns to office, we would introduce a tiered banking structure. To be a Class C bank, you probably need about GH¢80 million. For Class B bank, about GH¢200 million and for Class A bank, about GH¢400 million. Banks by their sizes cater to different segments of the market. Those smaller banks are able to deal with the small and midsize businesses (SMB) sector better than the bigger banks.
We want to restore the indigenous Ghanaian private sector investment in the banking sector. Right now, there are only about three indigenous Ghanaian banks left. All those that were closed, from UniBank, UT Bank, Heritage Bank, Construction Bank, were Ghanaian-owned.
Q: Borrowing also has been a huge problem.
A: Yes, the government’s poor policy choice of borrowing for consumption, at a very rapid rate, is what has brought us where we are now. In six years, Finance Minister Ofori-Atta has borrowed more than US$13 billion from the international capital markets. Worse, there is nothing to show for that money.
If you look at infrastructure, in my time if we had US$13 billion to spend, you would have seen a very significant change. We would have done our railways and our roads, and we would have done much more than we have seen from this Akufo-Addo administration.
The debt overhang is one of the poor policy choices.
Q: In his State of the Nation address, President Akufo-Addo said that “some people are unwilling to accept that we were on a good trajectory until the arrival of COVID-19.” How do you respond to that?
A: Well, I don’t agree. You can’t say that COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war have caused the downturn in Ghana’s economy. Ghana is not the only country to have been affected by these two problems. So even though COVID-19 affected the economy, we got inflows to try and cushion it. The IMF [International Monetary Fund] first gave us US$1 billion, more or less. And last year, they gave us another US$1 billion in SDR. In total, the IMF gave us US$2 billion, and the World Bank also gave us almost US$1 billion. The African Development Bank followed suit. Everybody gave us money.
Even though COVID was a curse, it was a blessing in other ways. There was an injection of almost GH¢22 billion into the economy, and the government squandered the funds. The last Auditor General’s report is very damning, because they can’t account for much of those funds. There was a lot of misappropriation. They didn’t follow regulations in awarding contracts. All on the excuse of urgency.
They gave contracts to their family members and friends, and in many cases, the contracts were not fulfilled, because people took money and didn’t deliver. There is the case of vaccines, where we paid fully for the vaccines but received just a fraction of them. Up to now, we have not received the remaining vaccines. And yet the supplier has taken our money, almost to the tune of US$80 million or something like that.
They should start prosecuting anyone who misappropriated COVID funds. We will hold people accountable when we come into office.
Q: Do you think Finance Minister Ofori-Atta was not truthful about the economy before COVID-19 hit?
A: Yes, I believe so. The major problem is that he was using creative accounting to paint a brighter picture of the economy than it truly was. He was not including some huge public liabilities in his budget accounting in order to show a lower deficit than the actual number. When COVID-19 hit, his house of cards all came tumbling down.
Today, the IMF has added all of these as liabilities of the government, because they really are liabilities of the government. But the finance minister had quoted 60-something percent as debt-to-GDP. Suddenly, when the chickens came home to roost, our debt-to-GDP was found to be about 103%. It’s mostly the fault of the finance minister, the vice president, and the economic-management team. They did not give the world the true picture of what the Ghanaian economy was.
First time in our history we had different sets of budget indices, one for the Ghanaian public and the other for an international audience. We handed over to them an economy with great prospects which was predicted by the World Bank and IMF to grow above 8% in 2017. Akufo-Addo’s government was actually clueless about what accounted for the 8% growth. The trajectory that showed the economy going in an upward direction was the momentum that was generated by our efforts at fiscal consolidation. As soon as their own borrow and consume policy began to kick in, the growth trajectory began to decline. Today, we are struggling to achieve even 2% growth.
Q: Last December, Ghana defaulted on its debt obligations for the first time. Do you think the $3 billion IMF bailout granted in May can turn the economy around?
A: When my government went to the IMF in 2014, we had just a challenge with stabilizing our macroeconomic environment. And as a member of the IMF, we turned to them for assistance. The extended credit facility we agreed with the IMF was for about US$960 million over three years to shore up our balance of payments. This agreement gave us the policy credibility needed to continue with the implementation of our homegrown fiscal-consolidation policy.
The Akufo-Addo administration has a twin problem. They must deal both with the macro challenges and also with an unsustainable debt burden.
This government is borrowing US$3 billion from the IMF over three years. This means that the program will go beyond Akufo-Addo’s tenure of office and into the tenure of the next president.
The program can turn the economy around if this government is more prudent in terms of expenditure and cutting out waste and ostentation. That’s why we keep calling on the administration to reduce the size of the government.
We are in the process of determining what the stability trajectory is going to be. We will soon see exactly what they are doing with the debt restructuring.
There are some people who believe that Finance Minister Ofori-Atta is trying to pile a lot of the debt post-2025, so that he can get an easy pass and leave the heavy lifting to the next administration.
Q: In February 2022, in your address to Chatham House, you warned that if the government followed through with its domestic debt-exchange program, which was a condition for the IMF to approve the $3 billion loan, “up to about six million people could be deprived of their life savings and investments” by having to “forfeit proceeds of government bonds.” So far, about GH¢83 billion out of the GH¢97 billion in domestic bonds have been restructured. Wasn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?
A: It wasn’t. We predicted that the government was going to restructure the bonds, and that people were going to have a haircut on their bonds. If you remember, this president said there were not going to be any haircuts. No haircuts, he repeated.
Today, what’s the reality? People are taking severe haircuts on their bonds. Even those whose coupons are due are currently picketing the Ministry of Finance, because the government is not paying their coupons on schedule, as they have agreed with individual bondholders.
Everything we said has come to pass. People’s life savings are affected. Several pensioners used their gratuity upon leaving service to buy government bonds. Elsewhere in the world, this is the safest investment to make. Alas! Not in Ghana!
Unfortunately, in Ghana, it has turned out to be the riskiest investment that people made. These pensioners depended on the interest from the bonds to pay their hospital bills and buy medicines. Understand that these are elder citizens who have been suddenly deprived of their life savings.
Q: So, do you stand by what you said at Chatham House?
A: Yes. What I said at Chatham House was exactly true. The Ghanaian middle class invested a lot of their savings and capital into government bonds. They invest it as and when they need it. For a lot of them who have extra disposable income, they put it in government bonds, so that the value of their money does not depreciate. And then, suddenly, their capital and life savings have been restructured, and millions of them will get paid many years later than they had anticipated.
The IMF has told the government that the debt restructuring they have done so far is not enough, and they should do a second round.
They are looking at hitting the banks again with further debt restructuring. They are also looking at pension funds. But labor is up in arms against the use of their pension funds. They are still negotiating, so we don’t know how that will end.
That will be a trigger for the next tranche of the IMF funding, which is supposed to be due in November, which is US$600 million. It means that between now and then, the government must achieve a second round of debt restructuring.
But we are not really apprised of the details of what the government is doing in terms of the negotiations for the debt restructuring. I recently wrote to the IMF and said that as their program is going to straddle two governments, as one of the leading political parties in Ghana, we are entitled to know the details of every agreement that they and the government are entering into.
We are continuing to look for the actual agreements and the negotiations with the banks and the other creditors of the government. They are saying that they expect debt-to-GDP to come to normal levels, that is about 50%, by 2028. It means that the program will straddle the whole of the next administration, so the NDC has a very real interest in what is agreed to between the government and the multi- lateral institutions.
Q: President Akufo-Addo used the slogan “Ghana Beyond Aid,” and both he and Finance Minister Ofori-Atta said the government would not go back for any IMF aid. But they did. This is the 17th time Ghana has gone for IMF support. Sixty-six years after independence, why can’t the nation get its act together?
A: One of the hallmarks of Akufo Addo’s administration is sloganeering. One District One Factory, One Village One Dam, Agenda 111 and etc. Well, “Ghana Beyond Aid” was just empty sloganeering. It sounded nice to the ear, but really, if you look at this government, they have taken more aid than any other government in our history. The president likes to come across as an erudite and strong leader. He comes out with these theories but really doesn’t believe in them himself.
He went to an African conference and was talking about how African countries should learn to wean themselves off foreign aid, and posited strongly that who finances you calls the shots and influences your policy. I am sure there was silent whispering, “Look who’s talking! You are on your knees at the IMF, in America, begging for aid, and you are telling us we should learn to wean ourselves off Western financing?”
It doesn’t matter if it is the 17th time that Ghana has gone to the IMF. We are a member of the IMF. We pay our dues, and we are entitled to the support that the IMF has to give. What matters is for us to be more prudent in our financial management.
Q: Are you really saying that it doesn’t matter if Ghana goes to the IMF to ask for help 17 times in 66 years, because we are members of the IMF?
A: No, it does matter. Sorry if I said it doesn’t matter, because 17 times may be one too many. But the point I am making is that we are entitled to the support that the IMF has to give, because we are members of the IMF, and we pay our dues.
Yes, we have the obligation to run our economy better, so that we don’t have to regularly go back to the fund. Sometimes you have to turn to the fund, especially for balance-of-payment support, which goes to shore up your foreign reserves and is paid directly to your Central Bank.
Actually, the NDC is the one that urged the Akufo-Addo administration to seek a fund program. Our analysis of the trajectory on which the economy was travelling made it obvious to us that the government will have to seek a bailout. If government had not sought the bailout the economy would have crashed, and the consequences would have been worse and very dire.
We gave this advice in April last year. They refused to listen. Yet every month, the situation got worse, until eventually, they decided to take our advice and go to the IMF. Before this, they had been in denial and were still living in their self-created hoax that the economy was robust. Remember, a Deputy Minister said, “We will not go to the IMF, not today, not tomorrow and not as long as the NPP remains in government. We will never go to the IMF.” They claimed it was only failed governments that go to the IMF. Today, in a complete turnaround, they pride themselves as having negotiated an IMF deal in record time. That is NPP doublespeak for you.
Q: Ghana’s public debt reached a historic high of more than GH¢575 billion at the end of last year, about 103% of the nation’s GDP. The president says the government has “not been reckless in borrowing and in spending,” and that much of the debt was run up by previous administrations, including yours. What do you say to that?
A: He must carry the blame alone. He must! If you look at the debt-to-GDP ratio, at the end of 2016, it was 56% debt-to-GDP. The recommended figure for middle-income countries is not to be above 60%. We were within the optimal debt category that the country was supposed to be.
Recently, our debt-to-GDP was about 100%. In six years, you grew the debt from GH¢120 billion to almost Gh¢600 billion. How can you share that blame with previous governments?
That’s the thing about this president. He never accepts responsibility. He is always in a hurry to shift the blame to somebody else. The point is, if you are a leader and cannot accept responsibility, then you cannot solve the problems and the challenges that the nation faces.
Q: How are you different?
A: The first step in resolving challenges and solving the difficulties that your nation faces is to accept responsibility for the situation. I did it. The shortfall in generation in energy did not happen when I became president, it was the lack of planning in generation over years that culminated in the dumsor power outages that occurred under my watch.
But I didn’t lay blame on former President Mills or Kufuor or Rawlings. I went to Parliament and took responsibility and promised to fix the problem. And I fixed it. In 2016 there was no power rationing. We had no generational deficit. Indeed, we had excess redundancy in the system.
We started the infrastructure to be able to evacuate the excess power to our neighboring countries. We had more than enough power. If you look at the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCO) work program, by 2017-2018, we should have started exporting power to Burkina Faso.
Unfortunately, Akufo-Addo’s government slowed down a lot of projects. The interconnection with Burkina Faso and the upgrading of the line’s carrying capacity did not take place until, I think, last year. It’s only now that we are able to evacuate sufficient power out of the country. A lot of things fell behind schedule because of the change of government.
Q: Ghana’s energy-sector debt hit about US$2 billion at the end of May this year. The government says your administration signed expensive Power Purchasing Agreements (PPAs) that were mostly “take or pay contracts” and forced the country to pay for energy it didn’t use. How do you respond to that?
A: It is just propaganda, when they talk like that. One should look at the context and the period in which we contracted these PPAs. Nobody was going to finance a power plant for, say, US$300 million, and tell you, “Take the power when you want and pay for it. If you don’t take it, then it’s my loss.” Who is going to give you that kind of financing plan? When I was president the only financing agreements available for power plants were take or pay. It was only later in my term that we began to work with the World Bank on alternative financing involving multilateral insurance guarantees etc.
In any case why has this government extended the deal for AKSA Energy’s used plant by 15 years, when it has take or pay clauses in the agreement? They have also extended the Karpower take-or-pay agreement. If the take-or-pay agreements and the power-purchase agreements were expensive, why do you extend them?
They also tried to extend the Ameri take-or-pay agreement too? Today, the Ameri plant belongs to us after we finished payment. They had wanted to extend it to 20 years.
There were no take-and-pay power plants available to us anywhere in the world. We had no option but to accept financing on a take or pay basis.
Q: How do you think the nation can get out of the debt trap?
A: One, we should use less borrowing based on our sovereign guarantee, because that goes directly onto the public debt. We must borrow only for very priority projects. We must not borrow for consumption. I think that the bulk of our borrowing should go into infrastructure. It should go into productivity. It should go into building Ghanaian businesses. It should go into creating more employment. It should go into cutting down our huge import bill. I think that is where we should invest any loans that we take, instead of using it to finance the budget deficit.
Two, we should go for more build, operate, and transfer (BOT) agreements. Let the investor build the infrastructure and operate it until he has recovered his investment.
We can also borrow on the balance sheets of state-owned enterprises. We can do this using escrows and debt service accounts. We did this with the Tema Port Expansion project. The cost of the project is not on our public debt, sitting on government debt, because we made the MPS partners borrow the money on their own books. The Kotoka International Airport’s Terminal 3 was financed on the balance sheet of the Ghana Airports Company.
We will look at alternative innovative financing plans when we come into office again, in order to relieve the public debt.
Q: Finance Minister Ofori-Atta’s Databank company offers transaction advisory services on the money the government borrows for the nation and the bonds it issues. So far, it has bagged about GH¢150 million (now about US$13 million) in fees. Is that a conflict of interest?
A: Yes, I think it’s a conflict of interest, and I have said so several times. He has earned money on all the bonds and the money the government has borrowed. As finance minister, I think, he has not been very ethical in terms of his conduct.
We know that, publicly, there’s a 30% share of DataBank, of which he owns 5%. But then there is a 70% share of DataBank in an offshore location. Why would he be hiding who those directors are? So definitely, he must be involved in that 70%. And he was named in the Panama Papers, if you remember. DataBank and others have been the main brokers for government bonds. And he earned money from it – that’s a conflict of interest.
Q: Last year, the Bank of Ghana printed a lot of money to support the government’s budget. Didn’t that violate the rules?
A: The bank of Ghana breached the regulations, because the laws make allowance for the central bank to finance government not more than 5% of previous years revenue.
When the minority group in Parliament exposed the unlawful financing of government’s budget, both the Bank of Ghana and government denied it.
Now we know that the central bank printed GH¢32 billion in 2021 to finance government budget and again another GH¢42 billion in 2022. The central bank colluded with the Ministry of Finance to hide the fact that they were financing the government’s deficit with printed money, in breach of the financial regulations.
Q: Ghana’s annual inflation rate was about 42% in May, and the prices of basic goods and services have gone up extremely rapidly. The Ghanaian cedi has depreciated by about 50% against major currencies since January 2022. But the government still claims the people are still better off today than they were seven years ago under your presidency. How would you respond to that?
A: In capital letters: CERTAINLY NOT. The people live their lives, and every survey will tell you that the majority of Ghanaians feel their lives have gotten worse under this government. The president’s approval rating is one of the lowest in the history of the Fourth Republic. The greater majority of Ghanaians believe that the country is going in the wrong direction.
Those statistics are known; I don’t have to tell you that people don’t believe that their lives are better today than under my administration. There has been a deterioration of every aspect of life in health care, in education, and the infrastructure has gone bad, the economy is in crisis. How can people’s lives be better in circumstances like that?
Q: The unemployment rate is currently about 13%, and the lack of meaningful economic opportunities for most of Ghana’s youth has become a ticking time bomb. How do you plan to defuse it?
A: The first basic point we must recognize is that the government sector is not going to be able to solve the unemployment problem, because there is a limit to how many people can be employed in the public sector. So government must accept the challenge of creating additional avenues for employment is the private sector. It has become the hen that lays the golden eggs. Unfortunately, Akufo-Addo’s government is overburdening the private sector with myriad new taxes and levies. It is as if the government wants to cut open the hen’s stomach and take the rest of the golden eggs out immediately. The government has imposed all sorts of taxes on businesses. It has made Ghana unattractive as a place to do business. Several companies are leaving, moving to Cote d’Ivoire and other neighboring countries. Others are shutting down and going away, because they don’t think that they can continue to do business here.
The huge taxes the private sector is paying, how are they going to be able to create the kind of employment to absorb the youth?
When we come into office again, we are going to work to lighten the tax burden on Ghanaian businesses, so that they are able to reinvest those revenues into retooling their plants. If you strategically invest in the private sector, you will be able to allow companies to expand, and once they expand, it will allow them to employ more.
We have done it before. For instance, we gave the pharmaceutical sector in my time GH¢50 million to retool and to expand their production capacity. Not only did that led to the creation of massive jobs, it also made Ghana one of the biggest exporters of pharmaceuticals in the West African subregion. Burkina Faso, Mali, Liberia, Sierra Leone, etc., take their pharmaceuticals from Ghana.
Q: Let’s talk about other raging issues. The government’s Agenda 111 project, which involves the construction of 111 hospitals, appears riddled with corruption. A parliamentary select committee that recently toured some of its project sites lamented that some contractors who had already received payments have done little or no work. How would you handle this situation?
A: I hear some of the contractors have even absconded with the money they got, and they are re-awarding the projects to other contractors. This is the problem with this government. Why start 111 hospitals at once, when you know you don’t have the funding streams to be able to let them move at the pace you want?
If you started with 50 and you build them up to completion, then you take another 40, and then you take another 21. Eventually, you will get the number you want. But you want to start 111 hospitals at once, so some are at the foundation stage, some are at the lintel stage, some at the roofing stage.
You could have finished 40 or 50, which is what we did with the E-Blocks [school buildings]. We awarded 50 of the E-Blocks, and people started working. Then we got some World Bank financing for 23, and we awarded those 23. That’s how we were able to finish almost 70 before we left office.
If we had a little more time, we would have finished all 200, but we were doing it in phases. This government has started 111 hospitals. I have seen some of them, they are now digging the trenches because people ran away with the money. They had to re-award the contracts to other people.
Q: Ghana has several institutions mandated to fight corruption, but it remains widespread. Can it ever be rooted out?
A: We can’t completely root out corruption, but we can minimize it, if we stop interfering politically with the anti- corruption institutions such as the Criminal Investigations Department of the Police Service, the Economic and Organized Crime Office, the Commission of Human Rights and Administrative Justice, and the Office of the Special Prosecutor.
The last special prosecutor resigned because he said the government was interfering in his work. Indeed, he stated that the president had tried to influence him to suppress his report into the Agyapa deal. The finance minister had even visited the special prosecutor in his house and tried to dissuade him from publishing the report.
Let’s leave the anti-corruption institutions to carry out their mandate without interference.
Q: The board and management of the Tema Oil Refinery claim a deal to lease its main production assets to a company called Torentco Asset Management for six years is their last hope of survival, but some civil society organizations say the deal is shady. What do you make of it?
A: In the twilight years of Akufo-Addo’s government, they are trying to hive off a lot of strategic assets. You don’t know who is behind trying to take control of these assets. Torentco is not known to have a track record in running a refinery anywhere. Apart from that, the majority of the shareholders are registered offshore.
If they have nothing to hide, why would they be hiding their identities in an offshore company? I do think that the agreement should come to Parliament, and there should be full disclosure of who the beneficial owners are.
Q: Does the government’s Gold for Oil barter program make sense to you?
A: No, it doesn’t. We don’t know the terms of that agreement, so I really cannot comment much on it. It’s not transparent. They say it’s the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company that is in charge of the transaction. But I know that the Bank of Ghana was initially giving the money for the purchase of the gold. We need to know what the details are for us to be able to scrutinize it. Otherwise, for me, it’s more of a hedging program. I don’t know if they have agreed on what the gold price will be going forward, and if they are forward-selling the gold and then using it to exchange for crude oil, and at what price have they locked in the crude oil. Who receives the discounts on the gold we export and who receives the discounts on the oil we import? We need to know all this before we can make a proper judgment on it.
Q: Is the government’s Free SHS policy viable, given the current economic distress? The IMF has described it as “poorly targeted.” What do you think should be done?
A: I have been one of those who have raised concerns over the years, and I have said that the implementation has been poor, and so the government should hold a stakeholder consultation to see how we can improve free SHS.
The free SHS policy is viable, but it is poorly targeted and very poorly implemented. We also face a serious deficit in infrastructure to sustain the policy.
When I come into office again, we will look at what all the challenges of the free SHS program are, and then together, we will come up with solutions so that we can improve the quality of education and improve the teaching and learning experience that children have when they go to school.
Q: Accra has undergone great transformation, but perennial floods have beset it for a long time. You tried to tackle that problem during your administration. What do you intend to do about it again?
A: The problem with Accra floods is that we have streams coming from the Akuapem mountain range, and traditionally, before Accra was established as the capital, these streams used to flow into the sea. Now, Accra is obstructing the flow of these streams to the sea and so the water backs up. What we did when I was in government was that before the rains come in, we did a de-silting of all the streams and drains, so they had the capacity to carry the excess water from up the mountain range.
Unfortunately, that de-silting is not being done, so places that did not used to flood when I was in government are flooding today.
For the first time, Ofankor is flooding, Gbawe is flooding, Weija is flooding. I think we have to find an engineering solution. When we come back, we are going to bring all the best brains from the Ghana Institution of Engineers, all our water-resource engineers, and we are going to look at the problem and come up with one.
In the meantime, we must be doing the de-silting to allow the water to flow.
Q: Last year, you said that if elected, you would form a government with less than 60 ministers and deputy ministers of state. Your government had about 80 ministers and deputy ministers. Why do you think you can now run one with less than 60?
A: Desperate times require desperate measures. And we are in desperate times. The economy is in a crisis. So, I do think that it is the duty of the president to reduce government expenditure.
You know how much it costs to maintain one minister. In addition to the minister’s salary, you need to provide the person with accommodation and transport with free fuel. You pay telephone, water, and electricity bills for the person. You also pay the minister’s medical bills, and almost everything.
Right now, the Akufo-Addo’s government has separate ministries for aviation, transport, and railways, you understand. When I was in office, all these three were together under the Ministry of Transport. They have Ministry of Sanitation which should have been under Ministry of Local Government. They have Ministry of Information and Ministry of Communications which used to be together as one ministry. So, there are several of these ministries that we can bring together and reduce the number of ministers.
Q: The Akufo-Addo administration abandoned some infrastructure pro-jects that you started. You said that because of limited fiscal resources, a new NDC government would complete abandoned and ongoing projects rather than commence new ones. Which projects will you give the most priority to?
A: If you go all over the country, there are so many ongoing and abandoned projects. And yet every day, we start new ones while we cannot finish the projects that we are working on.
When we get elected back to office, we will do an inventory of all ongoing and abandoned projects. This includes the projects that were abandoned from our time, and the projects that are ongoing under this government, so that we finish them before we start new ones.
I think that is a more viable way to spend our money. The hospitals they are building, we are not going to abandon them. We will inject money and finish them, if they are not finished by the time we come back into office.
The E-blocks that we were building and were abandoned by Akufo-Addo, we will inject money and finish them. There are a lot of projects that were taking place in the secondary schools – dormitory blocks, classroom blocks, laboratories – that have been abandoned because of the capping and collateralization of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund). We will take an inventory of all those, and with the little money we have, we will send the contractors back to site, let them continue working. We will pay them to finish those projects. And as we finish those projects, we can start looking at new ones.
Q: You said during your campaign launch that some Ghanaians had lost all hope in the democratic experiment. What do you think needs to be done to restore people’s confidence?
A: Akufo-Addo’s government has bastardized and politicized all state institutions. They haven’t cared as much for human rights and the democratic freedoms that our constitution guarantees us.
Journalists have had to run away from the country and seek refuge outside, because people were hounding them. One journalist has even been killed.
Aside from that, the general economic malaise makes a lot of young people feel that “what is the use of voting, when it doesn’t look like there is any future for me here?”
The NDC, when elected again, will set a new standard in governance. We will make sure that we respect the constitution and human rights. We will expand the frontiers for free expression. We will also pay attention to issues of stabilization of the economy, and employment. The economic crisis is exacerbating the feeling of helplessness among young people. They believe the economy is not working for them. We need to let them see that they have a future in our country. That is what will restore their confidence in our democracy.
Q: You were reported as saying that the Ghanaian judiciary needs to work to regain the trust and confidence of the citizenry and erase the widely held perception of hostility and political bias in the highest courts. Can you expatiate on that?
A: If you look at all the Afrobarometer reports, and you look at people’s perception of the judiciary, you find that Ghanaians are losing confidence in the judiciary. We have an Attorney General who has weaponized the office and is using it to persecute political opponents. The Attorney General is reported to have attempted to influence judgements in cases in which government has an interest.
The judiciary is the last arbiter when we cannot agree. Investors count our judiciary as an important factor that influences their investment decisions. Investors expect that in the event of any legal disputes they can expect to get a fair trial. If you have a judiciary that has a low approval index, it affects the whole country.
Q: You have suggested on several occasions that the Electoral Com- mission (EC) is biased towards the government, and you went to court to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential elections. Are you worried that the current EC might pull a fast one on you in next year’s elections?
A: We have had our fights with the EC. Our confidence in the EC is still low. We believe that the EC should rise to the occasion to increase our confidence in them. Recent appointments by the president to the EC of people like Peter Appiahene, who virtually are NPP foot soldiers does not inspire trust in the impartiality of the Commission.
The EC’s posturing conveys an image of being inclined to one political party. Recently, the NDC’s Communication officer wrote a letter protesting the eligibility of the NPP’s candidate in the Assin North by-election. The very uncivil and vituperative response received from the EC was a clear indication that they can hardly hide their feeling of hostility to the NDC. Anyone reading the EC’s reply wondered if it could be written by a public servant paid with the people’s taxes. On another occasion a Commissioner of the EC described the NDC as “the biggest existential threat to Ghana’s democracy.” In other climes he would have resigned. How can we have confidence in such an EC? But we have no choice and are willing to work with them. We just have to work harder factoring in the partiality of the EC.
Q: The EC is trying to use the Ghana Card as the only requirement for anyone registering to vote in the general elections next year. But there are Ghanaian citizens who don’t have Ghana Cards, and it is likely some may not have them before the elections. What do you make of this?
A: One just can’t understand why the EC is behaving like that. The National Identification Authority does not have the capacity at the moment to provide every Ghanaian who wants a Ghana Card with one. The EC’s position is that even if you are Ghanaian and you cannot procure a Ghana Card through no fault of yours, you will not be allowed to register to vote. This is unconstitutional. Parliament has asked the EC to retain the guarantor system, but they have remained adamant.
Q: Where do you stand on the issue of the government funding political parties?
A: I think it’s an idea to be considered. If the government helps to fund political parties, it will also have the right to audit them and make sure that they are doing the right thing.
But I don’t believe that the government should hand money to politicians or pay money to a political party account. I think it should be done through the Electoral Commission. The government can budget for political parties through the EC, so that party chairman, general secretary, organizer, youth organizer, and women’s organizer will receive an allowance for the work that they do. Aside from that, if parties can’t pay the rent for their headquarters, the government can provide money for that. More importantly, I think that the government should give the Electoral Commission money to train party agents, and also pay them a stipend when they sit at a polling station to supervise elections. I think if the government is able to do that, it will take some of the burden off political parties. The EC must supervise this operation. The money can be included in the EC’s budget.
Q: Recently, you stated that you “share the view that Ghanaians in the diaspora must no longer have to renounce their foreign citizenship before they can stand for election or hold public offices in Ghana.” Isn’t that a bit controversial?
A: No. I will urge Parliament to speed up the constitutional amendment to enable Ghanaians in the diaspora to run for MP or be appointed as a minister without renouncing their foreign citizenship. Because these are our own citizens who have traveled to sojourn abroad. Many of them are working in very lucrative jobs, and they have acquired a lot of experience that they can bring back to help their motherland.
Interestingly, when they send home remittances, we are happy to receive them. Their remittances are welcome, but we bar them from standing for elective office as MPs or appointment as Ministers of State. I urge Parliament to speed up the passage of this amendment. If it doesn’t pass in the term of this government, I will make sure that I fast-track it when I get elected back to office. Ghanaians don’t need to give up their other citizenship just because they want to come and serve their motherland here.
Q: Let’s go on the international scene. Since you left office in 2016, you have monitored elections in countries like Gambia, Liberia, Malawi, and most recently, Nigeria. What has that experience taught you about the state of democracy in Africa?
A: I think that democracy is taking root. We have seen a consolidation of democracy. A lot of the elections are very well participated. There is a very high interest in people coming up and voting. If you look at West Africa, turnout in elections is much higher than in many parts of the world.
I think that our people are responding to their rights to vote and are increasingly using people’s power to get governments to work in the interest of the people.
Q: You have served as the chair of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States). What do you think about the expanding terrorist threats in the region?
A: This is something that West Africa especially must look at, because the insurgency and the threat of terrorism is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to full implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area. You are not going to be able to move goods between countries when terrorists are attacking drivers and killing them. Recently, several drivers were killed on the road from Niger. They were transporting onions, and the onions were destroyed by the terrorists. It puts fear in people who must commute from country to country. It’s something we need to work at. I know that the Accra initiative is bringing countries together to deal with terrorism as a group rather than as individual nations.
Q: What do you see as Ghana’s role in Africa and the international community?
A: Ghana has always been the beacon of democracy and good government, and I think that we should continue to deepen that. As president, I will continue to hold aloft Ghana’s flag as the beacon of democracy and the Black Star of Africa.
Q: And back to the 2024 general elections. What do you think are the most important issues that will shape the campaign?
A: Bread and butter. “It’s the economy, stupid.” The economy is going to be front and center. After the economy, you see things like unemployment, education, the fight against corruption, and other governance issues. It will be about how the people feel in terms of the quality of their lives and in terms of the hardship they feel. All those will count in the 2024 elections.
Q: What are some of the things that you want Ghanaian voters to keep in mind when they go to the polls next year?
A: They should just ask themselves if their lives are better today than it was in the past. And if it isn’t, and this government is not working for you, then you must vote them out.
Q: Finally, do you have any other remarks you would like to share?
A: Ghanaians should not lose hope. We must keep hope alive. Today, we might be in the worst of times, but if we work together, I think that soon we can bring our country out of the abyss in which the NPP has plunged us.
I am willing to give my all to work honestly to make our country a better place for the people. A president cannot do it alone, you need all the people to come on board. Together, we will create a situation where all Ghanaians can determine the direction and pace at which our country is moving.