COCOBOD Under Siege: A Perfect Storm of Incompetence ,Akaneweo Writes
I reiterate, had John Mahama not appointed Randy Abbey as Chief Executive Officer of COCOBOD, the nation might never have been confronted with the hollowness that so often hides behind confident television rhetoric. His tenure has torn the veil from a dangerous illusion that eloquence on air is a substitute for competence in office.
Today, COCOBOD lies bruised and bewildered, and across Ghana’s cocoa belt, the air is heavy with lamentation. Farmers weep openly. Cocoa sheds stand full yet useless. Beans lie ready, but buyers are absent. Even more tragic, those who have already parted with their produce wander in despair, unpaid and unheard. The sweat of their labour has yielded not sustenance, but suffering. This is pure incompetence coupled with wickedness.
Under Dr. Randy Abbey’s tenure, the once reputable machinery of cocoa purchasing has ground to a humiliating halt. Licensed Buying Companies stagger under financial paralysis, payments are frozen, and hope is rationed in cruel promises of soon. Buyers are not ready to purchase cocoa because the government cannot pay them. Meanwhile, these are the same people who made mouthwatering promises.
Again Ghana is paying its farmers less than neighbouring countries, inviting massive smuggling, yet during campaigning, promises flowed freely. At a moment when global cocoa prices are rising like a tide, the Ghanaian farmer is left stranded on dry, cracked earth, watching prosperity pass him by.
Randy Abbey, once the confident oracle of Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana, the man who dissected governments with ease and offered prescriptions with certainty, now turns to the same farmers and declares that Ghanaian cocoa is too expensive. It is a statement soaked in contradiction. Too expensive for whom? For buyers, perhaps, but never expensive enough to dignify the hands that cultivate it. Somewhere between the world market and the village farm gate, value has vanished, and accountability with it.
A leader, especially in moments of crisis, should be a shield. Instead, leadership has become a mirror reflecting excuse after excuse. The CEO speaks not as a steward of farmers’ welfare, but as a commentator still trapped behind a studio desk, analysing failure rather than correcting it.
John Mahama’s presidency did not strengthen COCOBOD as promised. It exposed the peril of mistaking noise for knowledge and commentary for competence. Until this failure is confronted honestly, the cries of cocoa farmers will continue to echo through the forests, a haunting reminder that leadership, when hollow, leaves devastation in its wake.
Credit - Authored by Akaneweo Kabiru Abdul
