The former Speaker of Parliament, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye, has shed light on the dangers of the politics of ‘moneycracy’ and its detrimental impact on Ghana’s democracy and pervasive corruption.
Delivering a lecture during the 2nd R. S. Blay Memorial lectures, under the theme “Consolidating Democracy and the Rule of Law in Contemporary Ghana: If Justice R.S. Blay were with us using the Law as An Instrument of Social, political and economic engineering,” Prof. Oquaye expressed his concerns about the current state of politics in Ghana.
Prof. Oquaye highlighted the shift from a time when politics involved individuals contributing their resources to help the nation, to a disturbing trend where personal gain and acquisition dominate the political landscape.
“What happened to us is that today, politics has become a Moneycracy. Now it is no more a matter of me helping with my resources, but rather, what will I go in and grab, for which matter everything they do today becomes like an investment.
“It is very dangerous and we have to think it through so that politics doesn’t become the preserve of people who buy themselves into it and only to buy themselves out by making money at the expense of the country. We all know that, associated with that moneycratic tendency comes the hole of corruption in our society which has become more and more endemic”, he warned.
He advised the youth to learn from the best examples of the past in addressing their problems of today.
“I would like the young people to be proud to be Ghanaians and to copy the best practices of this great nation of ours and not some of the rude techniques of recent times. Some time ago, the British decided to nationalise all lands, thus simply saying that every land which they described as wasteland belonged to the British crown. However in the then Gold Coast, some smart chiefs just saw this as untenable but they didn’t take cutlasses nor resorted to arms.
“They got Mensah Sabah, a Ghanaian Lawyer, who took the matter to court, that in Ghana there is nothing like a wasteland and that our lands either belong to the society, chief, a family or an individual even if it is not being used at any particular time. They fought and won their case and the British kept off our lands. This shows that even the illiterate chiefs were very intelligent and knowledgeable. That’s the kind of people we should be as young people“, he advised.
