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This is an open letter to whoever ordered the arrest last week of Mr Kofi Nsiah-Poku, the Managing Director of Kinapharma Ghana Ltd. Dear sir or madam, I am writing to you in your capacity as the one who ordered the arrest of Mr Kofi Nsiah Poku and also ensured wide media coverage for the arrest. And I write to you in my capacity as a Ghanaian who knows the value of men like Kofi Nsiah Poku for Ghana. Let me begin by putting on record my respect and deep appreciation for you and all law enforcement personnel in Ghana. I know that we sometimes take our security for granted in Ghana and forget that without your tireless efforts none of us can go about our business with the kind of ease we do in Ghana. Thanks to you and your colleagues, Ghana is a very different place to live than say, Nigeria or Kenya. Having said that, I must go on to let you know what I think of what you did to Mr Kofi Nsiah Poku. From where I sit, I see your treatment of Kofi typical of our attitude as Ghanaians to those who are successful among us. The average Ghanaian just assumes that if someone is successful, then he must be a crook. We are very suspicious of the wealthy and successful among us and whenever we have a chance, we show them just what we think of them. I believe that we should change that attitude towards the rich and successful Ghanaians. Unfortunately whilst we treat our own with contempt and suspicion, we treat the foreigners among us who came to Ghana with nothing and have made it big in Ghana with deep respect, accommodation and even reverence. It is as if as Ghanaians we resent a fellow Ghanaian becoming successful in Ghana. It is sad that we are comfortable with foreigners making it in Ghana but very negative towards Ghanaians making it in Ghana. It seems that the only place a Ghanaian can make it without attracting hostility from government and government agencies is outside the country. Ghana has been blessed with entrepreneurs and yet we do not have any major indigenous businesses that are older than 40 years. We have consistently targeted and destroyed every Ghanaian who has grown big in Ghana whilst at the same time helping foreigners to grow in Ghana. Sir, maybe you may not know it or possibly you may not care but Ghanaians like Kofi Nsiah should be treated with great care in Ghana because but for them, Ghana�s future is very bleak. The economy of Ghana is largely in the hands of foreigners. The telecom industry is almost exclusively in the hands of foreigners; the banking sector is largely in the hands of foreigners with only the likes of Edward Effah and Prince Amoabeng and Ken Ofori Atta doing whatever they can to ensure a Ghanaian presence in banking. The battle for who controls the media in Ghana is ongoing with people like Mr Kwasi Twum struggling to take as much of the media territory for Ghanaians. Even events management has fallen to foreigners. Our advertising industry is going to foreigners; our restaurant and service industries are in the hands of foreigners. Our real estate sector is in the hands of foreigners. The automobile sector is in the hands of foreigners except the second hand cars. Sir, Madam, ask yourself, how much of Ghana�s formal economy is in the hands of Ghanaians? With time, we will have a Ghana where the Ghanaians can only be low level employees while the wealth of the nation is made by foreigners and for foreigners who will never make any meaningful contribution to our economy. We know that much of the business activities of foreigners are exploitative and can only weaken this nation�s economy and leave the Ghanaian poorer and poorer in his own country. People like Kofi Nsiah have dedicated themselves to reversing the trend. We have often complained that all Ghanaians do is buy and sell. Kofi Nsiah also began as a buy and sell person but he quickly moved from buy and sell to manufacturing. Before he came on the scene, pharmaceutical manufacturing in Ghana was largely nonexistent. What little manufacturing there was was in the hands of a foreigner or just for painkillers. Kofi Nsiah was a leader in establishing a full range indigenous private sector driven pharmaceutical manufacturing company in Ghana. A man like that should not be treated like a criminal and when he is treated as one, it sends dangerous signals to the business community in Ghana that the bad and horrible old days where indigenous Ghanaian entrepreneurs were targeted and destroyed are returning. May be your were genuinely doing your duty. Of course if Mr Nsiah was into drugs, I am not saying that you should have turned a blind eye to his nefarious activities. But let us review what was done to him. Your men went into the warehouse with experts in detecting narcotics. When they opened that chemical that was suspected to be cocaine, they did a preliminary test right there in the warehouse and said it was not cocaine but they wanted to take samples to the lab for a more exhaustive testing. You ordered then that they should not take a sample but the whole stock and then you ordered that Mr Nsiah be arrested and held in police custody even though his wife told you that the man was on medical treatment and holding him in custody could endanger his life, you of course ignored the pleadings of his wife. My question is, when your preliminary testing was negative and since you were still investigating the nature of the chemical, was it really necessary to take him into custody? Were you thinking that a man with such investments in Ghana would run away? Even if you thought he could run away, was not other ways of grounding him other than holding him in custody? Are we now operating a system that says that a man is guilty merely on suspicion until he proves otherwise? At any rate are we saying that we don�t have intelligence on someone like Kofi Nsiah in Ghana? Does he fit the profile of a drug dealer? When will we learn to have confidence in our own? I don�t think you are aware of the disservice you have done to mother Ghana with the arrest of Kofi Nsiah Poku. You sent a message to the business community to live in fear because no one is safe in Ghana from being destroyed on a whim. And this is not just my view. This is the view of two big businessmen who called me on hearing of the arrest of Kofi Nsiah. They said, �Ebo if they can do this to Kofi then no one is safe in Ghana.� Sir, I am sorry to tell you that you misfired and disgraced Kofi and in doing so, you have created panic among the few Ghanaian entrepreneurs who were fighting so hard to reclaim Ghana�s economy for Ghanaians. By your actions, you have just made the future of your children and your grandchildren that much bleaker because they will become slaves in their own country because they cannot find a Ghanaian entrepreneur to work for and when they become entrepreneurs they will also be targeted and destroyed. I hope you will find the decency to apologise to him and I hope we will find better ways of enforcing the law in Ghana as far as our entrepreneurs are concerned. The days when law enforcement acts with hostility to innocent and decent Ghanaians should be a thing of the past. Yours concerned for the economy of Ghana.