Facts you cannot dispute

It was decidedly pleonastic – plain tautological – for President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to tell Ghanaians resident here in New York City that soundly jack-booting the Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) could not have come at a better time (See “Akufo-Addo Says Voting Mahama Out Has Paid Off” Pulse.Com.Gh/Modernghana.com 10/1/18).

In fact, it has more than paid off, as it has put Ghana, once again, in the global media spotlight in a way that Mr. John Dramani Mahama could not even fathom.

Already, the former Atta-Mills’ political spare-tire has rather bizarrely and insolently indicated that he intends to review Nana Akufo-Addo’s fee-free Senior High School Policy Initiative, should he be voted back to the helm of the country’s affairs come December 2020.

What the foregoing means is that the former NDC-Member of Parliament intends to put at least 30 percent or some 300,000 eligible SHS students back on the streets, should Ghanaian voters make the egregious and unforgivable mistake of returning this veritable political scam-artist into the Jubilee-Flagstaff House.

He says that the fee-free SHS Policy Initiative was implemented without the proper consultations with such critical stakeholders as the nation’s educators, labor leaders and civil society leaders, which, of course, is a flat-out lie.

To be certain, more than adequate consultations were held with these leaders in ways that cannot be said of the sinister backdoor pact that then-President Mahama struck with the Obama Administration to have the two Saudi-born Yemeni terror suspects settled in Ghana, when even the far better protected American captors of these suspects would not have them locked up in any maximum-security prison within Continental United States or even in such far-out US states as Hawaii and Alaska.

It is quite clear that short of stroking his own megalomaniacal ego, Mr. Mahama has absolutely no good or progressive agenda or intentions for the development of our beloved nation. He also says that the Ghana Education Trust Fund or GETFund was established via consultations between NDC operatives and civil society leaders, which is precisely what he intends to do by reviewing the fee-free SHS Policy Initiative. But, of course, the logical question that needs to be posed to this most abjectly incompetent postcolonial Ghanaian leader is why, in spite of the “auspicious” establishment of GETFund, approximately one-third of all eligible Ghanaian youths could not gain access into our SHS institutions, on either tuition-free or tuition-paid basis.

The man is so intellectually backward and morally bankrupt that one begins to wonder how he came by his Ghanaian citizenship, much less be selected as a Vice-Presidential Candidate and voted into the democratic seat of governance by the Atuguba-presided panel of Supreme Court Judges in the chaotic aftermath of the 2012 Presidential election.

But, of course, what is even more important to highlight here is the fact that none of the statistical figures provided by President Akufo-Addo to shore up his claim of the gross incompetence of his immediate predecessor can be credibly contradicted by Mr. Mahama, such as the fact that under the Mahama regime of the National Democratic Congress the country’s economic growth rate was a diddly 3.6 percent, compared to the present phenomenal growth rate of 8.5 percent.

On nearly every national-development front, from healthcare to agricultural production, education and industry, the four-and-half-year performance of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress far pales in significance compared to the 21-month stewardship of the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party.

The country still has quite a ways to go, as it were, to be fully restored to where it needs to be socioeconomically, culturally and technologically. But, of course, with Nana Akufo-Addo at the helm of our national affairs, it goes without saying that Ghana’s reins of governance could not have been placed in better hands.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

October 1, 2018

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net