Nana Konadu - The Woman behind JJ’s Self-Destruction (Part 6 )

The current troubled situation Ghana’s ruling party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) finds itself should not surprise political pundits and analysts both home and abroad.

What is happening in the NDC today is reminiscent of what bedeviled the party between 2006 and 2008 when it was in opposition and when Professor John Atta Mills was the then favoured candidate to lead the NDC to the Castle, the seat of power.

The well-mannered law professor suffered similar negative campaign from within his own party.

Such was the level of nastiness the negativity reached that at a point in time after he had been duly elected and nominated as the party’s flag bearer, Mills, incredibly, was even said to have died in South Africa.

At that time NDC founder, Jerry Rawlings and wife, Konadu who hadn’t hidden their disapproval of Mills leading the NDC in any future elections since the beginning of 2005, adopted a strategy to carry the fight straight to the good old professor, by focusing on him, indeed they very nearly succeeded in achieving their objective of ditching Mills.

This came about because it got to a stage when Mills nearly threw in the towel. He became totally fed up with the back-stabbing, constant denigration and endless scheming of the Rawlingses who are geniuses at dirty politricks cloaked perfectly-fitting lily-white, holier-than-thou shining knight’s amour-of-truth.

Despite the back-stabbing, constant denigration and endless scheming of Jerry Rawlings at the behest of Nana Konadu, Mills finally triumphed over them when he was overwhelmingly endorsed at the NDC primaries at Legon in 2006 and was eventually, elected and sworn-in as president of the Republic of Ghana on January 7th, 2009.

Professor Mills' triumph over the Rawlingses was however short-lived as virtually every sincere political analyst in Ghana will confirm that Rawlings and his wife Konadu have been a thorn in President Mills' flesh, ever since he was sworn in as president of the Republic of Ghana, on the 7th of January, 2009.

Rawlings has now finally stopped bothering to hide his real intentions - the replacement of Mills by his wife, Nana Konadu: the perfect legal front, through whom he can rule Ghana again, calling the shots from behind her kaba-blouse and ankle-long-slit-skirt.

One may therefore legitimately then ask, why the Rawlingses now so detests former protégé, Mills, that they want him replaced at all costs - even at the risk of the NDC losing power.

Defiant and incorrigible Nana Konadu finally let the cat out of the bag when she told a bemused select group of women, mostly of her 31st December Women’s Movement stock from across the country in Accra some few days prior to announcing her resignation as one of the NDC vice chairperson to contest Mills for the 2012 flagbearership of the NDC in Sunyani in July 2010:

“Let me tell you all gathered here today, that I have no ambition of becoming president of this country, why I am entering this race (NDC presidential primaries) is not because I want to be president but to contest and, am very confident to win so that we can remove the ‘bonsam’ (devil) who is destroying our party, even if that would cost us victory in 2012”.

The women were drawn from northern, middle and southern belt of Ghana. Some of them came from Tamale, Bolgatanga and Kumasi. Others were from Ho, Ayawaso East and Central and according to one of them, who pleaded anonymity, virtually all of them at the meeting were shocked when their President, Nana Konadu referred to the sitting president as ‘bonsam’, who must be uprooted before he destroyed the party.