Ghana has beggars for MPs

By  Peter Wanyonyi

African MPs are all the same, it appears. This is instructive because it explains why the continent is so corrupt and backward.

Down in South Africa, President Jacob Zuma has just spent the equivalent of Sh2.4 billion from the public purse “upgrading” his private residence. Zuma is not known for his personal restraint. He has six wives after all.

That number might go up soon, too. During his sixth wedding, the good man invited his new bride by telling her, “Do not close the door that others left open for you.”

Against this backdrop, one must feel sorry for Ghana’s president, John Mahama. His salary is the equivalent of a mere Sh360,000 or so. Compare this to the salary of a Kenyan MP, who takes home in excess of Sh850,000 a month! Ghana’s MPs take home a paltry Sh185,000 a month. It’s an embarrassment that almost borders on the criminal.

So a few days ago, Ghana’s MPs got together and decided to increase their salaries to something more presentable. There was uproar. Unlike Kenya’s cowardly so-called middle class, Ghana’s masses are readying themselves for massive protests to stop the unwarranted salary increment.

And there’s a precedent. One fine morning in June 1979, Ghana’s leaders were then lined up on a beach and shot dead for misgoverning the country.

Maybe it is the case that Kenya is so poorly governed because our MPs and other leaders are clearly overpaid, and have never had as ruthless a day of reckoning as their counterparts in Accra. We have been overpaying these charlatans for decades and yet we still are very backward.

Even worse, they want to increase their own pay, yet again — and we might let them.

Perhaps it’s time we tried underpaying them for a change or ordered them to volunteer.

Insulting phantom political enemies can’t be that tough.