Ghana’s democracy runs on hidden political financing – Yaw Nsarkoh

Yaw Nsarkoh, former Executive Vice President of Unilever Ghana and Nigeria, has raised concerns about the opacity of political financing in Ghana.

He warned that the country’s democratic foundations are eroding under the weight of untraceable money and unchecked influence.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express on Monday, June 23, Mr. Nsarkoh declared that political funding in Ghana lacks the transparency seen in other functioning democracies.

“If I ask you, how much money did the sitting President spend on his campaign? How much did his main contestant spend? Those are even starting questions,” he said. “I’ve not even gotten to source.”

He lamented the near-complete absence of institutional frameworks to monitor and regulate fund flows in politics.

“In our democracy, we do not know these things. Even when we sit here, we know the budgets of the American presidential candidates—how much they raised, how much they spent. Why can’t we know that in our own country?”

According to Nsarkoh, this lack of oversight creates fertile ground for illicit money to shape the country’s political direction.

“If you and I today are in the drug trade, we can carry money in sacks and give it to people who are going to become very powerful actors,” he warned. “And then that starts an entire chain.”

He noted that this influence doesn’t stop at campaign contributions.

“Sometimes not even the people in office, but the kingmakers. And once we have played big roles in sponsoring them, we start to make all sorts of demands: You need to put this person here, you need to put that person there.”

Yaw Nsarkoh blamed Ghana’s current predicament on what he called a “reluctant transition” to democracy.

Referencing the late Nigerian political economist Claude Ake’s posthumously published book Feasibility of Democracy in Africa, he noted that Ghana’s path to democracy was more about appearances than substance.

“We opened up space just a little bit so that we could say the forms of democracy had been put in place. But the structures needed to sustain it were never truly built.”

This has resulted in a system where, he says, “the electorate is reduced to mere ballots” in what he described as a “public auction for the highest bidder.”

The transactional nature of the political process, he argued, is hollowing out any real sense of citizenship and participatory governance.

Calling the current state of affairs a “Santa Claus democracy,” Mr Nsarkoh said Ghana’s political environment rewards those with money, not ideas.

“This is the root of all evil. In a Santa Claus democracy, you cannot track your fund flow.”

Though he acknowledged that individuals must be held accountable, Nsarkoh argued that Ghana’s political decay is far more structural than personal.

“There are systemic defects. Yes, there’s a place to hold personalities accountable. But after three and a half decades, when you compare with other countries going through the same cycles, and see the same outcomes, then there are design issues that need to be corrected.”

Yaw Nsarkoh’s remarks come just days after his lecture at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, titled Iniquities of Iniquity in Our Santa Claus Democracy, where he delivered a blistering critique of the country’s democratic trajectory.

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