Former Executive Vice President of Unilever Ghana and Nigeria, Yaw Nsarkoh, says Ghana may have embraced the appearance of democracy, but the substance never arrived<\/p>\n
He said this during an unflinching conversation on JoyNews\u2019 PM Express following his lecture titled\u00a0\u201cIniquities of Iniquity in Our Santa Claus Democracy.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In his view, what Ghana practices is not a homegrown democratic system, but an imported template lacking the critical foundations that make such a system thrive elsewhere.<\/p>\n \u201cWe imported democracy without the foundations that made it work in the West,\u201d Yaw Nsarkoh stated, drawing a clear line between form and substance.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t get a working democracy just because you put up ballot boxes and sing an anthem. If you haven\u2019t built the underlying institutions, you\u2019re playing a dangerous game.\u201d<\/p>\n His argument is rooted in both history and political economy.<\/p>\n Unlike nations where modern democratic systems evolved after sustained industrialisation and capital accumulation, Ghana and much of Africa, he explained, attempted to graft democracy onto states still grappling with the hangover of colonialism and severe economic fragility.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen modern European democracy took root, they were distributing wealth that had already been created. We didn\u2019t have that. We started from under $3,000 per capita GDP. That\u2019s a fundamentally different conversation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Yaw Nsarkoh emphasised that democracy without a robust economic and institutional foundation simply becomes a transactional contest\u2014what he termed \u201ca public auction for the highest bidder.\u201d<\/p>\n In such systems, the electorate is reduced to passive participants, voting every four years and then retreating into silence while elite groups trade power for personal gain.<\/p>\n He was especially critical of the idea that independence equated to sovereignty.<\/p>\n \u201cKabral Blay-Amihere said it and got into a lot of trouble: what kind of independence do you really have if you don\u2019t control your productive forces?\u201d Nsarkoh asked.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving a dark-skinned president and a new anthem doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019ve achieved independence. You\u2019re still navigating a distorted reality.\u201d<\/p>\n Citing the work of political economist Claude Ake, Nsarkoh argued that African states did not emerge organically but were shaped by colonial disruptions, leaving behind weak and artificial structures.<\/p>\n \u201cThe post-colonial elite took over the facilities of the state and became the new colonialists. They looked after themselves,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the deformity we\u2019ve refused to confront.\u201d<\/p>\n He lamented the collapse of local governance, describing it as a symptom of a broader democratic decay.<\/p>\n \u201cLook at the space we\u2019re in\u2014local government has essentially collapsed. Where is the citizen engagement? Where is the accountability?\u201d Yaw Nsarkoh asked.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve built a system where people come to power not to serve, but to recover their campaign investments.\u201d<\/p>\n At the heart of his message is a warning that Ghana\u2019s democracy, if not radically rethought, risks becoming a hollow ritual.<\/p>\n \u201cThis Santa Claus democracy we\u2019re practising is not sustainable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feeds expectations but doesn\u2019t deliver outcomes. It\u2019s dangerous because it breeds disillusionment, and disillusionment is the seedbed of instability.\u201d<\/p>\n Former Executive Vice President of Unilever Ghana and Nigeria, Yaw Nsarkoh, says Ghana may have embraced the appearance of democracy, but the substance never arrived He said this during an unflinching conversation on JoyNews\u2019 PM Express following his lecture titled\u00a0\u201cIniquities of Iniquity in Our Santa Claus Democracy.\u201d In his view, what Ghana practices is not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123457,"featured_media":11482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[3645],"class_list":["post-11481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news","tag-yaw-nsarkoh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/123457"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11483,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11481\/revisions\/11483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Disclaimer: The content provided on Fish FM Online is for informational and entertainment purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, we do not guarantee the completeness, reliability, or timeliness of the information presented. Fish FM Online and its affiliates are not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any decisions made based on the content available on our platform.<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"