SEVEN PARTS. ONE VICTIM. THE FARMER YOU FORGOT TO MENTION. ONE UNFORGIVABLE ACT. The NDC’s “ineffective washing detergent”, summarises our position as: "Because COCOBOD had debt in 2017, the NPP cannot be blamed for what happened between 2017 and 2025."

 SEVEN PARTS. ONE VICTIM. THE FARMER YOU FORGOT TO MENTION. ONE UNFORGIVABLE ACT.

The NDC’s “ineffective washing detergent”, summarises our position as: "Because COCOBOD had debt in 2017, the NPP cannot be blamed for what happened between 2017 and 2025."

That is not our argument. That has never been our argument. And he knows it.

Our argument is precise, simple, and remains entirely unanswered:

COCOBOD has always had debt. Every administration has managed debt. That is the institution's history and it is well documented. What no administration before this NDC government has done is respond to that debt by cutting what the farmer earns per bag.

That is the argument. Not that the NPP was perfect. Not that every cedi was managed flawlessly. Not that debt never grew. The argument is that the farmer was never made to pay for institutional mismanagement, until now. All administrations had to grapple with debts, rollover cocoa beans, procurement overruns etc. and none touched the cocoa farmer in such devastated manner as has been done by his beloved NDC party today. 

Codjoe's seven parts have not touched this. His counter-rebuttal does not touch this. Because there is no answer to it that does not indict the very government he is defending.

 

Kay Coddle (NDCs new)  announces, with considerable fanfare, that this is the first installment of a seven-part forensic exposé. Seven parts. Forensic. Let us hold those two words together for a moment, because forensic work, by definition, requires evidence. Documents. Exhibits. Verifiable records.

We submitted one. An official Ghana Cocoa Board memorandum. Dated. Signed. Filed. Addressed to the Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Codjoe's seven-part forensic masterpiece has so far produced exactly zero documents.

Just words. Confusingly arranged, carelessly confident, entirely unsupported words.

There is a word for forensic work without exhibits. It is not journalism. It is not analysis. It is not even commentary. It is fiction with footnotes it forgot to include.

 

ON BEING CALLED LONG-WINDED.

Codjoe opens by mocking the length of the rebuttal, breathless, theatrical, a miracle manuscript, a Sunday revival. It is a clever dodge. When a document destroys your argument, attack the font size. When an official memo contradicts your thesis, question the author's adjectives.

But here is what he cannot mock away: we brought a document. He brought metaphors.

We brought GH¢19.67 billion, recorded and certified as at January 2017. He brought a leaking roof analogy.

We brought Cocobod’s own words describing imminent insolvency inherited from the NDC administration. He brought the image of a man burning down a house.

Pretty pictures. No paper.

 

ON THE MEMO HE CALLS "ADVOCACY."

With spectacular insincerity, Codjoe now tells us that the 2017 COCOBOD Board memorandum, an official document for strategic decision making, is merely a "management advocacy document written to justify financing requests" and therefore should not be treated as a neutral forensic instrument.

Breathtaking.

So when the document serves his narrative, it is evidence. When it serves deflates his narrative, it is advocacy.

This is not analysis. This is umpiring a match where he reserves the right to disqualify any ball that dismisses him.

But let us follow his logic to its conclusion. If the memo is management advocacy, if its figures cannot be trusted at face value, then the GH¢19.67 billion inherited debt is not just our claim. It is COCOBOD's own board-level claim, made to justify a US$750 million financing request. Banks do not extend US$750 million based on fiction. Boards do not accept financing memos based on advocacy they have not interrogated. That document was acted upon. That document shaped institutional decisions. You cannot simultaneously call it unreliable and pretend the institution it describes was in fine health.

 

ON THE AUDITED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS HE RAISES.

Codjoe gestures at audited financials showing GH¢11.44 billion in assets against GH¢9.94 billion in liabilities as at September 2018, suggesting this undermines our insolvency narrative.

Two things.

First, those figures are from September 2018, eighteen months after the NPP took office and after significant debt restructuring by the NPP Government, repayments of GH¢12.78 billion, and new facility arrangements had already been executed. Of course the balance sheet looked different after the NPP went to work. That is precisely the point.

Second, and more fundamentally: bring the document. We brought ours. Cite the audited financials. Reference them. Attach them. Publish them. Show us the balance sheet that contradicts the board memo we have shared. Show us the audit signed by the directors. Do the forensic work the seven-part series promises.

Otherwise, citing documents you are choosing not to show is not evidence. It is the rhetorical equivalent of saying "trust me, I have receipts" while keeping your hands firmly in your pockets.

 

ON WHAT THIS DEBATE IS ACTUALLY ABOUT.

 The “ineffective washer’s” response runs long on debt figures, jute sack tallies, and bond concentration schedules. It runs completely silent on the singular verdict this conversation has always been building toward.

Ghana's cocoa farmer, the man and woman who rise before the sun, who nurse the pods, who carry the harvest, had their price per bag cut by this government.

Not restructured. Not temporarily adjusted with a recovery pathway. Cut.

After inheriting an institution Codjoe himself describes as distressed and fragile, this administration's answer to fragility was to make the farmer bear it.

And Codjoe's forensic seven-part series, armed with all its data and discipline and prosecutorial poise, has produced not one sentence defending that cut. Not one sentence explaining why it was necessary. Not one sentence demonstrating that every other option was exhausted before the farmer was reached.

Because there is no defence. And he knows it.

Debt is institutional. Mismanagement is governmental. But cutting the farmer price is personal. It is a choice made against the most vulnerable actor in the entire chain, and no forensic series, however long, can launder that into an administrative inevitability.

 

ON THE ELECTORAL ARITHMETIC HE INVOKES.

He reminds us the NPP was rejected at the polls. We accept that verdict with humility, as democrats must. The people spoke. We heard them.

But here is what that arithmetic also says: the Ghanaian voter who rejected the NPP did not hand power to the NDC as an endorsement of NDC management. They handed power as a demand for better. Better than what they had. Better than what they feared they were getting.

Cutting the farmer price is not better. By any measure, moral, economic, political, it is worse.

And if Codjoe's seven remaining installments do not address why the farmer's bag now fetches less under the government he is defending, then his forensic series is not an exposé.

It is a distraction operation.  Poorly-written. Heavily footnoted. And fundamentally evasive.