Of looking face and Cos 90 Leadership
By A Concerned Ghanaian · 7 May 2026 · Politics
I greet you from Ghana. I have actually been contemplating sending you emails because I am not sure if you internet access in Asamando . I guess you will get this letter through the usual telegram.
Have you realized how our leaders like media attention , to shout into cameras to create the impression they are working, to sit on radio and TV and explain the problems they are meant to solve? That is “looking face leadership” or face pleasing leadership . We see it so many times in this country and it is becoming nauseating. A presiding minister sits down and watches a building spring up in an unapproved area and when it is at the point of roofing , he marches journalists there to demand the contractor’s building permit and to ask them to stop work .
You ask yourself what he was doing when the site was being excavated. In 2019 , Kwasi Amoako Atta, then minister of Road and Highways marched with camera men to the construction site of a 22 story building in Accra’s Airport Residential area and shouted on them , ordering them to stop the work because they were doing so without permit and inconveniencing commuters . Today the site holds the KASS F towers in that vicinity. The developers had secured a permit from the local metropolitan assembly. It wasn’t the first high rise building in the area but because it was bigger and taller than its neighbors and was being constructed from an older site, the deep excavations had caused issues for the adjourning properties, a report which had triggered the minister’s noise on camera . After the noise the building continued as planned
I am sure you have seen the current road minister . Governs Kwame Agbodza, also shouting on contractors who have not delivered on road contracts given by his ministry . He has been touring sites with media men and the sound bites and visuals are all over on social media. Surprisingly, the same contractor who is not delivering on the road has so many other contracts even in other regions and in some cases he has not appeared on site after taking the mobilization for the project . How did the contractor win so many contracts when he has been underperforming on previous contracts ? Why is the mnister now shouting on camera? Where are the engineers who are supposed to visit the site and certify progress payment requests from this contractor ? It is the same supervising minister who has been in the news for sole souring a maintenance contract of the Dodo-Pepesu road at a price twice higher than its original cost . I am sad that these antics impress some people.
These radio and tv shouting does not deliver anything . It is the same approach we adopted in the fight against galamsey – launching programs, training blue guards, white armies etc and renaming miiatary interventions -operations stop , Naimos , and many other funny interventions all on tv while in actual fact we have GPS locations of the sites being mined, we know the names of the concession holders and we do even collect taxes from those illegally mining the site .
For many a Ghanaians leader , when he comes to sit on tv or radio and explains himself he feels he has delivered . Osagyefo, did you have the same media issues with your time ?These days it looks like the media does not even expose what hurts the society. they dress it and present it because their bread is buttered by those who control the illegality . This letter is my first and I am sending through another friend so wont make it long .I will send you more if I confirm that Asamando has internet
Agya Yaw Brefo