Category: Opinions

By; Harry Hammond I gozaro007@gmail.com / 0244658466 / 0207698171

In the shadows of Ghana’s justice system, there’s a group of individuals who show up every day to manage the chaos, the conflicts, and the complexities that come with keeping society safe from those who’ve broken its rules. They are the prison officers; the backbone of a system that often doesn’t get the respect it deserves.

A Job That Builds Patience, Not Just Muscles. 

Prison work is not for the faint-hearted. While some careers build physical strength, this one build something far tougher: patience. Day in, day out, officers navigate a world where tensions run high, resources are scarce, and the stakes are personal. They are tasked with keeping order in environments where unpredictability is the only constant.

Those who don’t understand the job often assume it’s about locking doors and throwing away keys. But anyone who’s ever set foot inside a prison knows it’s far more complicated. It’s about balance — restraint and firmness, empathy and authority. It’s about reading unspoken cues, diffusing rage before it erupts, and making split-second decisions that could mean the difference between safety and catastrophe.

“Those Nobody Wants to See”

The public rarely thinks about prisons until something goes wrong. But someone has to do the hard work of keeping those who’ve broken the law contained, rehabilitated (if possible), and away from the rest of us. Prison officers are the ones who do it, often with minimal resources and maximum scrutiny.

They deal with individuals that society doesn’t want to think about, the violent, the troubled, the marginalized who ended up on the wrong side of the law. And they do it without the luxury of walking away at 5 PM. Theirs is a 24/7 responsibility, where “shift work” includes nights, weekends, and holidays.

“Handle with Guts, Not Just Hands”

Some people think prison officers should be cold, unfeeling enforcers. But the reality is that raw guts and intelligence are what get them through the day. They don’t just “manage criminals” they manage people. Broken people, angry people, sick people, desperate people.

They do it in facilities that are often overcrowded, underfunded, and overlooked. They do it knowing that public sympathy is usually with the inmate, not the officer. And still, they show up. They separate feuding gangs, talk down suicidal inmates, and stand between violence and victims (both inside and outside the walls).

A Call for Respect and Resources.

To every prison officer doing this thankless job: Respect. Not just because of what you do, but because of how you do it often with professionalism and humanity, despite the system’s shortcomings. You are the thin line that ensures prisons don’t become breeding grounds for more chaos.

But respect isn’t enough. Ghana’s prison officers need better resources, better training, and better conditions to do their jobs safely and effectively. They need society to recognize that rehabilitation is part of their mandate, and that they’re not just jailers they’re part of a system meant to reduce recidivism and restore lives.

A System That Needs Reform, Too. 

This isn’t a call to romanticize prison work. The system itself needs urgent reform overcrowding, lack of rehabilitation programs, and inadequate healthcare are ticking time bombs.

But reform starts with acknowledging the people on the front lines. The officers who, despite it all, get the job done. Who keeps the peace. Who help inmates take steps toward redemption.

To them: Thank you. Your work is seen. Your patience is heroic. And your contribution to society is greater than many realize.

By Daniel Nii Okine

For years, Ghanaians have rightly directed their outrage toward the destruction of our countryside. We have watched in horror as illegal mining,galamsey,turns our iconic rivers into toxic sludge and poisons the forest belts that sustain us. But while our collective eyes are fixed on the devastated countryside, a far more intimate and immediate threat has quietly invaded our homes, sitting right in front of us at the dinner table. We are being poisoned from the inside out.

A viral video recently circulating on social media features a courageous head of market women blowing the whistle on an open secret: toxic chemicals are being imported into Ghana and deliberately applied to pepper, plantains, and other everyday foodstuffs to force rapid ripening. It is a terrifying revelation, but hardly an isolated one.

Responding to the video on X, Franklin Cudjoe of IMANI Africa captured the gravity of the crisis with stark urgency:

“A must watch video and share as well. While most of our rivers and forests are under siege from illegal miners poisoning our flora and fauna, we are at the mercy of murderous and greedy traders adding more poisonous chemicals to hasten the ripening of fruits and vegetables.”

Cudjoe’s choice of words, murderous and greedy, is not hyperbole; it is a precise diagnosis. When a trader douses fresh produce in industrial-grade ripening agents or hazardous chemicals meant for non-food applications just to beat market timing and boost profit margins, that is not business acumen. It is chemical assault. It is a slow, profit-driven poisoning of an entire nation.

Consider the tragic irony of the modern Ghanaian consumer. We buy bright red peppers and golden-yellow plantains believing we are feeding our families nutrition, health, and life. Instead, we are serving them doses of unvetted, unregulated toxins. The long-term health implications, ranging from acute gastrointestinal distress to chronic organ failure and rising cancer rates, are a catastrophe unfolding in slow motion across our hospitals.

The question that demands an answer is simple: How do these substances cross our borders, hit our wholesale markets, and enter our food chain without alarming those paid to protect us?

This is where the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) and the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) must step out of their air-conditioned offices and take decisive control. Education alone is no longer enough, though it is a vital starting point. As Cudjoe noted, regulators must immediately adopt these grassroots exposure videos to launch aggressive public education campaigns. Every market trader needs to know the extreme danger of these practices, and every consumer must be empowered to spot artificially ripened produce.

However, awareness without enforcement is just noise. The FDA and GSA, working alongside border security and customs authorities, must trace these chemical supply chains to their roots. We must halt the importation and sale of unauthorized ripening chemicals at our ports and open markets. The rogue traders involved must face public exposure, hefty fines, and real jail time to send a unambiguous signal that sacrificing public health for quick profit will not be tolerated.

We cannot save our rivers from galamsey only to lose our lives to the market square. Our flora and fauna are under attack, but so is our body politic. It is time for state regulators to treat food adulteration not as a minor market infraction, but as the national security emergency it truly is.

If we lose control of what enters our water and what touches our food, we lose the right to call ourselves a secure nation. The whistle has been blown. The evidence is on our screens and in our markets. The FDA and GSA must act now before the silent poison on our plates claims more lives.

Op‑ed By Daniel Nii Okine

Ghana stands at a crossroads, and this time the crossroads is not on land. It is on water. For decades, we have allowed our coastline to remain a passive spectator in our national development story. We have admired it, photographed it, complained about its erosion, and then walked away. Today, the Government of Ghana has finally placed a bold marker on the table, and it is time for the nation to respond with equal boldness.

The Ministry of Transport has commissioned Vision Consult, working with KPMG, to conduct a six month feasibility study on a proposed coastal water transport service linking Keta to Axim. This is not a routine bureaucratic exercise. It is a historic pivot. It is the first serious attempt to treat our coastline as an economic engine rather than a scenic boundary.

Ghana must not underestimate the significance of this moment. A coastal water transport system is not a luxury. It is a necessity. Our roads are choked, our intercity travel is exhausting, and our coastal communities remain disconnected from each other and from national opportunity. We have a natural highway stretching over 500 kilometres, yet we have behaved as if it does not exist. This study is the first step toward correcting that national oversight.

The proposed Keta to Axim route is more than a transportation idea. It is a national development strategy. It promises faster movement of people and goods, reduced pressure on road networks, expanded tourism corridors, revitalized coastal commerce, and a new wave of economic activity for communities that have long been left behind. It is a chance to knit the Volta and Western Regions into a single coastal economy, one that can generate jobs, investment and innovation.

Vision Consult and KPMG bring credibility to this effort. Their mandate is clear, assess the technical, economic and operational viability of the route and present findings that can guide government decision making. This is how serious nations build infrastructure, through evidence, analysis and strategic planning. If their study confirms viability, Ghana will have no excuse to delay implementation. The coastline has waited long enough.

Imagine boarding a vessel in Keta and arriving in Axim without battling traffic, potholes or endless detours. Imagine tourists exploring Ghana’s coastal towns with ease. Imagine fishermen, traders and entrepreneurs benefiting from faster, safer and more efficient movement. Imagine a coastline that finally works for its people.

This is the kind of bold thinking Ghana needs. It is the kind of initiative that signals a government willing to innovate, diversify and expand national connectivity. But bold thinking must be matched with bold public support. This project is not regional. It is national. It deserves bipartisan backing, civic enthusiasm and sustained public pressure to ensure it does not die in a drawer.

Ghana must not sleep on this opportunity. The feasibility study is only the beginning. The real test will come when the findings are submitted. Will we act, or will we retreat into the comfort of old habits and familiar excuses?

The coastline is calling. It is demanding relevance. It is demanding investment. It is demanding vision. Ghana must answer.

By Fuvi Kloku

A scholarship represents a sacred covenant between a government and its youth. It is a promise that brilliance, diligence, and raw potential will be elevated above financial hardship so that the brightest minds can acquire knowledge abroad and return to build a stronger nation.

Listen to the audio alleging misconduct by the Nana Addo appointee at the Scholarship Secretariat below.

In Ghana, where millions of taxpayers work tirelessly to secure basic necessities and where deserving students sacrifice sleep hoping for a chance at higher education, that sacred covenant has been callously shattered. The revelations emerging from the audit of the Ghana Scholarship Secretariat under its former leadership reveal a narrative not merely of administrative negligence, but of brazen, predatory systemic abuse.

What was designed as a lifesaver for brilliant but needy scholars was transformed into a personal piggy bank for connected elites and their extended families. Public documents reviewed by parliamentary oversight reveal an outrageous scheme where single awardees were granted comprehensive luxury relocation packages for their spouses and multiple children.

State funds intended to pay tuition and basic living expenses were instead funneled into covering international travel visas, yellow fever cards, airline tickets, and generous monthly stipends for non student dependents.

In one particularly glaring instance, a single awardee family package ballooned to nearly ninety thousand pounds sterling, with individual dependents receiving over eight thousand pounds each a month. Entire families, including minor children removed from local schools, were relocated across the Atlantic on the back of the Ghanaian taxpayer.

The financial scale of this betrayal is staggering, but the moral rot behind it is even worse. While underprivileged students walked kilometers to beg for basic study materials or watched their academic dreams evaporate due to unpaid fees, state resources were being lavished upon privileged individuals, including politically connected figures labeled as royalty, who treated state coffers as a birthright.

Furthermore, doctoral graduates routinely demanded forty month stipends despite having no intention of returning home to serve the country that funded them. This is not assistance, it is unmitigated plunder. Every single dollar spent on an unauthorized spouse, every visa fee paid for a dependent child, and every inflated stipend dished out to an unaccountable scholar represents an explicit theft from a needy Ghanaian child whose future was sacrificed to feed another person’s greed.

The time for soft diplomatic handling, quiet internal memos, and comfortable behind the scenes negotiations is completely over. The Ghanaian public does not want political maneuvering or bureaucratic delay tactics while wrongdoers preemptively control the narrative in the media. Transparency must be absolute, immediate, and uncompromising.

The law enforcement agencies, including the national intelligence authorities and public prosecutors, must move with decisive speed. The individuals who knowingly orchestrated, approved, and pocketed these unlawful disbursements must be hunted down, publicly exposed, arrested, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Forgiveness without restitution is an insult to the honest citizen. Every single dollar and every single pound sterling knowingly paid out under these fraudulent schemes must be recovered. Bank accounts must be frozen, assets acquired through illicit allowances must be seized, and enforcement orders must be rigorously applied against both the officials who signed off on these payments and the beneficiaries who greedily accepted them.

If a scholar took public money under the condition of returning to serve Ghana, that obligation must be legally enforced or converted into an enforceable debt that follows them wherever they reside across the globe.

Ghana cannot build a prosperous future on a foundation of unpunished corruption. The ongoing investigation into the Scholarship Secretariat must not become another forgotten committee report gathering dust on a shelf. It must mark a permanent line in the sand. Immediate payment freezes, rigorous vetting protocols, and completely open public audits must be established right now to ensure that not one more Cedi or pound, escapes into unauthorized hands. The wrongdoers must be brought to trial, made to refund every stolen unit of currency, and made to serve as an unmistakable warning to anyone who considers betraying the trust of the nation.

The youth of Ghana deserve justice, the taxpayers demand accountability, and the law must strike without fear or favor.

By Abena Dekyiwah Agyekum

In many African corporate circles, the persistent if unconventional issue of inferiority remains widespread. Particularly in spaces with expatriates, conversations often devolve into reflections on how African nations are not only lagging behind but also fundamentally lacking what it takes to catch up.

In classrooms, teachers without passports unhesitatingly tell students they are not enough because their Chinese peers are building phones while they struggle with ‘simple’ equations. These educators often overlook that the rigorous training many African children endure sometimes produces remarkable academic abilities—abilities that ultimately lead nowhere because they exist within a rigged system.

How many American nine-year-olds know their multiplication tables from one to twelve by heart?

When Ama, the average Ghanaian child’s mathematics teacher, assigns eight daunting exercises—long division with recurring decimals, unnecessarily difficult fractions, cruelly confusing word problems—Riley in America receives a homework pass simply because she appeared distraught twice during one lesson.

To be fair, Ama has more troubles than Riley. She may lack romantic distractions, but she serves as her single mother’s emotional outlet for frustrations about Ama’s “useless father.” The blows from a shaky economy are gently passed down to Ama. Yet, she never receives the “Sorry, sweetheart” comforts that Riley gets for comparatively minor inconveniences, like a disliked babysitter.

Further into their future, Ghanaian youth face many deprivations that make certain comparisons brutally unfair. This does not imply Africans should become complacent about their economic difficulties or other crises.

The problem has never been a shortage of creativity. Africa has produced inventors, artists, entrepreneurs, and scholars in abundance. What has often been scarce is opportunity, infrastructure, and institutional support to transform that creativity into global influence. Our excessive deference to foreign models stems from lack of confidence and inability to be original.

Instead of sliding woefully at the push of comparison, we must be original. We have spoken English to the point where African languages are going extinct. UNESCO estimates that between 428 and over 500 indigenous African tongues are threatened out of roughly 2,000 to 3,000 total languages—some with only one fluent speaker. You find completely African people without a single African name, while it remains questionable for a Ghanaian to lack an English ‘formal’ name. African names are not merely domestic labels, just as African wisdom is not mere unconventional indigenous skill. It is as trustworthy as foreign principles. Let us not forsake African principles; instead, let us adapt them to the modern world.

France is known for fashion, Italy for cuisine—what about Africa? Instead of chasing others, let us be our best selves. Africa has its own fashion traditions: Kente, Aso-oke, Kuba, Adire, Akwete, Batik, and many others. We also have architectural heritage beyond round thatched huts—the dry stonemasonry of the Giza pyramids, the Sudano-Sahelian style of the Djenné Mosque, and the decorated earthen dwellings of Tiébélé.

There is ignored yet remarkably effective indigenous technology in metallurgy and blacksmithing—iron smelting and tool fabrication from Nigeria’s Nok culture, and symbolic procedures from Tanzania, Rwanda, and East Africa. In medicine, lifesaving African methods have been substituted with foreign ones, some inferior. Beyond efficient herbal therapeutics, indigenous healers employ specialized bone-setting, herbal antiseptics, and psychological integration within solid community healing frameworks.

At this point, Africa has limited opportunities and harsher climates, but that is not the end. In every successful society’s history, there arose the need to organize, innovate, build institutions, and create opportunities—they did not appear by chance. No nation prospered by talent alone; prosperity requires creating institutions, investing in people, encouraging innovation, and leveraging existing circumstances. Africa should not give up and watch with folded arms. Let us completely discourage inferiority and surge forward brave and free. So many attainable goals remain beyond reach because we disbelieve in ourselves. With greater confidence, we will be unstoppable, and our greatness boundless—a revitalised continent reaping the fruits of opportunity once sown.