President Mahama represents bad leadership

"The country is full of very brilliant, intelligent people; we have sidelined them; we have pushed all of them to the side and then you have people who know next to nothing wielding power, showing power, and the rest of us are suffering. I think it's about time that Ghanaians sit (sic) up."

The above comments capture the lamentations of Sam Okudzeto, a renowned legal practitioner and former President of the Ghana Bar Association. And what makes his comments very instructive is the fact that it captures the very pathetic state of affairs in the country under the leadership of President.

The people of Ghana are now crying for a genuine, competent leadership that will put their interest first; a leadership that will jealously guard the resources of the state, and use them to implement policies and programmes that will inure to the benefit of all Ghanaians and not few cronies and family members.

Political leadership is all about taking the right decisions to affect the development and implementation of sound programmes and policies to improve upon the socio-economic wellbeing of the people.

Effective political leadership is not just about taxing the people and borrowing money to carry out normal infrastructural projects, such as construction of roads, hospitals and schools. This is a duty anybody, including even "apampam" store operators, can do on behalf of the state.

Evidence of effective leadership was witnessed in the country under the previous Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party government that implemented programmes such as the National Health Insurance Scheme, School Feeding Programme, Mass Cocoa Spraying, Free Maternal Care and others that had far-reaching positive ramifications for the lives of the people.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the current leadership being provided for the nation by President John Dramani Mahama. One would have wished that if he could not even build upon the above laudable programmes inherited from the previous government, he should have done everything possible to keep them in the shape he came to meet them. But that has not been the case: the country is rather witnessing deterioration in the implementation of these programmes.

Nothing seems to be working in the country at the moment, and the reason is simple: bad leadership. The outcome of this bad leadership has led to the unfortunate situation where the good people of Ghana have endured eight years of excruciating hardship under the corrupt and incompetent National Democratic Congress government.

President Mahama has done more than enough to convince Ghanaians that he represents all that bad leadership can offer a nation: a leadership that is not decisive; a leadership that takes the people for granted and employs lies, deceit and propaganda as its major tool in dealing with the people; a leadership that has virtually no clue as to how to tackle the basic problems confronting the country; a leadership that is only interested in creating opportunities for cronies to steal the people's money; and a leadership only interested in the next election and not the next generation.

This is the sorry picture of leadership being offered the nation now by President Mahama. And that is why majority of Ghanaians believe the time for a change cannot be delayed beyond the end of this year. They don't have any doubt to believe that entrusting the affairs of the country into the hands of President Mahama for another four years will be a complete cataclysm for the nation