Author: Kay Codjoe, Market Research Consultant and Volunteer Associate at the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education

“All truth passes through three stages,” wrote Arthur Schopenhauer. “First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.” For months, anyone who questioned the state of COCOBOD was treated like a village drunk disturbing a funeral.

Raise concerns about debt, and you were called an alarmist. Ask questions about Cocoa Road’s commitments, and you were accused of sabotage. Point to procurement irregularities and you become an enemy of cocoa farmers.

Mention cash flow problems, and the propaganda machinery was immediately dispatched to explain why black was actually white. One of the loudest voices in that orchestra of denial was Miracle Aboagye and his colleagues, who spent considerable energy assuring Ghanaians that everything was under control.

The numbers, however, were stubborn. Numbers have an irritating habit. They refuse to join political parties. Today, something fascinating has happened. The denialists have been overtaken by the inconvenient candour of their own intellectual and political establishment.

Kojo Oppong Nkrumah now says the next NPP administration will solve the cocoa crisis. Consider the significance of that statement. Not politics. The admission. The next NPP administration will solve the cocoa crisis.

Not “the alleged crisis.” Not “the fabricated crisis.” Not “the propaganda.” The crisis. The same sector that saw cocoa production fall from over one million tonnes to less than half that level in recent years.

In a single sentence, the argument has moved from denial to admission. The existence of the crisis is no longer in dispute. The only debate now is who should fix it.

Which brings us to the uncomfortable question. If there is indeed a cocoa crisis requiring an entirely new NPP administration to solve it, who created the conditions that produced it?

Did the crisis descend from Jupiter? Did it emerge from an anthill in Atebubu? Did angry cocoa trees organize themselves into a conspiracy? Or did human beings occupying public office make decisions that accumulated over time? This is where the conversation becomes awkward.

You cannot simultaneously argue that a crisis exists, promise to fix it tomorrow, and then become offended when citizens ask who was managing the sector yesterday.

Especially when questions persist over billions in cocoa-road commitments, debt obligations, and procurement decisions accumulated over several years. The mathematics simply refuses to cooperate. A doctor who breaks a patient’s leg does not become a hero merely because he promises to provide crutches.

The deeper problem is that many politicians still believe public memory expires every election cycle. It does not. Ghanaians are increasingly keeping receipts. They are comparing commitments against funding.

Promises against outcomes. Borrowing against productivity. Announcements against results. They are asking how commitments reportedly reached GH¢26.5 billion while funding gaps widened and liabilities piled up.

They are asking how only GH¢5.4 billion had reportedly been paid against those commitments, how debt exposure climbed beyond GH¢16.18 billion, why approximately GH¢7.7 billion in bond obligations were pushed into future years, and how more than 200,000 jute sack bales remained uncleared while production declined.

The tragedy for the deniers is that truth has completed Schopenhauer’s journey. First, concerns about COCOBOD’s finances were ridiculed. Then they were aggressively opposed.

Now even leading architects of the same political tradition openly acknowledge the existence of a crisis that once attracted ridicule merely for being named.

The truth did not change. The numbers did not change. Reality did not change. Only the talking points changed. And that is perhaps the most expensive admission of all.