Compared to Mahama, Naana Opoku-Agyemang Is More than Qualified to Be Ghana’s First Woman President, of Course!

Of course, just about anybody whom the Kingmakers and the Queenmakers of the country’s main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), decide to select as the 2024 Running-Mate of the twice-defeated, one-term former President John (Ouagadougou-Nkonfem Flying) Dramani Mahama is apt to be far better qualified than the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress, whom the late Founding-Father of the latter political party establishment, namely, former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings described as the most grossly incompetent and thoroughgoing corrupt leader of postcolonial Ghana.

So, yes, Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia-ousted Parliamentary Minority Caucus Leader, is dead-on-target when the Member of Parliament for Tamale-South Constituency, in the Northern Regional Capital, asserts rather smugly, cynically and exuberantly that the once-defeated 2020 Mahama Presidential Running-Mate, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, is not only more than qualified to be the Running-Mate of the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, but that the former Mahama-appointed Education Minister is equally more than qualified to be elected as the First Woman President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana (See “Prof Jane Naana Is More Than Qualified to Be Ghana’s First [Female] Vice-President and Even President – Haruna Iddrisu” Modernghana.com 4/24/24).

The most significant problem with the unreserved and otherwise fitting, if also all-too-predictable, endorsement of Candidate Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang is that the party bigwig doing the endorsement is an irredeemably damaged merchandise, just like the Mahama Running-Mate herself. The truth of the matter is that Mr. Iddrisu woefully lacks the requisite moral weight and the credibility to endorse even himself for the job. You see, Dear Reader, it was under the watch of Mr. Iddrisu, the former Mahama-appointed Labor and Employment Minister, that a ginormous $72 million (USD) went missing from the vaults of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), money that belonged to hardworking Ghanaian civil and public servants and retirees, as well as private individuals and entrepreneurs.

At the time that the aforesaid money went missing, the man who has been self-righteously demanding that his immediate successor set up investigative panels to inquire into nearly each and every officially reported incident of the breach of public trust, namely, the then President John “Ford Expedition Payola” Dramani Mahama, never established any investigative panel to enquire into the means by which the Mahama-appointed SSNIT administrators caused a humongous loss to Ghanaian taxpayers and pensioners and retirees. So, you pretty well know, Dear Reader, that any public endorsement proffered Candidate Opoku-Agyemang by Mr. Iddrisu is not worth even the very breath with which such endorsement was spoken, much less the piece of paper on which it was written.

Then also, we need to quickly remind those of our readers who have so soon forgotten the same, that Mr. Iddrisu was the Dean of the Double-Salary Drawing Mahama Cabinet Appointees who were royally exposed by then Auditor-General Daniel Yaw Domelevo and ought to have quietly retired and kept a low profile, were he even half as smart as his electoral next-door neighbor, namely, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, the former NDC-MP for Tamale-Central Constituency. Instead, a shameless and a morally bankrupt Mr. Iddrisu would be desperately and egotistically crisscrossing the country earnestly pleading with highly influential and respected monarchs and chieftains like The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu, II, to intervene so as to enable Mr. Iddrisu and his kleptocratic and kleptomaniacal associate cabinet appointees avoid well-deserved discipline and time behind bars.

Now, the foregoing testimony goes to show any socially responsible Ghanaian citizen and taxpayer the abjectly poor caliber of politician and leadership profile cut by Mr. Haruna Iddrisu. The unvarnished truth of the matter is that Mr. Iddrisu is an incurable criminally minded politician who is deathly afraid of boldly and honestly paying for his own wanton acts of heinous criminality, just like his former boss and paymaster and, presently, the 2024 Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress. It is also rather comical for Mr. Iddrisu, who spent half of his fully paid office hours on the job, as Labor and Employment Minister, shuttling between Accra and London while working on his law degree, or some such professional certification, to be pontificating about the purportedly great and yeomanly achievements of Candidate Opoku-Agyemang, without naming a single one of those achievements to members of the global Ghanaian community.

Now, one does not need a college degree to figure out that as the Mahama-appointed Education Minister, Prof. Opoku-Agyemang presided over one of the worst public education systems in the world, at least as authoritatively assayed by the United Nations-sponsored and Paris-, France, based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). So, it is patently clear that the decision to re-select or re-field Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang as the 2024 Presidential Running-Mate of Candidate Mahama is purely based on the commonplace ideology of “Birds of Identical Plumage Flying Together.” We are also pretty certain that that absolutely no self-respecting and dignified party stalwart, including Dr. Kwame Duffuor, the deliberately and strategically ostracized former challenger to Candidate-General Mahama for the party’s 2024 Presidential Nomination, would have deigned to be so scandalously paired up with such a clinically vision-bereft narcissist and kleptomaniacal egotist.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
May 5, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]