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When deceased President John Evans Atta Mills turned on the wheels of the Floating, Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) Kwame Nkrumah off the shores of Cape Three Points to commence the production of oil in commercial quantity in December 2010, he invited the whole nation to rejoice. Like the three Wise Men who asked the world to rejoice with them on finding the baby Jesus in a manger in Bethlehem, then President Mills proclaimed that the news of the oil production was worth celebrating, in the sense that it marked an era of rejuvenation for the national economy. �We rejoice in the oil find,� proclaimed the late Prof. Mills. He said the day should serve as reason for all Ghanaians to work hard and not rest on their oars. �It means we are assuming extra responsibilities.� The Head of State said Ghanaians living now were trustees for future generations, and promised that his government would manage the oil revenue well. �Revenue from the oil will be used for the benefit of all and not for a few,� echoing the sentiments of countrymen praying for the efficient management of oil resources to improve on infrastructure and society generally. After joining the dignitaries at the Takoradi Air Force Base after the commissioning the oil project, the late President Mills said: �The oil will be a blessing and not a curse for Ghana.� Less than two years after the late Head of State had tickled Ghanaians to enjoy a good laugh, the prospects are bleak. This nation now sits on a time bomb of economic mismanagement, corruption, coupled with what The Chronicle describes as voodoo economics. In the first place, the 120 barrels of oil a day promised has been a mirage. Today, oil companies are struggling to produce 70 barrels a day, indicating that resources are dwindling. To add insult to injury, corruption now permeates all sectors of society. In place of the jubilant mood on the discovery of the black gold, Ghanaians are asking what happened to the oil money. Last Tuesday, the New Patriotic Party, the largest opposition political party in the country, held a press conference and described the state of the national economy as in tatters. In the opinion of the party and its spokesperson for the day, Mr. Yaw Osafo Maafo, the former Finance Minister who took the country into the Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative and brought Ghana out in a record two years of fiscal prudence, the 2013 Budget statement, billed as the panacea to bail this country out of the economic hole, is only a �hogwash of assorted patchwork of propaganda.� Read Mr. Maafo�s lips: �Six months on, the economy is in tatters, and things are getting worse. Government is no longer in denial. There is now consensus that the economy is in bad shape. That is why it is lamentable that the President is sounding from the roof-top that wherever he has gone to, he is being commended for managing the nation well.� On the same day the NPP rubbished the economy under President John Dramani Mahama, Transparency International indicted Ghana as more being corrupt than before. According to the TI, its Global Corruption Barometer for 2013 has established that 54 percent of Ghanaians believe corruption has got worse in the last two years. Out of 2,000 people sampled in the survey, 64 percent said corruption had become a very serious problem. Only 18 percent felt corruption was abating. In a nation where state officials are alleged to have connived to pay a whooping amount of GH�51 million to Alfred Agbesi Woyome, a financier of the ruling National Democratic Congress, without any proof of any work done, nationals are beginning to question the morality upon which the administration of President John Dramani Mahama is based. In addition to the Woyome dole-out, the Supreme Court has established that the state, under the Mills/Mahama directive, had paid 5 million Euros to Waterville Holding Company, a foreign firm that was initially involved in the renovation work on the Ohene Djan Stadium in Accra, without any proof of contract. In his submission as member of the panel, Mr. Justice Jones Dotse stated that state officials and their legal accomplices, �created, looted and shared� the state booty. What baffles most Ghanaians is the fact that someone like Mr. Ebo Barton-Odro, who has been linked to the Woyome deal, sits in Parliament as First Deputy Speaker. The gamut of judgment debts have been established as a conduit pipe through which state officials siphon state funds. As if these were not enough, both the 2011 and the 2012 Auditor General�s Reports have established state monies running into billions being siphoned away, while the state taxes the poor. In an economic policy that defies any standard logic, the government has pushed through Parliament a bill to tax all manner of things, including cutlasses, fishing nets and outboard motors. The conventional wisdom is that the state subsidises agriculture to enable farmers and fishermen everywhere produce more. Under Mahama�s voodoo economics, the state squeezes everything from the poor farmers, and lays them on the plate for looters of the state treasury, tracing their political lineage to his ruling National Democratic Congress. On Monday, Ghanaians woke to the shock of a report in state-run Daily Graphic indicating that the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneur Development Agency had paid a whooping GH�4.6 million to a consultant to access a World Bank facility for the agency, even though the World Bank facility had not hit any of the accounts operated by Ghana. Meanwhile, the World Bank has made it absolutely clear that it deals with the government directly. It does not go through any middlemen. In the meantime, this country hobbles on its knees economically. All Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies are owed three quarters of their Common Fund. The Ghana Education Trust Fund is virtually unable to fund the needs of its client institutions for lack of money. All the same, it emerged recently that an employee of the Economic and Organised Crime Office sent to investigate the fund over alleged misapplication of funds, was awarded a full scholarship by the GETFund to study law at GIMPA. Almost all social interventionist policies bequeathed by the previous Kufuor administration are struggling to survive, while the state over-taxes the underfed and sometimes unemployed Ghanaian, through increases in petroleum and utility bills. Bereft of financial resources, the government itself is only hanging in there!