The Executive Director of the Media Foundation of West Africa (MFWA), Sulemana Braimah says Sam Jonah’s reflections genuinely reflect existing conditions in the country.

His comment comes on the back of a speech delivered by the astute businessman at a Rotary Club function titled “Down the up escalator – Reflections on Ghana’s future by a senior citizen” where Sir Jonah bemoaned the prevailing “culture of silence” which he said is being enforced not “by legal and military power but through convenience, parochialism, hypocrisy, and lack of conviction.”

According to Sulemana Braimah, these developments as described by Sir Sam Jonah, particularly those concerning the media landscape in the country, have been slowly building up over the years since the advent of our Fourth Republic.

Speaking on Joy Prime’s Prime Morning Show Monday, Mr Braimah stated, “I think it has been something that we have been building up, tolerating and almost nurturing and watering and grooming.

“Except that I should say in the last four years under the Akufo-Addo administration, the acts of intolerance, attempts to silence people, I think it has grown quite more so it has become more manifest to people than perhaps it used to be.”

The Executive Director of the MFWA said the prevailing culture of silence is based on two different dynamics; the first being silence by volition and the second being state enforced silence.

He explained that a lot of Ghanaians have chosen to stay out of public debates concerning national policies due to perceived inconveniences and often times the risk of losing out on benefiting from the ‘loot and share’ schemes.

He said, “I think there are people in our country today who by their own volition have decided that I wouldn’t want to comment on public issues, I don’t want to endure the robust debates that go on and so on and so forth.

“For some of them it is as a result of perceived inconvenience, for others it is simply because of the enjoyment of the booty.  So even as they see things go wrong, they dare not comment because then they take themselves out of the possible beneficiaries of the system.”

He further stated that the use of state security forces to oppress dissenting views in the country is also a contributing factor to the culture of silence.

According to him, over the years, especially within the past four year tenure of the Akufo-Addo administration, state security agencies including the Police Service, the National Investigation Bureau and the National Security etc. have been used to silence outspoken critics of the government.

He explained that, “From people who have been hired and being paid to aggressively attack views that are contrary to that of government, to the state institutions being used against persons who appear to be vociferous and expressing themselves about national affairs, to that the state security are sometimes deployed against people who are vociferous.

“And by state security; the police, the national security, the NIB, and so on have all been on one occasion or the other deployed against forces that are quite strong against views of government.”