The former Executive Vice President of Unilever Ghana and Nigeria, Yaw Nsarkoh, says Ghana’s democracy was never built on genuine independence; it is, instead, a grand illusion rooted in a distorted reality.

“Our democratic project didn’t begin from a position of real sovereignty,” he told JoyNews’ PM Express.

“What we called independence was, at best, symbolic. It wasn’t backed by control over our productive forces. You had a flag, an anthem, and a dark-skinned president, but that doesn’t make you truly independent.”

Drawing from his widely discussed lecture at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences — ‘Iniquities of Iniquity in Our Santa Claus Democracy’ — Yaw Nsarkoh described Ghana’s political space as a dangerous parody of democracy: one that functions more like a “public auction for the highest bidder” than a participatory governance system.

“The electorate,” he said, “has been reduced to ballots. Not citizens. Just ballots.”

He dismissed comparisons with thriving democracies like Singapore as intellectually lazy. “People keep saying, look at Singapore. But Singapore didn’t start modern democracy at GDP per capita levels of $3,000.

"Their context was different. They had centuries-old institutions, strong traditions. We, on the other hand, were dealing with colonial hangovers — no capital accumulation, no institutional depth.”

Quoting political thinkers like Claude Ake and citing texts like Return to the Source by Kabral Blay-Amihere, Yaw Nsarkoh laid bare a searing critique of Ghana’s post-colonial elite.

“They simply replaced the colonialists,” he said. “They took over the state apparatus and looked after themselves. They didn’t liberate us — they inherited the machinery of control and became its new masters.”

His dissection of the failures went beyond philosophy. Yaw Nsarkoh zeroed in on what he called the collapse of Local Government as evidence of a hollow democracy.

“There is no meaningful devolution of power,” he argued. “The institutions closest to the people are broken. You can’t talk about a functioning democracy when Local Government has essentially collapsed.”

According to him, the consequences are now playing out in real time.

“What we’re seeing is the erosion of public trust, the commodification of politics, and a creeping cynicism among the youth. They’re not apathetic because they’re lazy. They’re disillusioned. They know this isn’t what democracy is supposed to be.”

Yaw Nsarkoh didn’t spare Ghana’s intellectual class either.

“We’ve failed to create a truly indigenous intellectual tradition to interrogate our own political evolution. Instead, we copy frameworks that don’t fit and wonder why they break.”

Yaw Nsarkoh concluded with a warning: “We are not dealing with cosmetic dysfunction. We are dealing with foundational cracks. If we don’t confront this distorted reality, we risk institutional collapse under the weight of our delusions.”

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