Former Executive Vice President of Unilever Ghana and Nigeria, Yaw Nsarkoh says fourth republican politics has led to the ‘thingification’ of electorates in Ghana.

Speaking at the Ghana Institute of Engineers’ Annual Ethics Lecture 2023, themed ‘Improving National Values, Professional Practice, and Engineering Ethics,’ he said the fourth republican political ‘big men’ have developed a mindless addiction for wealth accumulation at the expense of electorates – who they view at best as “thumbprints on a ballot paper, no more.”

“How else can I explain that we do nothing about illegal mining, galamsey, poisoning our compatriots? Would we be so quiet and indifferent if we had to drink polluted water in Labone, Cantonments, Airport Residential Area, Ridge and so on?

“It can only be fully explained by accepting that we see some of our compatriots as less human than us. Therefore we simply do not care enough about their conditions of existence. That is ‘thingification’,” he said.

He warned that the unfettered accumulation of wealth especially as the country languishes in an economic quagmire leading to the ever widening gap between the have-and-have-nots could implode causing widespread instability.

“As some of the rich politicians on both sides of the duopoly watch mass misery in our midst and yet continue to grab with both hands, their mouths, their feet, everything they can use? To stash away under beds, in cupboards and wardrobes, under mattresses and wherever else.

“The fact that so many languish in mass misery, in a world that also has so much wealth and yet cannot distribute it properly because a few must hoard to satisfy their greed. This stark reality of mass poverty and its associated indignities are the biggest threat to humanity. They make the world an unstable place,” he said.