One Step at a Time

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Garden City, New York

Oct. 17, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

He is on the home turf, and so he has to be soberly and wisely deferred to on occasion. However, the fact remains indisputable that the voluble and garrulous managing-editor of the Daily Dispatch newspaper is smack-dab in the pay of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC). And so his views ought to be accorded all the cautious reservations that they definitely deserve. I am also quite certain that he is not totally off-tangent, when Mr. Ben Ephson asserts that the leadership of the country’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) would likely push off and, perhaps, even put him out of their circles altogether, once Nana Akufo has done his bit and exited the national political scene (See “NPP Will Dump Bawumia After Akufo-Addo’s Exit – Ben Ephson” Kasapafmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 10/7/15).

The problem here, though, is that in the 8 or so years that he has been dealt his deck of political cards from the very top of the party’s hierarchy, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has established a remarkable traction that would not be easy to cavalierly dispense with, as the Kufuor/Kyerematen faction of the New Patriotic Party may be dreaming about. His undeniably central role in the landmark 2012 presidential-election petition established him as a formidable figure and the man to beat when it comes to managing the affairs of Ghana’s largest party. His follow-up performance in exposing voters’ registration irregularities places him in a class category that can only be rivalled by the country’s foremost investigative journalist, Mr. Anas Aremeyaw Anas. And so any inordinately ambitious prominent member of the New Patriotic Party who mischievously schemes to shunt Dr. Bawumia onto the gray margins of political inactivity or irrelevance in a post-Akufo-Addo era must be fully prepared to see the fortunes of the party drastically dwindle.

I have said this before and hereby frankly repeat the same, that party leadership is best predicated on merit, rather than the mere and superficial length of time of one’s membership. The Akan have a poetic style of casting the preceding concept of leadership competence. It runs mellifluously as follows: “When the future king was being born, there were adult-male residents in the palace.” Alhaji Bawumia has more than amply demonstrated that he has what it takes to take our country to the next level. He knows how the economy works, which is why he was named head of the team of crackerjack monetary experts who effected the salutary redenomination of the hitherto shinplaster that was Ghana’s legal tender, the Cedi. If you are reading this article and you are at least 25 years old, you probably remember that inexcusably bleak period in our nation’s history when the local equivalent of $100 (One-Hundred American Dollars) had to be carried in a sizeable briefcase instead of a pocket-sized wallet. Well, Dr. Bawumia was a key player on the team of economists that neatly and wisely returned the Cedi into our wallets and purses once more.

The three-time Vice-Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party has enviably established his political and leadership authority and done so on a grand scale, and so contrary to what Mr. Ephson would have his audiences believe, replacing Nana Akufo-Addo with Alhaji Bawumia is not a chimerical question of “dreams” and “wishes” but one of incontestable reality. Dr. Bawumia strikingly complements Nana Akufo-Addo in ways that cannot be said of previous Fourth Republican presidential candidates and their running-mates. At the worst, what I see happening will be a progressive case scenario whereby any of the party stalwarts, such as Messrs. Dan Botwe, Paapa Owusu-Ankomah and Isaac Osei gets paired up with the Simon Fraser- and Oxbridge-educated Alhaji Bawumia, with the latter holding the top end of the ticket.

The only problem here would be the question of regional balance. But even as I once had occasion to remark about the bizarre, albeit not totally out of place, concept of a “rotary presidency,” Ghanaians do not have the luxury not to privilege competence and leadership ingenuity over and above the nativity or provenance of any individual leader.