By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
March 5, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
During his electioneering campaign in the northern-half of the country in 2012, then-Transitional President John Dramani Mahama was widely reported to have told Ghanaians of northern birth and/or descent that he was their one and only hope for socioeconomic and cultural prosperity in the country. Consequently, the Gonja native was widely quoted to have exhorted his "northern brothers and sisters" that they would be digging their own graves, if they made the egregious error of voting for the southern-born Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the Presidential Candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Since then, Mr. Mahama has not let up on seizing the least speechificational opportunity to bigotedly lambaste the two most powerful sub-ethnic Akan people of the country. At a congressional primary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) last year, for example, Mr. Mahama was widely reported to have stood in the middle of the Asante royal capital of Kumasi and castigated the Asante people for being so pathologically and incurably ungrateful that even if his government decided to pave all the roads and highways of Ghana's most populous region with gold, Asantes would still not show any modicum of gratitude for the party whose key operatives have persecuted and executed more Asantes than any other group of Ghanaians during the past 35 years.
And then just last year, during the commissioning of a potable water project, sponsored by the United Nations, in the Akyem-Abuakwa royal capital of Kyebi, Mr. Mahama, whose government has done more to pollute the water bodies of the Eastern Region than any other government during the last two decades, by its reckless sponsorship of the deleterious activities of gold-mining companies, taunted the Paramount Chief of Akyem-Abuakwa and his people for having made their township the headquarters of Galamsey or illegal mining activities.
And so it hardly comes as refreshing news that the President of Ghana would be asking the Christian majority citizenry of the country to literally roll up on their backs and let their Muslim brothers and sisters who are attending Christian missionary academies to ride roughshod over them. In essence, in his latest feint at bigotry, Mr. Mahama has invoked the country's Indemnity-Clause hobbled 1992 Constitution as a means of legitimizing the right of Islam-confessing Ghanaians voluntarily attending Christian missionary schools to cherry pick which rules and regulations of these schools and academies to obey or flout. And here, it is important to promptly point out that President Mahama claims to be a practicing evangelical or pentecostal Christian, it is not clear to this author which.
It is equally significant to point out that Mr. Mahama's own late father, Adama, a former Northern Regional Minister under the Nkrumah-led Convention People's Party (CPP), was a bona fide and practicing Muslim. And in recent months, the President of Ghana has been traipsing the Arab-Muslim Gulf States, with retinues of largely Ghanaian Muslims and close business associates, assuring Emirs and Sultans of the region that his country is West Africa's most conducive oasis for Muslim business investment. On his last visit, it is interesting to observe, one of those rabidly anti-Christian emirs or sheikhs was even reported to have lectured His Excellency on the need for Ghana to establish educational hubs in a manner that takes after the construction of industrial townships.
Even more significantly, one obviously addled reporter had Sheikh Lasisi (not his real name) commending Mr. Mahama for having singularly created a conducive environment for Muslims among the country's predominantly Christian community. Talk of surreptitious beachheads! And so, of course, it comes as both opportune and quite refreshing that the Methodist Bishop of Obuasi, the ancient Asante City of Gold, the Rt.-Rev. Stephen Richard Bosomtwe-Ayensu, should vehemently dare Mr. Mahama to attempt to carry out his executive threat of "Makarantizing" the country's mission schools by exhorting Muslim students who voluntarily opted to attend these schools to pick and choose which rules and regulations they want to obey and see just what happens (See "Methodist Bishop Berates Mahama" Daily Guide / Ghanaweb.com 3/5/15).
Actually, the prime target of NDC official abuse cautioned the Mahama posse to sober up and tackle the crucial business of nation-building and governance with all the intellectual heft and moral poise that the job requires.
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