Desperate Mahama is afraid of his own shadow

He said that “he knows of a letter” written by a staff member of the Upper-West Security Council requesting that some operatives of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) be provided with combat training in preparation for next year’s election. Such military or combat training, we are told, was to take place at a National Security Council-owned facility located at Asutuare, in the Greater-Accra Region. Well, in a media release signed by Major (Ret.) Ignatius Awuni, Head of the Public Information Department of the Ministry of National Security, the Secretariat admits to the fact of owning a combat-training facility at Asutuare that is “managed and run on a day-to-day basis by the Ghana Armed Forces.” Major Awuni even more pointedly adds that “Other non-state agencies and private institutions also use the [same] facility to train their staff” (See “National Security Secretariat Rubbishes Mahama Allegations on ‘Asutuare Thugs’” Modernghana.com 10/19/19).

You begin to wonder what his massive defeat in the 2016 polls and the resonant success of the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) have psychologically and emotionally done to Mr. John Dramani Mahama, who still curiously and outrageously appears to be in abject denial of the fact that he is no longer an attractive Presidential Candidate Material, that is, hypothetically assuming that he ever was once upon a time. What is even more significant and worth highlighting here is the fact that the former President made his patently lame allegation of “knowing about” a letter requesting the training of some Upper-West NPP Security Council operatives at Asutuare to the President of the Ghana Journalists’ Association (GJA), Mr. Affail Monney.

This is all perfectly in synch with the indisputable fact of the Radio-Broadcast Director – the last time that I checked – at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) being the veritable toady of the former President. The latter fact became scandalously obvious when in the wake of the brutal mauling of the young broadcast journalist by Mr. Stanislav X Dogbe, at the 37th Military Hospital, in Accra, with the passive but equally criminal complicity of then Communications Minister, Dr. Edward Kofi Omane-Boamah, Mr. Monney put up absolutely no remarkable struggle to secure justice for the victim, a bona fide member of his own staff.

Well, in the latest instance of the mendacious allegation by Mr. John Dramani Mahama, as well, Mr. Monney flagrantly failed in his official duty and designation as the Dean of Ghanaian Journalists by not promptly demanding to be shown a hard copy of the letter which the former President claimed to have been written by an NPP security operative at the Upper-West headquarters of the party, expressly requesting the combat training of an unspecified number of party operatives in preparation for next year’s general election. You see, Ghanaian political culture has far advanced beyond rumors and innuendoes and the era of rumormongering by even prominent politicians like the former President and false -information peddling.

And such patently falsehood, coming from the mouth of a former President and former Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) must be roundly condemned, in toto, for it unmistakably verges on incitement to riot, insurrection and sedition. For me, though, what was even more disturbing about the Mahama Mendacity or deliberately calculated falsehood is the fact that according to Major Awuni, the Public Information Head at the Ministry of National Security, the Asutuare Combat-Training Facility has been in existence since 2009, when Mr. Mahama was sworn in as Vice-President to then-President John Evans Atta-Mills. We are also significantly informed by Major Awuni that there is absolutely nothing different that is being done or has been done by the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party that was not done or had not been done before by the previous Atta-Mills- and Mahama-led regimes of the National Democratic Congress.

In short, not in so many words but inescapably implicit, nonetheless, according to Major Awuni, Mr. Mahama unpardonably insults the intelligence of the Ghanaian citizenry by so maliciously presuming to unconscionably manufacture and sell such senseless propaganda poppycock. Any forward-looking and progressive-minded Ghanaian citizen could not agree more with Major Awuni.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net