How Can Akufo-Addo Even “Shockingly” Endorse ......

Prof. Doo-Little, the Insult- Supervisor, Mr. Bature?

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

In its giddy desperation to hang onto power by hook and/or crook, the Mills-led National Democratic Congress government appears to have hired unconscionable mercenaries like Alhaji Iddrisu “How-Much-Did-Woyome-Give-You” Bature, the notorious pathological liar and editor-publisher of the Al-Hajj newspaper, to mislead their readers by the use of sophistry (See “Akufo-Addo’s Shocking Affirmation… Mills Needs 2 Terms” Peacefmonline.com 4/2/12).

Consequently, Alhaji Bature and his ilk have resorted to the lurid business of excavating the New Patriotic Party presidential candidate’s development agenda, as intermittently detailed in speeches and media reports, and tweaking it to expediently suit the morbidly vacuous reelection campaign of President John Evans Atta-Mills. In the latest of such patently oafish and downright disingenuous twists, Alhaji Bature has Nana Akufo-Addo claiming that “Four years is not enough to change Ghana’s economy.” Well, Alhaji Bature ought to be told that Election 2012 is a righteous referendum on the administrative performance and managerial competence of the Mills-Mahama government, and not the selfish desire of Messrs. Mills and Mahama to remain in power.

Then also, Alhaji Bature has Nana Akufo-Addo asserting that: “We [i.e. an Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party] will transform Ghana in ten years.” First of all, nowhere is Nana Akufo-Addo noted on record as claiming, either categorically or implicitly, that the constitutionally stipulated four-year term of the presidency is not enough to remarkably transform the country’s economy. Rather, what the NPP flag-bearer has emphatically stated is that given the electoral mandate, the New Patriotic Party ought to be able to significantly transform Ghana’s economy to at least the level of the beginnings of an industrial revolutionary economic culture within a decade. Now, the foregoing statement is a far cry from Nana Akufo-Addo claiming that no governing party in Ghana can transform the country within the four-year presidential term clearly and unambiguously spelt out in Ghana’s 1992 Fourth-Republican Constitution. What is more, an objective comparison between the first four years of President John Agyekum-Kufuor’s tenure would clearly indicate Mr. Kufuor to have been far and way ahead of the game and far ahead of his immediate successor, a man with absolutely no parliamentary and prior electoral experience in democratic governance, other than his adjunct service as the nauseatingly servile lieutenant of former President Jerry John Rawlings! Which, of course, is largely why it took the now-President Atta-Mills three tries before narrowly clinching the presidency.

Well, they may not know this, but what reprobate media scam-artists and pathological liars like Alhaji Iddrisu Bature achieve by such reckless and unconscionable sophistry is insult the intelligence of Ghanaian citizens, at large, before the proverbial international community. The fact of the matter is that prior to the promulgation of Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Constitution, a legitimately constituted assembly of legal mavens, scholars, distinguished and responsible Ghanaian citizens was established to comprehensively determine the practical parameters of a democratic political protocol or culture for the country. And it was, of course, that group of remarkable individuals, representing the various constituencies and legitimate civic bodies and organs, nationwide, that formulated our current Constitution. We must also promptly point out the glaring fact that Ghana’s most recent Constituent Assembly was definitely not the first of its kind in the 55-plus-year-old history of the erstwhile Gold Coast.

And so, if I may pertinently ask: What is the problem now? There clearly appear to be two issues at stake here, neither of which is too far-fetched to raise any remarkable concerns. The first, of course, regards the evidently abject self-centeredness of many a Ghanaian politician and his/her media hireling and/or thug, such as Mr. Iddrisu Bature and the “Trokosi Boys.” For instance, to-date, not many of these same apologists screaming for President Mills to be afforded a second presidential term have come out to vociferously condemn the military coup-plotters who criminally and violently ousted the legitimately-elected governments of Drs. K. A. Busia and Hilla Limann. Instead, we have had these leaders, neither of whom concluded a single term in office, roundly and summarily condemned for administrative mismanagement and gross incompetence. Now, what does such myopic intellectual temperament tell the outside world about the proverbial “Ghanaian Personality”? And just exactly when are we going to cultivate that noble spirit of humility and realism in order to both vindicate and rehabilitate Drs. Busia and Limann, now that we appear to have learned and become more knowledgeable about the byzantine complexities of democratic governance?

I have deliberately excluded Mr. Kwame “MacBeth” Nkrumah and his neo-fascist Convention People’s Party (CPP), obviously, because the latter demonstrated a shameless and abject disregard for human rights and judicial equity. Also between 1956, Ghana’s eve of sovereign reassertion, and 1966, when he was auspiciously and righteously ousted, President Nkrumah never called for and/or organized a single general election, not even to simply rubber-stamp his mandate. Instead, what Ghanaians were inordinately subjected to were a series of predetermined referendums/referenda geared towards the entrenchment of the Show Boy’s personality cult of apotheosis (“Nkrumah Never Dies!”) and the farcical conversion of a hitherto multiparty and democratic Ghana into a one-party autocracy.

Also, the problem that media mercenaries like Alhaji Bature have convincing their fellow Ghanaians of the need to afford President Mills a second term, is the glaring fact that unlike Nana Akufo-Addo, his main ideological opponent, President Mills has yet to unveil any credible development agenda for the country, beyond the characteristically superficial NDC culture of vacuous sloganeering and cynically dismissive attitude towards the more clearly defined agenda of their main political opponents, such as the hoopla created around Nana Akufo-Addo’s promise to make pre-tertiary/pre-university education tuition-free for all Ghanaian citizens, were he to be elected president in December 2012.

Needless to say, on almost every significant front of national development – namely, Health and Sanitation, Agriculture, Law Enforcement, Education and Housing – the Mills-Mahama government has demonstrated itself to be Absent Without Leave (AWOL). The STX Housing and Woyome Judgment-Debt scandals also clearly show the Mills-Mahama government to be up-to-the-neck submerged in an irreparable crisis of gross administrative incompetence, naked robbery and the unremitting exploitation of the Ghanaian people.

Indeed, when it is not neck-deep about the ungodly business of derailing the Kufuor-minted National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the Mills-Mahama regime has been engaged in tapping the phone-lines of its own party operatives and other Ghanaian citizens who have not been charged with any crimes, bordering on a breach of national security, without any judicial authorization or warrant, an egregious violation of human rights by a government that pontifically claims to be both “Democratic” and protective of the rights of the citizens it is supposed to be dutifully serving.

And Alhaji Bature really thinks that such a roguish government deserves another four-year term, in order for the Mills-Mahama posse to continue giving more grief to responsible, diligent and law-abiding Ghanaians? Hell, no!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Danquah v. Nkrumah: In the Words of Mahoney.” E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.

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