Inside the News by Mpakoo - All pieces appearing in this column are satire

Statistics from GSS are calculated by EC officials – Bawumia

On Mar 30, 2015

It has been revealed that the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has contracted officials from the Electoral Commission (EC) to calculate important statistics like inflation rates. This revelation was made by Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, vice-presidential aspirant of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), while giving a lecture on the state of the economy. He also disclosed that the EC has sent officials to the African Development Bank (AfDB) for the same purpose.

When the EC was reached for comments, the deputy chairman revealed that they felt proud that their mathematical acumen was finally getting the recognition that it deserved. He further hinted that the EC was ready for the next big move.

‘Our next step is to send officials to the Bank of Ghana to help out with high-level financial calculations,’ he said.

Dr Bawumia also made another surprising revelation in his lecture, pointing out that Ghana was actually a ship, and that this ship was at sea. The former deputy governor of the Bank of Ghana further warned that this ship risked drifting aimlessly off and getting tossed hither and thither on the tempestuous seas, because ‘the anchor holding the ship together is too heavy with debt and it may no longer hold.’

But deputy communications minister, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, who is not an economist, has made a heroic attempt at refuting Dr Bawumia’s claims. He alleged that ‘Dr Bawumia’s lecture was full of untruths.’ For instance, he claimed that ‘the country cannot drift too far’ into the ocean, because ‘Ghana is not a ship, like Bawumia wants us to believe, but only a simple canoe. And as you all know, canoes don’t go too far’

He also claimed that what is holding the canoe still at the moment ‘is not an anchor, as Bawunia dishonestly wants us to believe, but rather cobwebs.’ He said that the choice of cobwebs is a further indication of the Mahama administration’s commitment to fiscal prudence since ‘buying cobwebs is an infinitely cheaper option than buying an actual anchor. The money that we save by this means, we give it to Woyome and RLG, and share the rest among ourselves. That is what we mean when we say Create, Loot, and Share,’ he said.

Editor’s note: The ‘Inside the News by Mpakoo’ column which appears every Monday exclusively on ghanabusinessnews.com is satire.