I have been peripherally following the Ann Sansa Daly Affair with interest but absolutely without the least bit of surprise, because it has been clear for the entire duration of Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Dispensation that the leadership of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has absolutely no remarkable desire and/or interest in building and upgrading our National Healthcare System (See “Minority NPP Petitions GMDC Over Ann Sansa Daly’s Medical Credentials” Modernghana.com 6/2/25).
We all witnessed this abject state of the combination of gross incompetence and willful criminality during the first tenure of President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama, when the entire Healthcare System in the country was literally, deliberately and callously ground to a screeching halt, as it were, with budgetary allocation earmarked for the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) and the administration of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) effectively embezzled and/or misappropriated by the entire cabal of the leadership of the National Democratic Congress.
For those of our readers who may have so soon and sadly forgotten this most painful and morally untenable moment in Ghana’s postcolonial history, it was in the frenetic homestretch runup to the 2016 General Election. A politically desperate President Mahama would shamelessly and self-righteously scapegoat his own handpicked Executive-Director of the National Health Insurance Authority, namely, Mr. Sylvester Mensah, who would be promptly put under house arrest and have his bank accounts frozen and his passports confiscated.
Significantly, as had been widely anticipated by those of us avid students and observers of Fourth Republican Ghanaian Political Culture, Mr. Mensah would never be arraigned before any competent and/or legitimately constituted court of law of the land, as it were, let alone be rigorously prosecuted by the politically desperate President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama, as the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, had public;y promised the entire nation.
Not surprisingly, in the wake of his second nonconsecutive extortion of the electoral mandate from the longsuffering and largely unsuspecting Ghanaian people, the very personality who had been put under house arrest for the criminal embezzlement of funding allocated for the management of the John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-established National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), you guessed right, Mr. Sylvester Mensah, would be one of the very first party hacks and stalwarts to be appointed to the even more “capital intensive” and managerially exacting portfolios as Executive-Director of the Export and Import (EXIM) Bank of Ghana.
Now, what all the preceding tells us is the fact that when it comes to the sociopolitically critical issue and subject of appointments to positions of public trust and the development of the country, competence and merit have absolutely no pride of place in the playbook of the man who equally criminally and scandalously bankrupted Ghana’s economy by creating the veritable boondoggle that was the so-called Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), an ostensibly strategic development program for the relatively underdeveloped northern half of the country, that effectively and decidedly ended up becoming a state-capturing avenue for the Mahama and the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia Posse to line their pockets and fill up their bank accounts to the detriment of a wantonly exploited and criminally deprived and malnourished overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian people.
So, what is really new here regarding the Ann Sansa Daly Scam in which a widely alleged American-trained Home-Health Aide (HHA) certificate holder, posing as a medically trained crackerjack professional, was reportedly appointed by the Mahama Presidency as a Board Member of the National Health Insurance Authority? Absolutely zilch! As of this writing, media reports circulating in cyberspace indicated that the appointment of Ms. Sansa Daly to the Board-of-Directors of the National Health Insurance Authority had been revoked or quietly withdrawn, in the wake of a critical mass of public protestation, largely fomented by the leadership of the country’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Nonetheless, it absolutely goes without saying that the leaderships of the country’s two major political parties and their allies among the minor legislatively non-representative splinter political parties must equally share the blame, especially the bipartisan membership of the Parliamentary Vetting and Appointments Committee, who clearly well appears to have royally failed in conducting the necessary and the requisite background checks or due diligence vis-a-vis the fact of whether, indeed, Ms. Sansa Daly was professionally equipped with the sort of credentials that she reportedly claimed to possess and as a result of which the Bono native had been employed as the host of some health-related programs on the locally popular GHOne Television Station.
You see, as the recently retired Associate Supreme Court Judge, Justice Jones Mawulorm Dotse poignantly and wittily remarked not very long ago, with the leadership of the Mahama and the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia-commandeered National Democratic Congress, it is all about “Creating, Looting and Sharing” the collective wealth of the country among themselves and their friends and relatives.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]
