Nice try, President Mahama, but…

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D. English Department, SUNY-Nassau Garden City, New York January 22, 2017 E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I would love to congratulate former President John Dramani Mahama on his appointment as co-chair, with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, of a session of the UN-sponsored Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) – he has since denied this announcement that reportedly first appeared on his Facebook Wall – but I can’t because what we clearly see here is a deftly and subtly orchestrated publicity stunt, geared towards claiming credit for any investment successes that may very likely be chalked by the Akufo-Addo Administration (See “My UN Appointment Speaks Volumes About Ghana’s Leadership – Mahama” MyJoyOnline.com / Modernghana.com 1/22/17).

We learn that the preceding announcement of his “nine-day” appointment was first posted on his Facebook page, which is where it squarely belongs. And if he wants to be given any lessons about Ghana’s great leadership presence around the globe, I could take the Gonja petty chieftain to as far back as the 1400s, from the likes of King Kwamena Ansah, of present-day Cape Coast, to George Kuntu Blankson, the first Ghanaian to sit in the Gold Coast Legislative Assembly, from the Saltpond-Anomabu littoral, in the 1870s. the fact of the matter is that the erstwhile Gold Coast is not a newcomer on the global political and diplomatic scene. Mr. Mahama could also do himself and his partisans and sympathizers great good by studying Asante diplomacy in the 19th and early 20th centuries from the erudite and immortalized likes of Prof. Ivor Wilks, and stop behaving as if Ghana’s significant presence on the global stage began with his election as the “spare tire” of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills.

The fact of the matter is that co-chairing a panel, or a session, on Sustainable Development Goals is no more likely to attract any more investors into our country than when the then-Foreign Minister Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had the privilege to chair a month-long session of the UN Security Council did anything to boost the nuclear-weapons capacity of Kwabenya. Needless to say, what is more likely to facilitate the remarkable influx of foreign investors into the country is the dogged pursuit of the neo-liberal ideology of a “Property-Owning Democracy” that was fervidly championed by the Danquah-Busia cohort. Indeed, if the mere chairing or co-chairing of UN-sponsored sessions did any country any good, the election of Mr. Kofi Annan as UN Secretary-General, and a first-rate one at that, would certainly have catapulted Ghana from its very unenviable Third-World economic status to that of a First-World economic Titan.

To be certain, Ghana has a pride of place among the global comity of nations not because of grossly misguided faux-socialists like our former president, but rather in spite of people like Mr. Mahama. If he really wants to make himself relevant and productive to the salutary development of the country, Mr. Mahama may need to do some serious soul-searching, abandon his opportunistic and narcissistic tendencies and ethnic chauvinism, which was largely what cost the National Democratic Congress (NDC) the 2016 general election big time!

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