In Akua Donkor, President Mahama Has Good Company!

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

Garden City, New York

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I wish I did not have to say this, but with widespread reports of President John Dramani Mahama's younger brother, Ibrahim Mahama, being neck-deep involved in a slew of shady deals having to do with millions of cedis of taxpayers' money, if Ms. Akua Donkor is, indeed, a former criminal convict who spent nearly a decade at the Kumasi Central Prison, as Messrs. Ernest Owusu-Bempah and Charles Owusu are publicly claiming, then Mr. Mahama could not have been in better company (See "Akua Donkor Is An Ex-Convict - Owusu-Bempah" Antinkaonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 7/23/15).

Now regarding Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, of course, I am thinking of the deal involving the South African-owned banking institution. I believe the name was Merchant Bank, in which the President was alleged to have used his clout as the most powerful politician in the country to let his brother get away with transactional misdeeds that would have landed a lesser personality in the slammer, with a blanket forfeiture of the bulk of his/her properties. The other day a deeply frustrated relative with past connections to the Mahamas called to know whether the apparent abysmally low sense of shame, on the part of the Mahamas, in the scamming of the Ghanaian taxpayer was genetic, or it was simply a general northern-Ghanaian greed for public property and wealth. Well, my terse reply was that my relative's guess was as good as mine.

Then quite recently, we learned that the younger Mr. Mahama, proprietor of a firm called Engineers And Planners, was using equipment owned by the state, to wit, the Ghanaian taxpayer, to do business for himself and his company. I have not read the full details of the alleged scam, but it immediately brought back to memory the name of Mr. Wontumi, the Asante Regional Chairman of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). During an electioneering campaign last season, or so, Chairman Wontumi was alleged to have damned the Mahama Brothers for being the most thoroughgoing corrupt scam-artists in the postcolonial history of Ghana. Mr. Ibrahim Mahama promptly sued Chairman Wontumi for libel and defamation, I forget exactly which, and the case landed in court. But I neither had the time nor interest to closely follow it through to its logical conclusion.

What I vividly recall, though, is the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu II, reportedly pleading with the parties involved to amicably settle the case out of court. Now, we are being told by some two minor political operatives that the leader of another minor opposition political organization, the Ghana Freedom Party (GFP), Ms. Akua Donkor, is a former criminal convict who spent nine years at the Kumasi Central Prison. Her riposte makes Ms. Donkor seem far more credible than her two male detractors. And it is that if she were an ex-con, the Electoral Commissioner would not have permitted her to register her Ghana Freedom Party. And the reason? Because the Electoral Commission (EC) conducts background checks before allowing any citizen to register and head any political party in the country.

Messrs. Owusu-Bempah, of the National Democratic Party (NDP), and Charles Owusu, of the Progressive People's Party (PPP), the two men may be related, do not make a convincing case. For starters, these two men do not provide any documentary evidence to back up their quite serious claim. And so they leave their audience wondering whether, at best, such accusation is not mere hearsay calculated to discredit Ms. Donkor. Mr. Owusu-Bempah is the National Communications Director of the NDC-breakaway and Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings-led National Democratic Party. You see, I don't place much premium on the credibility of people who shamelessly truck with the wicked wives of bloody dictators who are, themselves, no less megalomaniacal, and whose egos may have been rattled by the plucky decision of spunky women likeMs. Akua Donkor to gun for the presidency.

Indeed, I would not be the least bit surprised if the GFP leader turned out to be a great source of annoyance to Konadu-Rawlings. I have the same credibility problem with Mr. Charles Owusu, the Deputy Communications Director of the Nduom-owned and operated Progressive People's Party. And as I noted in a previous column, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom (the former Mr. Kwesi Yorke) is arguably the most power-drunk business mogul on the Ghanaian political scene presently. He has made an indisputable second career out of politics, having spent some 12 years representing the rump-Convention People's Party (r-CPP) from his home district of Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abirem, in the Central Region.

Recently, Dr. Nduom shocked many of us avid observers and students of Ghanaian politics, when the Touche And Deloitte's Africa Representative (he may have retired or even resigned), smugly declared that his quite considerable property holdings around the country made the University of Wisconsin graduate the best qualified presidential candidate. It is ironic that with megalomaniacal bosses like Konadu-Rawlings and Nduom, Messrs. Owusu-Bempah and Charles Owusu should presume to so casually impugn the credibility of President Mahama's apparently fast friendship and some even say, companionship, with Ms. Akua Donkor.

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