Accra: Justice Atuguba recently observed that some politicians who were close to him during the 2024 elections no longer answer his calls. He plainly believes it should not be that way. His remarks portray politicians as people who cultivate relationships when they need support but withdraw once power has been secured. They are 'people of the people' when they seek power and people above the people once they have power.
According to Ghana Web, the disappointment is understandable. But the larger problem is not that every political relationship fails to survive an election. It is that our system of governance encourages people to believe that personal access to politicians is necessary for navigating public life. Too much in our beloved country appears to depend on whom one knows. Admission to school, employment, scholarships, contracts, appointments, transfers, promotions, allotment to public lands, and even the ordinary delivery of services, including access to public toilets, can seem easier when one has a political godfather or a party contact.
That is the soil in which cronyism and nepotism grow, known as the Familiar Family and Friends Governance. It also explains the disappointment Justice Atuguba describes. When access to opportunity depends on relationships, people naturally invest heavily in political connections, expecting those connections to remain useful after the election. When the calls are no longer answered, they feel abandoned, used, or betrayed. But no politician can remain personally close to everyone who supported, advised, defended, or befriended them during an election. Campaign coalitions are broad, government is narrower, and new pressures arise, making access scarce.
That is normal politics. The real mistake is building a governance system in which losing access to a politician can mean losing access to opportunity. We must therefore stop asking politicians to maintain permanent personal relationships with everyone who helped them and start building institutions that make those relationships largely irrelevant. A citizen should not need to know a minister to secure a job, and a business should not need a party connection to win a contract. Public services should not depend on who can place the right call.
There was a time when many important public decisions appeared more impersonal. A student could write the A-level examination and later see their name published in the newspaper, together with the university and programme to which they had been assigned. The system may not have been perfect, but the process conveyed an important message: your result mattered more than your connections.
That is the model we must recover and modernize, not necessarily with newspaper lists, but with transparent criteria, competitive processes, published outcomes, auditable decisions, and effective avenues for appeal. The objective should be a non-connection state: a state in which rules outperform relationships, merit defeats patronage, and institutions deliver what citizens presently seek through personal access.
Justice Atuguba's observation should therefore provoke more than a discussion about whether politicians are loyal to their friends. It should force us to confront a deeper governance failure. In a properly functioning state, it should not matter very much whether a politician answers your call. The institution should answer. Politics will always be transactional, and personal relationships will always come and go. That is the nature of politics everywhere. The task of constitutional democracy is to build institutions that make personal connections largely irrelevant.
The day it no longer matters whether a politician answers your call will be the day our institutions have finally begun to answer theirs.