When I was growing up, there was a type of fuel sold for the use of cars called ‘gasoil’. Those days, engines that used ‘gasoil’ were known for the amount of SUFFOCATING fumes they belched, and the slowness with which the vehicles travelled.
‘Gasoil’ was therefore priced much lower, as against ‘petrol’. And most people who needed personal cars, preferred cars with engines fired by ‘petrol’ as against engines fired by ‘gasoil’. One definitely did not want to travel far distances breathing diesel fumes for hours on end.
These days, with better engineering and better refining, the ‘gasoil’ (diesel) looks better than the brackish stuff that was sold in Ghana forty and fifty years ago. And the engines that use ‘gasoil’ are better, finer, and so it is hardly possible to see the type of fumes we experienced in those days.
But often, when I listen to our President, I am reminded of the ‘gasoil’ of by-gone days, and the fumes that oil used to produce.
Apparently, our President was at an international conference in Doha, Qatar. This conference, dubbed the ‘Doha Forum 2025’ is an event that attracted individuals with nothing better to do with their time.
Doha Forum advertises itself as ‘a global platform for dialogue, bringing together leaders in policy to discuss critical challenges facing our world, and to build innovative and action-driven networks’.
Under the banner ‘Diplomacy, Dialogue, Diversity’, Doha Forum states that it promotes the interchange of ideas and discourse towards policy making and action-oriented recommendations ‘in a world where borders are porous, our challenges and solutions are also interlinked’.
Speaking at this forum this weekend, President Mahama stated that ‘Ghana’s long-term prosperity in education and agriculture hinges on self-reliance, not foreign aid’.
I say that this type of talk, like the ‘gasoil’ of old, has the tendency to produce lots of suffocating fumes, without actually bringing in the substance and substantial work that leads to critical change.
By January 8th, 2026, Mr. Mahama would have been in government for a year, meaning that twelve months out of the forty-eight months that he would be in power, is already used up. He has not been able to propose a single definitive policy in either education or agriculture that remotely hints at self-reliance. Given that he found it necessary to go off to far-off Doha to spout his vision (possibly at the cost of several hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Ghanaian taxpayer), one would have thought that he would actualize his visi on back home, before speaking in Doha.
What has he done to ensure that education is more self-reliant in Ghana? That agriculture is more self-reliant? We see little, which brings into doubt the tough talk from Doha.
Just before I sat down to write this piece, I had to edit a news item about farmers in Wenchi in the Bono region, who are losing their corn from a dry spell. Earlier this year we had to contend with a similar problem in the northern parts of Ghana.
At the same time, this is a nation that has many rivers and water bodies that are not being stored for agricultural purposes. In fact, we have allowed water to be a curse in that every year, we allow the Burkinabes to release vast volumes of water to destroy agriculture in our northern hinterlands. This is water that, appropriately stored and engineered, could have made Ghana fully self-sufficient in food production.
We have not heard our President and his Agriculture Minister on what they are doing in this direction, yet he is in Doha, seeking adulation for his alleged great vision for Ghana.
Which leads me to the certainty that the real purpose of the trip was the flight and the contacts to be made (among other perks) and not necessarily the fact that Ghana should be self-reliant.
Like all his predecessors before him, in just one year, Mr. Mahama has assumed quite a few loans on behalf of Ghana, and is not in any hurry to wean us off the international finance organizations.
He should spare us the long talk, the gasoil. We see the fumes for what they are, mere fumes!
(Periscope Depth of 8th December, 2025).
