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Mahama’s Savage Hypocrisy: Free SHS is Sakawa

Wed, 5 Dec 2012 Source: Mensema, Akadu Ntiriwa

*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, PhD

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)

Mahama had free education

His rich father didn’t pay fees

His 19 children had free education

Mahama’s 31 children & counting

Will have free education

Mahama had free education

But cruelly parodies it as sakawa

Mahama’s visionary injunction

His seductive narrative

His evocative ingratitude

His deceitful declaration

Is free education is 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 it all

Of Harmattan-time water

Of putrid night soil

Of raining season firewood

Ah! Nkrumah’s free education

Brimming with hubris

Mahama pedagogies hypocrisies

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

That has made the Iddrisus

That has made the Ayarigas

That has made the Bagbins

Presidents

Vice presidents

Ministers of state

Tractor-thieves

Let us summon history

To speak to free education

Free education

Has been good to the North

It will be good for all

It will be better for all

History as meditation

Of Nkrumah’s free education

That has made the Mahamas

Let it inspire all

History that speaks truth

That speaks to us

About our quotidian struggles

About our archives of pain

About our memories of dreams

About dreams deferred, detained

Shallow politicians

Pen-armed robbers

Who wield faith as history

Who wield kinship as nation

Northern NDC politicians

Benefitted from education

They are brimming with hubris

Like vultures in flight

Over carcasses of history

Besmeared with corruption

Bonded by tractor tribalism

Bait the South

Braying non-free education

John Mahama has no message

No platform

No ideology

Ah! Mahama said it all

He is a Northerner

Northerners must vote for him

Ghanaians let us unclench truth

Let us speak truth to power

Those who bait it us

Those educated hypocrites

Who bait us with their untruths

Let us unclench our fists of truth

To flood all untruths

Daughters and sons

Of the South

You need free education

As much as the North does

Daughters and sons of the South

Summon history

History as meditation

History as guidance

*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