Opinions

News

Sports

Business

Entertainment

GhanaWeb TV

Africa

Country

Clueless Mahama: From “Sakawa” to Free Education

Tue, 4 Mar 2014 Source: Mensema, Akadu Ntiriwa

*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, PhD

I don’t know what the NPP is doing about Mahama’s pitching of Akufo-Addo’s free education. Mahama may be clueless when it comes to governing or honoring hundreds of promises, but he knows how to take the wind out of the sail of the NPP. I predict that the pathological passivity of the NPP will confine them to the political wilderness for years to come. The NDC is good at propaganda, for example, the notion that the NPP is an Akyem-Asante party, has been bought by some constituencies. Endemic “tribalism” and pervasive illiteracy in Ghana make it easy to retail propaganda without any political cost. It is about time the NPP leaders mount a platform to counter NDC’s strategic political engineering, one of which is Mahama’s attempt to surrogate a political baby – free education - he had recklessly disowned. The NDC operatives are making a case that free education is a constitutional provision. That being the case, why did Mahama oppose it, was he against the constitution then, and if so what has changed? The second argument, and Mahama has made it, is that no one has patented free education. Granted that is the case, it tells us that Mahama is shifty and not grounded in core ideological principles. We Ghanaians like to imitate everything Western. If Mahama had been an American politician, his shameful latching onto the very ideas of his political opponent that he had publicly ridiculed and vigorously denounced would have been his political undoing. Then again, Ghanaians are so burdened with economic hardships and social malaise to the extent that “enye hwee,” “make you no worry,” “fama Nyame,” etc.” have become democratized national syndromes. The educated middle class that can save the masses are enjoying the pen-armed robber politics of the political elites and could care less. The masses have to rise up to claim their political space in the marginalizing grip of Mahama’s wanton promises none of which has been fulfilled.

“President John Dramani Mahama, flagbearer for the ruling NDC has urged his supporters to forget about Nana Addo’s ‘free educations’ mantra. ‘Because he [Nana Addo] wants power, he is preaching free education, but I say it is ‘sakawa’ and shouldn’t be trusted,’ President Mahama said” (Abridged from Ghanaweb, November 29, 2012)

“President John Dramani Mahama has announced the preparation of government to implement a free secondary education programme which is part of the national education policy of Ghana.

Mahama had free education” (Ghanaweb, February 25, 2014)

We see Mahama imploding

Atuguba’s historicizing has come full circle

About our quotidian struggles

About our archives of pain

About dreams deferred, detained

Mahama is brimming with hubris

Like a satisfied vulture in flight

Over carcasses of preyed history

Mahama has no message

No platform

No ideology

No principle

Mahama is lies in flight

Mahama’s filthy education

Not Akufo-Addo’s free education

Mahama is a “stealer”

John Mahama is at it again

Chirping as usual like akomfem

Tweaa President of promises

Seasons of anomic promises

Has a new promise of theft

Mahama has stolen from Akufo-Addo

Akufo-Addo’s free education

When it suited Mahama he chirped

He called free education sakawa

Free education for both North & South

Today Mahama is like an akomfem

Flight of promises in space

Ghanaians let us unclench truth

Let us speak truth to power

Those who bait us

Let us unclench our fists of truth

Daughters and sons of the South

You need free education

As much as the North does

Daughters and sons of the South

Summon history as meditation, guidance

Akufo-Addo’s free education

Mahama said it was sakawa

Akufo-Addo’s free education

Sakawa that had benefited Mahama

That Northerners are enjoying

That has made the Iddrisus

That has made the Ayarigas

That has made the Bagbins

That has made the Apaks

That has made the Atugubas

The Northern elites

The corrupt architects

Of SADA

Of Akonfem

Of GYEEDA

What Mahama must call sakawa

Not Akufo-Addo’s free education

Today Mahama has stolen it

Sakawa free education

Mahama had free education

Cruelly parodied it as sakawa

Mahama’s visionary injunction

His seductive narrative

His evocative ingratitude

His deceitful declaration

Free education was sakawa

Nkrumah’s free education

That rescued Northerners

From savage stereotyping

The watchmen

The farm laborers

The washermen

The buga buga police

The carriers of night soil

Ah! Glorious night soil

Ah! Nkrumah’s free education

Brimming with hubris

Mahama called it sakawa

Daughters & sons of the South

Time to summon history

History as meditation

History as science

History as a bridge

Between the North and South

Of Nkrumah’s free education

That has made the Mahamas

Presidents

Vice presidents

Ministers of state

Tractor-thieves

Let us summon history

To speak to free education

Not Mahama’s foul education

Yes, Akufo-Addo’s free education

*Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com. My poems and essays on Ghanaweb and elsewhere must not be reproduced in full or in part for any academic or scholarly work without my written permission.

Columnist: Mensema, Akadu Ntiriwa