I perfectly agree with Mr. Kofi Bentil, of the IMANI think-tank, that the purported activation of the long-defunct Komenda Sugar Factory by the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is apt to produce more propaganda than sugar. And on the latter score must also be highlighted the fact that the Komenda Sugar Factory was not the only one of its kind abandoned in the wake of the overthrow of the Nkrumah-led regime of the Convention People’s Party (CPP). There was also the Asutsuare Sugar factory, in the Eastern Region, which is widely known to have produced even more sugar than Komenda.

This is no accident because the Eastern Region has also been known and called the Cradle of the Cocoa Industry, the economic mainstay of modern Ghana. I also vividly recall that during the heady days of the Operation Feed Yourself (OFY) era, initiated by the Acheampong-led junta of the National Redemption Council (NRC), later the Supreme Military Council (SMC-1), the Asutsuare Sugar factory operated for quite a while. I was then a pupil of the Presbyterian Middle Boys’ Boarding School at Akuapem-Akropong, popularly called Akropong Salem. I remember a commercial truck fully loaded with satchels of Asutsuare-produced sugar driving up to Salem one afternoon and selling us quite a remarkable quantity of the sweet product.

The satchels came in two sizes, small and large. I must have bought one large size of sugar. Shortly thereafter, another truck would drive up to the school and sell us factory-produced gari to go with our sugar. I don’t remember any other truck driving up with cans of milk or satchels of powdered milk. Which may very well explain why quite a remarkable number of us, Salem Boys, developed one form of eye disease or another. I never heard or saw any satchels of Komenda-produced sugar then. And as I vividly recall, the Asutsuare-produced granulated sugar was packaged in “water-colored” transparent plastic bags with blue imprints.

Needless to say, the Vice-President of the IMANI think-tank is smack-dab on point to declare that the purported activation of the Komenda Sugar Factory, coming in a watershed election year, seems to be clearly calculated for propagandistic effect than any serious or demonstrable functionality of substance in practical terms. This may well explain why the first gut reaction of the founding proprietor of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, was to angrily and pointedly demand where was the sugar cane or raw materials that the Mahama government intended to use in the production of the sugar because of which the long-abandoned factory was activated.

And Dr. Nduom ought to know precisely what he is talking about, for as a quite successful entrepreneur in his own right, the former Presidential Candidate of the rump-Convention People’s Party (r-CPP) also represented the Komenda Constituency, including Edina, Eguafo and Abirem in Ghana’s parliament for several electoral terms. The fact of the matter is that you simply do not either reactivate or establish a factory before you start thinking about where the supplies for the operation of the aforesaid factory will come from. Such an at once regressive and shallow thinking is what has been termed as putting the cart before the horse.

On the preceding score, one can hardly fault the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress, for the Rawlings Posse has absolutely no credible track-record of industrial development. Their only industry-related track-record involves the total dismantling of the erstwhile Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation (GIHOC), initiated by the Nkrumah-led CPP regime, which President Jerry John Rawlings “sold” at giveaway prices to his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, the Ahwoi Brothers, and their associates and cronies. In other words, the key operatives of the ruling National Democratic Congress are better known for unconscionably quartering up and literally stealing state-owned properties than either building up or improving the quality of these taxpayer-owned properties.

Which is why contrary to what the notorious Cretin-of-California would have Ghanaians believe, Mr. Bentil hits a home run, in American baseball parlance, when he tells it exactly as it is, to wit, that the purportedly activated Komenda Sugar Factory is apt to produce more propaganda than sugar. Among the Akan, there is a terse and poignant maxim for this patently propagandistic hoax: “When Mr. Naked promises you a bolt of cloth, you just listen to his name.”