Mine is not soothsaying, it is a vision!

I do not have to be a soothsayer, a prophet, a black magician, a necromancer, a fetish priest, or a pastor to realise that any creature in the image of God will most likely choose the all-important transformational digitalisation over the irritating and retrogressive dumsor.

A story is told, somewhat anecdotally, that in ancient Egypt, as early as 2000 BC, the ancient Egyptians wrote down their dreams on ‘papyrus’.

The story goes that persons with significant and vivid dreams were considered blessed, and therefore seen as special species.

Apparently, the early Egyptians were of the view that dreams were like oracles that bring messages from the gods. Since then, people have been mulling endlessly over the meaning of dreams.

Suffice it to reiterate that “early civilizations thought of dreams as a medium between our earthly world and that of the gods.”

“In fact, the Greeks and Romans were convinced that dreams had certain prophetic powers. While there has always been a great interest in the interpretation of human dreams, it wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century that Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung put forth some of the most widely-known modern theories of dreaming”.

“Freud’s theory centred on the notion of repressed longing, that is the idea that dreaming allows us to sort through unresolved, repressed wishes”.

So it was not something out of the ordinary when I vividly saw the winner of the 2024 general elections in my dream recently. The said winner was Digitalisation.

My dreams, more often than not, come to pass, and, given Mahama’s abysmal performance while in office amid the irritating dumsor, and the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration encouraging performance in spite of the unspeakable corona virus and Ukraine/Russia intractable conflict, my dream may well come to pass.

My dear reader, please tell me, if Mahama is not taking Ghanaians for granted, how on earth would he consider returning to the presidency given the dreadful errors in judgement during his tenure in office?

To be elected as a president of a country is a life time privilege which comes with juicy trappings and enormous responsibilities.

Thus, ideally, someone with vast life experience, impeccable integrity, a catalogue of suitable employable skills, a portfolio of relevant qualifications, tried and tested competency and requisite knowledge should be a suitable candidate for the position given the absolute importance attached to the presidency.

Unfortunately, however, the emergence of democracy has energised every sound adult Ghanaian to compete for such an important position.

We are, more often than not, been electing ‘a semicircle’ of negligent officials whose only preoccupation is to sink the nation deeper and deeper into the mire through incompetence and unbridled corruption.

It is an undeniable fact that we choose to exercise our voting rights by electing a president in anticipation that the said leader will form a formidable government to run the affairs of the country to the benefit of all and sundry.

That being said, it would be absolutely wrong for anyone to suggest for a moment that every leader can prudently steer the nation to the right direction if given the opportunity.

Take, for example, it will be incongruous to put Akufo-Addo and Mahama in the same basket, for instance. This is because, the former has prudently introduced important policies and programmes, while the later failed to introduce a single social intervention in eight years.

Given the circumstances, I would like to believe that the good people of Ghana made a terrible mistake by voting the NPP administration out in 2008 general elections, as Ghana, as a matter of fact, was heading in the right direction following the eight years of prudent governance by Ex-President Kufuor’s administration.

But in spite of all the advantageous programmes and policies that put the country in a highly favourable economic position, discerning Ghanaians disastrously bought into the NDC’s propaganda and voted out the NPP administration in 2008.

There is no gainsaying the fact that all over the world, prudent and pragmatic governments, more often than not, manage to improve upon the economic fortunes of their respective countries if they are allowed to stay in power a bit longer.

Take, for instance, the Rwandan current president, Paul Kagame, has been in power since 2000 and has managed to transform the country’s economy tremendously.

In fact, Rwanda has undergone rapid development largely due to the implementation of pragmatic policies and programmes over a sustained period of time.

In Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, who returned in 2018 as the head of the opposition coalition, and the oldest Prime Minister at 93 years old, stabilised the Malaysian economy from 1981 to 2003.

Tun M, as Mahathir is called by his supporters, oversaw a period of rapid economic growth and development in Malaysia during his first long stint in office.

In the United Kingdom for example, the Labour Party assumed power from 1997 to 2010 under two separate Prime Ministers, Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007 and James Gordon Brown from 2007 to 2010.

Needless to say, Blair and Brown did their utmost best and managed to stabilise the United Kingdom’s economy until the Labour Party lost power to the Conservative Party in 2010.

That being said, to every rule, there is an exception, and this is no different in the case of Ghana.

Regrettably, in Ghana, since regaining independence from the British on 6th March 1957, the NDC tradition (PNDC and NDC) had governed the country more than any other government one can think of. In fact, that tradition had governed Ghana for approximately 27 years out of Ghana’s 67 years with a little to show for it.

Since the inception of the Fourth Republican Constitution, the day-to-day management of the country had been a shared responsibility between the National Democratic Congress tradition, whose share of the governance is 27 years and the New Patriotic Party (UP tradition) has also governed the country for nearly 16 years.

K. Badu, UK.

k.badu2011@gmail.com