What The Papers Say
Catholic Standard, Ghana, July 21, 1985
Economic recovery
On his return from this year's ECOWAS summit conference, the Secretary for Finance and Economic Planning, Dr Kwesi Botchway, was reported to have told a press conference in Accra last week (July 9) that "austerity measures", in the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) would continue if at the end of the three-year period (ending next year) we would not have earned enough reserve to initiate and sustain productivity.Among austerity measures, we have devalued the cedi at the highest rate ever. Consequently every item that has a foreign exchange component sells very dearly. While our purchasing power has been reduced as a result of spiralling price increases, there is a tax on "wealth", a road development levy and, as noted in our editorial of last week, we are having to pay directly for social services that we previously took for granted. We have also had to lay off a good many "redundants" from the Public Service.
By no means has the going been easy. And if we thought having made these sacrifices nothing could go wrong, the Finance Secretary's press conference alerts us to just that possibility, namely, that at the end of the day, we may be nowhere near generating our own resources to initiate or sustain productivity; worse, we may not be in a position to repay foreign and local debts when they fall due.
A little while back, we thought we were a little more confident about the Economic Recovery Programme. Commentators both local and foreign were full of assurances that the prescriptions were right and we could not go wrong. We are naturally surprised therefore that the Secretary for Finance and Economic Planning can now speculate failure.
Of goodwill we are best assured by consultation with all the parties involved in the economy to ensure that there is understanding all round. President Limann was not lucky in this respect. The People's National Party was torn between those for trade liberalization and those against, those for devaluation and those against, those for doing business with the World Bank/IMF and those opposed to flirtation with "international finance capital".
We are still far from a national consensus as to objectives, methods and procedures. The Economic Recovery Programme is the outcome of an agreement concluded with the IMF, the World Bank and various other foreign institutions and Governments. Consultation with the rank and file of the Ghanaian people to whom the programme matters most is absent. Even the initial efforts at meetings to discuss Programme were abandoned long ago. Lately decisions budgets constructed respecting the economy have been relayed to us through the to fit the Economic Recovery medium of radio and television, a far cry from participatory decision-making".
We pray that in spite of fears, spoken and unspoken, the Economic Recovery Programme succeeds for everybody's sake.
While still on austerity measures, there is at least one that we could be spared without any loss. We refer to the need for carrying around large quantities of cedi notes. It is inconvenient, if nothing else.
Because of the inconvenience of having to reprint ever so often the cedi and five-cedi notes which dirty easily, the Bank of Ghana has announced (last week) to issue those denominations in brass.
The Guardian, Nigeria, July 17, 1985
Trifling
What's in a name? You might ask. A lot, as Commodore Bamidele Otiko of Ondo State has poignantly demonstrated to us all. Obafemi Awolowo University has been renamed Ondo State University. It is one of four institutions which, according to an extraordinary gazette, have been given new names to "reflect their collective proprietorship so as to enhance greater and more appropriate identification with the state".Commodore Otiko is worried that politicians of old may have played on our psyche by naming the state's highest institution after Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and three higher institutions after towns. In taking the steps, the governor may have been guided by his inner light.
His worries are understandable and legitimate, even if misplaced. Chief Awolowo after whom the university is named is a great man, albeit controversial as all great men are wont to be. It was probably imprudent from the start to have named the university after him because he is still alive. A living man is a controversial man.
When the naming of the university was mooted, there was opposition, although feeble, from the opposition party outside the legislature overwhelmingly dominated by the Awolowo led-party.
Up to 1983, Ondo State could be written off as a one-party state. Towards the end of the year, there was a sharp, violent political division consequent upon the rigging of election, by the opposition in the state. In Otiko's reckoning, the wounds may not have healed and his desire, rightly, is to put the past behind him.
We fear, however, that there is a gap between the problem as identified by Otiko, and the means of solving it. The governor may find that by renaming the university, he has been led amiss and his decision, instead of uniting his people, may amount, in the long-run, to a prussic acid. For it has aggravated the imprudence of his predecessors - imprudence which is probably understandable considering Awolowo's immense contributions to education in that area long before the university was started.
As premier of the old Western Region, he opened up his area of authority educationally. The areas today known as Ondo and Bendel States, in particular, took advantage of the free education policy of the Awolowo Administration. It was in appreciation of the contributions to their upliftment that the Ondo University was named after him.
Bearing in mind the intrastate problems which are evidently real, governments should not be seen to be too quick to change names of institutions unless there is a clear and categorical reason for doing so, say, if a man were to be found guilty of misconduct. That is not the case in the issue at hand. And the Ondo State government may unwittingly be suggesting that anybody in power deserves the right to change names given to public institutions by his predecessors. There are, sometimes, limits to the legitimacy of an official policy.
In spite of Awolowo's undoubted contributions, we do recognise that he is not from Ondo State. We do hope that was not a major consideration on the part of those who took the decision. Ahmadu Bello, Awolowo's contemporary, would not have come from Kaduna State in today's geo- political setting. Ahmadu Bello University was planted in the heartland of the opposition party - NEPU - and it was named after him when he was alive.
