Menzgold’s collapse is the story of Ghana's failure

As a nation, haven’t we failed to create a friendly business climate for private business persons to invest in ventures other than Ponzies? 

Is it not our collective failure that makes the unemployed and the underpaid find investing in Ponzi businesses credible alternatives to government treasury bill and other legitimate ones?

The failure goes beyond the private sector when we begin to analyse the complete lack of efficiency and sense of duty on the part of national regulatory bodies like the Bank of Ghana (BoG) and Security and Exchanges Commission (SEC). 

That is sad. Our government has let us down.

But ‘ all shall pass’. That is the inscription on a kiosk at tiptoe lane, a street in Kokomlemle, formerly operated by Kwame Ali, who is now the leader and founder of the True Word Prophetic and Fire Ministry, now known as Prophet Nigel Gaisie. All shall pass indeed. So too shall the Menzgold saga. It shall pass like the Ghc 51 million Woyome debacles. Like DKM, UT Bank, etc, this too shall pass.

What is likely to remain is ‘dumsor’, the rising cost of doing business in Ghana and the continual laying off of workers either by employers who cannot afford the high cost of running a business or meet government’s condition for doing so.  

Nana Appiah Mensah is not the cause of high cost of utility tariffs or why government had to give up a strategic national asset like the ECG. He is not our problem. 

In fact, he has tried to help. By providing a sort of employment for those he employed in his Ponzi scheme at a time government’s National Youth Employment Scheme had collapsed. He is not the cause of the problems of the free SHS system. Neither is he the problem of our bad roads.

While it may appear politically expedient for the entire government machinery including the security agencies to be unleashed on an individual whose only crime was to take advantage of the incompetence of government to make a living, may the records reflect that  this will not reduce our national debts, increase our import cover, put our qualified nurses to job and provide additional classrooms for our SHS students.

When the dust is settled, it would be clear that the problem of this country, as it has always been,  is poverty, supervised by governments which are indifferent.

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