What I expected from former president Mahama at the NDC ‘unity walk’ in Wa

The NDC has organised one of its reorganization walks in Wa on Saturday, the 7th of April,2018. The aim of these walks is to unite the party and rally every member around the umbrella flag. It's quite ironic because this was a party that declared itself the most united political party in Africa just a year and a half ago.

The aim of the walk was to unite the NDC fraternity but certain key personalities in the party were not present which raised more questions as to whether the unity walk was even achieving its goal.

The founder of the party, former president Rawlings, the former chairman, Kwabena Adjei, leading members like Joshua Alabi, Namoale and others were all missing. Also missing in action for no apparent reason even though the walk was organized in their own backyard and region were the former NDC MPs for Sissala East, Honourable Alijata Sulemana and Honourable Dubie Halutie. This made the walk seem like a one-sided agenda to propagate and market the 2020 presidential ambitions of former president Mahama.

With the NDC walk termed, "Unity Walk", it was expected the former president will have addressed the very deep cracks in the party which he is seen as the primary cause of it. He should have shown leadership by being more of an observer than an active participant.

He should have given way to some new faces who will also use the platform as an opportunity to market themselves to the party and country. But his hijacking of the walks and his perpetual desire to always be heard has made a lot of NDC members to have genuine misgivings about the walk and also about his intentions for the NDC.

In the last " Unity Walk " the former president and his "Agenda 2020" group had in Tarkwa, the former president alleged that the President, Nana Akufo-Addo, was going to appoint one of his relatives and close confidant as the Special Prosecutor.

After the appointment and swearing in of his own NDC Messr Martin Amidu, it turned out that what the former president said wasn't true. As a statesman, we expected that he would have been principled enough and told Ghanaians especially his NDC members that he lied about his claim of president Nana Addo appointing one of his own confidants as the Special Prosecutor. It was a platform like this that he made that false accusation and it would have been better for his image and reputation if he had corrected himself and apologized to Ghanaians and his own NDC members on that same platform eventhough it was on a different venue and region .

Some few weeks ago, our Parliament approved a military deal with the US government. From the look of things,majority of Ghanaians are against the deal but are proud of the transparency and openness of the Nana Addo government. It was my expectation that the former president will have spoken on this military deal issue, giving us reasons why he signed a deal with the US military in 2015, why he wanted a US military school in 2012 and why he thinks this current deal is different from the previous ones he signed.

I would have loved to hear his perceptive as a former Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces whether such deals are good to be shrouded in secrecy as he has done in 2015 or it is good such deals are made public as was done by the NPP government. This I expected to hear from my former president but he unfortunately failed me.

Over the years, former Ghanaian presidents have been sent as election observers to sister African countries and they have always made us proud. But unfortunately, my former president have been accused in two different countries for playing roles to favour some candidates instead of acting as a neutral observer. First it was Kenya and now it's Sierra Leone.

I believe my former president is innocent in this Sierra Leone issue but I expected him to use this walk as an opportunity to educate us on what really happened but he once again failed us. This was his first political platform since he returned from Sierra Leone but he decided to fail his NDC members and fail the good people of Ghana by denying them this very valuable information.

My former president has spoken. He has used the Wa Unity Walk to reorganize his support base ahead of the branch, constituency and regional elections of the NDC. He has used the walk to create some Obinim inspired comic relieves rather than addressing key and critical issues that affects his image and that of the NDC.

I shall, In sha Allah, be back...